The Single-Tax no Relief whatever to Tenants.

Under Mr. Withy's system, tenants would be in no way relieved; the money they paid would be the same—that is, the full rent upon the value of both the bare land and the improvements, the only difference being that the landowner would have to pay to the State, at the nearest post office, the rent that was supposed to accrue from the bare land alone. And I would here like to ask Mr. Withy what he proposes should be done to the landowner if he thought that all the rent belonged to him, both for his land and his improvements, and on that ground stubbornly refused on principle to part with a penny of it, except what would represent according to his own idea his fair share of taxation as a member of the community; no matter how many yellow or blue papers were sent to him demanding this land rent, or how direful the penalties they declared he should suffer in case of his noncompliance? Or if the landowner were a very meek man and afraid of the law, and, therefore, unwillingly parted with the rent that was threatened out of him, would he be as willing to make concessions to his tenant out of what remained of his rent in case of bad seasons, or the reduced price of produce, as has been so often done equitably and considerately by many landowners? No, these inabilities to pay the rent having been caused by too much sunshine or too much rain, or by too much produce from other districts that had been more favoured in this respect, or by an invasion of caterpillars, or grubs in the land that destroyed the grass at its roots, or from many other causes that could operate upon the land or its produce—and by which the improvements upon the land had not been in the least affected as to their efficiency—the landowner could not in that case, even according to Mr. Withy's mode of reasoning, be expected to part with a single penny of concession, as the loss would have been caused by the land refusing to yield its usual produce or by that produce having fallen in value. Would the Government—having got the ground rent through the landowner—listen to any appeals for consideration from the tenant? And if they did, how would they respond, if they responded at all?

They would probably, in a few months' time, ask the tenant to fill up a paper stating the nature of his loss, how it was caused, the amount he estimated it to be, and a score more questions that only those who compile and send us the yellow papers can think of. If the tenant succeeded in answering these questions satisfactorily the first time, he would probably receive a visit, in a page 5 few months more, from some high-salaried Government official who would enquire into the correctness of the claim, and then leave with the assurance that he would report.

And when the allowance from the rent came, if any did come, would it much more than equal the cost of this gentleman's salary and travelling expenses, and the working of the elaborate machinery that had been set in motion to obtain it? And if it did not come the expense to the country would be all the same, and the disappointment to the tenant intensely embittered after all the fruitless trouble he had undertaken.

Would not tenants rather go straight to a landowner—who knows beforehand as well as the tenant the true circumstances of the case, and who, in more cases than one, has voluntarily offered to bear a fair share of the loss caused by exceptional circumstances?