Straight Questions.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume IV, Issue 538, 29 November 1890, Page 3

Straight Questions.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —A subject little known, and less considered, I propose bringing through your paper to the notice of the public. The question I refer to is the Customs tariff, and the way in which it bears privately on every individual member of the community. The Staple commodity of the colony may fairly ba stated to be wool, and that goes duty free, but look for a moment at the way in which the manufactured article returns to us, and the tremendous impost it is on every head of a family, borne passively it js true, for the simple reason that use makes custom, until custom becomes abuse, which in this particular instance I contend it has. Whilst the wool producer congratulates himself on the high price his product is finding in the Home market, he (we will give him credit for it so far) little thinks that the post js actually borne by his employes, their wives and children, and the bread earners throughout the whole country. Customs tariffs are little considered by the many; your merchants, storekeepers, and the numerous fry of small dealers, common to every civilised, and possibly every uncivilised community, make capital out of it. tfhey have to pay, probably in borrowed pjpney, the cost of the original article; and when the interest they pay on the soborrowed capital is added to the duty they have to pay in Customs dues, what is to recoup them but the money wrung out of the consumer ? New Zealand stands, if not fttthe bead, very near to it, of the me st heavily taxed country in the world, but the Circumstances which enabled the earlier jettlera to prosper, have materially changed in every particular, and what with one political fad and another, population is being frightened from our shores notwithstanding the enormous sums we have borrowed to obtain it. Beyond dispute hundreds of those who came to the colony, brought out at the expense of those who came before them, have but added to the burden of bona fide settlers and after a brief sojourn have sought pastures new—pther shores. It is on record that the Australian colonies laughed at us, and when an emigration policy was advocated, the Government replied ?o the opposition, “New Zealand is doing at ite cost, all we need '* — those who have read know this for truth. Not alone are goods taxed, but also the very cases in which they are packed. Sir Harry Atkinson in his inscrutable wisdom might have spared those whom be once boasted in the House were the brethren in whose ranks he once labored. Have the Custom House officers any power of volition in this matter ? There are other subjects on which I would like information; amongst them, a question near allied to our interests. How did it come about that in the varied manipulation of our Lands Acts, in the first instance, ten grantees only were permitted, and to suit particular cases the old Act got amended, at whose instance? Was it not done by those who had, to prevent those who had pot ? Answer me this, ye who know the past history of the present owners of large estates in the colony. If ycu care, on behalf of the Colonial Press, to take up the challenge I now throw down, I am utterly, In all good spirit, your willing opponent.—l am, &c 3 J. E. Hurbey.