Wanganui Herald. [PUBLISHED DAILY.] TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1886. MISREPRESENTATION.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XX, Issue 6085, 30 November 1886, Page 2

Wanganui Herald. [PUBLISHED DAILY.] TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1886. MISREPRESENTATION.

Fob some reason or other the Rangitikei Advocate never fails, when referring to the Hon. Mr Ballance, to accuse him of all sorts of blunders he never committed. In a late issue in its leading article, the Advocate says :—": — " In a recent speech at Blenheim, the Minister of LauJs announced that he intended next session to introduce a bill for Iho expropriation of private estates. Tho main principle of tho bill is that the State is to have the right to resume possession of any land that it may rcjj quire for the purposes of settlement, on payment to the owner of ten per cent increase on the property-tax valuation. The State may under the existing law take laud for public works or defence purposes, and we recently had a shocking example of its efforts in this direction. The State bought the property of Mr Stark, at Auckland, at tho net property-tax valuation, without any ten per cent increase, and it paid about seventeen thousand pounds for ■what was not at tho outside worth more than seven thousand pounds. The State would soon grow rich in this way, and taxes would soon be abolished altogether ! It came out in the course of the inquiry held by the Stark Purchase Commission that the Government property-tax valuerswere instructed to put the highest possible valuation on properties, in order to swell the revenue. This was said to be the secret of the Stark purchase swindle. The Government had simply been caught in their own trap. Mr Ballance is not only Minister of Lands, but Defence Minister, and the Stark property was taken for defence purposes. Tho lesson which he got on tliat occasion would have taught any ordinary mortal the unwisdom, not to say the folly, of attempting to introduce a general system of expropriation, by means of which a shoal of Starks might prey upon the State funds." There are two gross misstatements in the above. It did not come out that the Government property-tax valuers were instructed as to how they should perform their duties. The Government never interfered with them, nor would any valuator allow it to do so. The Advocate's assertion is a wild and reckless attempt to fasten discredit where there is no just cause. Again, it is equally wrong in its attempt by inuendo to lead its readers to believe that Mr Ballance had anything to do with the Stark purchase in any way. He had nothing whatever to do with it; the Minister for Public Works and the Colonial Treasurer being the responsible parties, as the writer in the Advocate surely knows, if he read the evidence in the Stark Purchase Enquiry. Mr Ballance's Marton critic should stick to facts, and not invent them to suit his arguments as in the above instance, whioh is a fair sample of the Advocate's style of political criticism.