vered was against the Property
Tax. This, the chief direct tax of the Colony, was an annual impost of
1d. in the L on the capital value of every citizen's possessions, less
his debts and an exemption of L500. Its friends claimed for this tax
that it was no respecter of persons, but was simple, even-handed, and
efficient. The last it certainly was, bringing as it did into the
Treasury annually about as many thousands as there are days in the
year. But inasmuch as different kinds of property are by no means
equally profitable, and therefore the ability of owners to pay is by
no means equal, the simplicity of the Property Tax was not by many
thought equity. The shopkeeper, taxed on unsaleable stock, the
manufacturer paying on plant and buildings as much in good years as in
bad, bethought them that under an Income Tax they would at any rate
escape in bad seasons when their income might be less or nothing.
The comfortable professional man or well-paid business manager paid
nothing on their substantial and regular incomes. The working-farmer
settling in the desert felt that for every pound's worth of
improvements made by muscle and money he would have to account to the
tax-collector at the next assessment. Nevertheless the Conservative
politicians rallied round the doomed tax. It was a good machine for
raising indispensable revenue. Moreover, it did not select any class
of property-owners or any description of property for special burdens.
This suited the landowners, who dreaded a Land Tax, for might not a
Land Tax contain the germ of that nightmare of the larger colonial
landowner--the Single Tax? It suited also the wealthy, who feared
graduated taxation, and the lawyers, doctors, agents, and managing
directors, whose incomes it did not touch. So when in the autumn the
rumour went round that the Ballance Ministry meant to abolish the
Property Tax and bring forward Bills embodying a Progressive Land Tax,
and Progressive Income Tax, the proposal was thought to represent the
audacity of impudence or desperation. When the rumour proved true, it
was predicted that the farmers throughout the length and breath of the
country would rise in wrath and terror, scared by the very name of
Land Tax. Nevertheless Parliament passed the Bills, with the addition
of a light Absentee Tax. The smaller farmers, at any rate, took the
appeals of the Property Taxers with apathy, suspecting that under a
tax on bare land values they would pay less than