Taxing Bachelors.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume XX, Issue 2036, 28 February 1887, Page 2

Taxing Bachelors.

A tax cm bachelors is the last financial proposal in France. A petition to that efiect has been sent to the Chamber of Deputies. It sajs that in Paris alone there are nearly half a million, whereas the number of married men is not more than 379,000. If ever we get a women's Parliament in this country it will probably be the first new tax proposed by the lady Chancellor of the Exchequer, and with the assistance of the married men it would doubtless pass. Why should not bachelors be made to pay something more to the State than heavily burdened fathers of families, instead of in so many cases escaping almost scot-free ? The Pall to all Gazette reminds us that the tax, singular as it may seem, has already existed in several countries. The French Convention adopted it. So did the old republics. In Sparta the women were allowed to drag bachelors into the Temple of Hercules and give them a sound thrashing. Plato condemned them to a fine. Home made them pay a round sum Camillus wont further, and forced them to marry the widows of citizens killed in defending the country. The petitioners say the tax ought to be doubly welcome—first, because it will increase the declining population by inducing the bachelors to marry ; and secondly, because it will help to make up the growing deficit in the Budget.