Australasian Democracy. Henry de Rosenbach Walker

would have seemed, from the constitution of human nature, to be doomed to failure; but an amount of work has been done in planting and clearing which testifies to continuous and sustained labour, disagreements have been rare, and the settlers, in conversation with me, expressed themselves as contented with their lot and confident of eventual success. They do not regard themselves as recipients of charity, as they have received advances on the same conditions as holders of Working Men's blocks; on the contrary, they regard themselves as pioneers of a new movement, and desire, not only to make homes for themselves and their families, but to prove that land can be worked successfully on a co-operative, almost a communistic, basis. If the Murtho settlers succeed, they will do so by the continued exercise of mutual forbearance and from the impulse of a common enthusiasm.

      The Government appear to have made several grave mistakes of omission and commission in the formation of the settlements. They should have caused a survey of the Murray lands to be made before the selection of the sites, and they should have realised that men, united only by their destitution, required control and direction, and, as the majority were ignorant of agricultural pursuits, constant superintendence of their work. The system of joint cultivation also was entirely unsuited to the class of men who formed the bulk of the settlers. It is true that the Act authorised neither preliminary surveys nor the appointment of superintendents, and stated expressly that the associations were to be co-operative; but if the urgency of the crisis may be taken to have justified the Government in making advances without the sanction of Parliament, it would also have justified such further illegalities as would have benefited the settlers and safeguarded the interests of the tax-payers.

      A certain amount of co-operation was inevitable if the settlements were to be formed upon land which could only be cultivated under irrigation, in the erection of the pumping plant and the use of water. It would also be advisable in the purchase of seeds, trees and vines, the disposal of produce and the common ownership of horses and implements of husbandry. But the land might have been cut up into blocks, in order to enable each settler to obtain the full benefit of his exertions subject to payment for the services rendered to him by the association.

      The Government are to be congratulated, however faulty their methods may have been, upon their attempt to enable the unemployed to make homes for themselves upon the land, a great improvement upon the policy of their predecessors, who wasted thousands of pounds upon unnecessary relief works. They have undoubtedly raised the moral tone of the settlers, who make a good impression upon the visitor through their intelligence and sobriety and the happy appearance of their children, and one cannot but regret that, owing to the absence of direction, much of their labour has been absolutely valueless. The cynic will say that the men have every reason to be contented as they are living entirely upon advances and can rid themselves of all responsibility for the loans by leaving the settlements; but he forgets that they have qualified for these advances by hard work and that they never see a shilling that they can call their own.

      The whole question must be looked at from the point of view of the Australian, who would be horrified at our system, under which indigence is assumed to be the result of idleness and improvidence and relief is offered under the most degrading conditions, and expects his Government to do something to relieve the misery caused by scarcity of employment. In South Australia, where adult suffrage and payment of the members of both Houses have made the working classes masters of the situation, they can compel the Ministry to pay attention to their wishes. A step in the right direction, was taken when Village Settlements were substituted for temporary relief works; but any future scheme, while affording to men the opportunity of regaining a position of independence, should compel them to prove their worthiness by their own individual exertions.

      The wide application by the Australasian Provinces of the principle of State action renders them especially liable to violent fluctuations of prosperity and adversity. As young countries they have borrowed largely for purposes of development, and have constructed expensive public works which have greatly increased the demand for labour. During the recent years of depression the Government have been obliged to discontinue their operations, and have offered less employment at a time when the labour market was already overstocked owing to the contraction of private enterprise. Similarly in the case of revenue: the receipts from the railways, which are almost universally owned by the State, vary proportionately with the returns from taxation, which depend in their turn largely upon the condition of trade. They have fallen in South Australia from £1,229,598 in 1891-2 to £967,656 in 1894-5, with the result that when the community has been least able, owing to the diminished returns from other resources of revenue, to bear additional taxation, further taxes have necessarily been imposed to meet the interest upon the loans out of the proceeds of which the railways have been constructed. The Kingston Government, which took office in 1893, had to face a deficit of £200,000, and immediately set to work to restore order in the finances. This they attempted to do by retrenchment, reducing the expenditure by £100,000 per annum, and by the imposition of fresh taxation. Succession Duties, a tax on the unimproved value of land and an income tax had already been imposed, a distinction being made in the latter case, between incomes derived from property and incomes resulting from personal exertion; but the present Government were the first to introduce the progressive principle into the taxes on incomes and land values. This legislation has encountered, as might be expected, the strongest opposition from the richer members of the community, who protest that a feeling of insecurity is produced and capital driven out of the country, but it may be noted that South Australia in 1895 raised money at 3 per cent. upon exceptionally favourable terms. The Government were compelled to obtain further funds, and showed their desire to equalise the incidence of the additional taxes by lowering, in spite of the opposition of the Labour Party, the exemption from income tax from £200 to £125 and by increasing the duty on beer, spirits, and other articles of ordinary consumption. Income tax is at present at the rate of 4-½d. in the pound up to £800, and of 6d. in the pound above £800 of taxable amount resulting from personal exertions, and at the rate of 9d. and 1s. in the pound, respectively, on incomes from property. Incomes between £125 and £425 enjoy exemption on £125 of the amount. Taxpayers are required, under penalty of prosecution for perjury for a false declaration, to furnish annually a statement of all forms of income that they have enjoyed during the past year, except in respect of any share or interest in a registered company; in this case the tax, at the rate of a shilling in the pound, is deducted by an officer of the company before payment of the dividends to shareholders. The higher rate is not paid on either form of income unless it, separately, exceeds £800. The tax on the unimproved value of land is ½d. in the pound up to, and 1d. above, the capital value of £5,000, and is increased by 20 per cent. in the case of absentee owners. A general assessment of all the lands in the Colony is made triennially, each person's property in each district or township being treated separately. The assessments are then sorted alphabetically, in order to discover the total holding of each individual which is the basis upon which the higher or lower rate of taxation is imposed. Little objection is taken to the manner in which the value of the land is assessed; in the majority of cases the owner and the official of the Government are able to agree as to a fair valuation, and, should they fail to do so, an appeal against the valuation may be made to the Taxation Department, and, if an arrangement be not arrived at, to a Court of Law. The assessment of 1894 led to a large number of appeals, as the assessors had not realised the enormous fall in value of agricultural and pastoral land, but all, with a single exception, were met to the satisfaction of the appellant by concessions voluntarily made by the Department. Their attention is turned mainly to urban land, because it is subject to the greatest increase in unimproved value and returns the larger portion of the receipts derived from this source. An incidental advantage of the tax lies in the fact that land held by speculators for a rise in value contributes to the revenue equally with that on which buildings have been erected. The tax is recognised by most people as equitable in principle, but its progressive character has brought upon the Ministry the bitterest animosity of the landed class, who maintain that it has caused land to be given up and to become unsaleable, not so much because the present burden is intolerable but because it is merely the thin end of the wedge. They point to the programme of the Labour Party in which it is stated that the duty should be taken off certain articles of ordinary consumption, the deficiency (which, according to an official estimate, would be £310,000 a year) to be made up by increasing the tax on land values, and argue that as the Labour Party hold the Government under their thumb,