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New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIX, Issue 34, 22 August 1901, Page 10

more protected the missionaries inside the railway pates, which were then locked upon the emissaries of peace and good will to all mankind, luncheon was conveyed to the hungry party and all returned by the next up train to report progress to Mrs Smylie and to receive their pay in Dublin. A TAX THAT AVAB NOT COLLECTED. But there was another side to the business. Mrs Smylie paid Only her own party . Government gave the police, but the citizens of Sligo, all creeda included, were ordered to pay the cost of these special police, and the tax assessed for these various comings and goings amounted to a large sum. Sbgo demurred : all creeds there agiueJ LLul they had never n°k r> d for Mr= Pmrl'e' a Tuiooiminrip* ■ that their happy Christian iieighborliueas had suffered from the irriLtkiion auJ counter irritation stirred up over religious dis f> n t »twi«< never dreamt of before, and Sligo said not a penny would it pay. The authorities waxed wroth : lawsuits ensued and law costs piled up to a big sum. There was a sturdy Mayor in Sligo, with the whole town to back him . he respectfully told the Queen, or Lord Salisbury, or the Lord Lieutenant, or the whole Government, to come and see could any of them or all of them together collect a tax that a united community refused to pay. This waa five years ago ; Queen Victoria is dead. Mrs Smylie is gone to her reward, but the tax is still nncollected. What a suggestive subject for meditation in an over-taxed land, let us say Italy ; tuigeann tv i Two generations ago, there was a celebrated social economist, Nassau Senior, who Baid that every community has oDe unfailing weapon against inustice at hand if they choose to use it : a unanimous refusal to pay taxes. M.B.