TAXATION.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5570, 20 May 1896, Page 4

TAXATION.

"It is an axiom that taxation always falls upon that portion of the people least able to bear it." So said Captain Eussell when speaking at Cambridge last week. Now (the Waikato Advocate gdbs on to = remark) an axiom is defined by the dictionary as " a self-evident truth," and during the long reign of the Conservative Party the truth that the workers were made to bear the weight of the burden of taxation was self-evident enough in all conscience. Not only was the working portion of the population obliged to contribute the bulk of the Customs revenue, but the farmers (who are unquestionably the hardest workers of all people) had to pay a tax upon their industry. The sacred cow of the Hindoos is not held in more holy awe than was the property tax by the political progenitors and coadjutors of Captain Eussell. The present Government has changed all that. It has relieved the farmer of the unjust load he had been compelled to carry on his shoulders for many weary years, while it has not substituted for it anything in the shape of indirect taxation, a form of tax which is not acutely felt because it is unseen. • It was, indeed, the aim of Mr Ballance to prove that the axiom upon which Captain Eussell lays such stress is artificial, and that he and his successors have accomplished their object is* best proved by the violent opposition offered to their policy by the Conservatives to-day.