Land Tax.

You remember that as member of Sir George Grey's Ministry I supported the land tax, and I believe it was right. (Cheers.) I felt sorry, however, for this, that the farmers throughout the country, I don't know by what process of logic or reason they arrived at it, thought that if their houses and improvements, their furniture and stock, and their corn, were exempted from taxation, and only their lands taxed, they were worse off than if their land and stock and furniture were all taxed together. (Cheers.) I don't know by what logic they arrived at it, but that was the decision of a majority of the farmers. If you wish to obtain this position—that land is not like other property—you will have to modify your property tax, and I will say incidence of taxation, and you will have to meet your members and explain to them that you think land is not like other property, and they will perhaps remember that in the next session of Parliament. (Cheers). Now, I have dealt with land as a peculiar kind of property, as one ideal you can have before you, and that as we have mi lions of acres in this colony undisposed of, we as colonists shall so dispose of them that while we provide the means for colonists to improve themselves, and to reap the reward of their own industry, the State shall have sole control of the land. (Cheers.)