Chapter VI. Representation a Farce.

Property has secured all the votes, and is thus able to put in "politicians," men who, ignorant of the fact that sound economy is really the best thing for property itself, and that to sin against true politics is only to punish property, yet persist blindly in taking the revenue out of the wages fund of the country, thereby preventing production, while on the other hand they positively allow millions of profit to be taken from the country by loan companies, such as the New Zealand Loan, &c; by banks whoso shareholders are in London; by insurance companies whose owners do not work for their income. So that as I have shown in the personal estate seventy millions of money earning about five and a half millions a year pay no taxes, while the Representatives charge on to the backs of the people the whole of the cost of the Railways.

Is that representation? Have the grocers, the shopkeepers, the clerks, the labourers, the civil servants no better judgment than to elect men guilty of the greatest financial errors that it is possible to conceive?

How true it is that for all the good they do it were bettor for some politicians that a millstone were hanged about their necks and they should have been cast into the depths of the sea than live to stand and defile the page of history with ignorance so profound, with a policy of spoliation, a policy of denudation, a policy mother to every ill.

Oh! Zealandia! my young country! You lie trampled under the merciless heels of a crowd of mammon worshippers, whose god is the golden calf, whose ambition is cash, and whose history is a dirge of sorrow.

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For one moment I turn from abstract truth to the persons representing this borough of Christchurch that holds my carcase (but not my soul). Mr. Stevens, a man who makes his bread and cheese out of foreign capitalists, is a representative. Look at his speech on the Income Tax (Hansard, page 625); he tells you such taxes would frighten capital away. What is 1s. 6d. in the £ on an income of 15 per cent.? Why it is only £ 1 2s. 6d. out of the profit. And does Mr. Stevens really think that London men would refuse to make £ 15 per cent, because they would be taxed £1 2s. 6d. out of it? That would leave them £13 17s. 6d. net profit; or, out of £8 per cent., £7 8s. net profit. Ignorance again!

Mr. Richardson is one of Sir Julius Vogel's friends, and he helped to put all this burden on the people : it is useless to argue with such a mind.

New Zealand should take care to avoid the influentials, the merchants, the runholders' friend, &c., get some candidates of a certain platform fixed by the electors—pledge their candidates to go up and tax incomes of foreigners.

Till that is done Representation will be a farce.

Receipts (see 13, 11—B2).

Customs (? or supplemented by Excise)	£1,226,000
Stamps	124,000
Post	107,000
Telegraph	70,000
Justice	43,000
Native Lands (?)	10,000
Registration Land	13,250
Registration Heeds	16,250
Registration Births	5,200
Registration Grants	6,060
Sheep	11,000
Miscellaneous	3,950
Goldfields	72,000
Education Reserves, and Rents, &c.	60,000
	£1,767,710

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