The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1876-08-05


mo LITTLE surprise has been expressed at the
action lately taken by the Legislature in repeal
ing tho Poll Tax, whereby the revenue as esti-
mated in the Ministerial Budget, is to be abridged
10 the amount of $27 900. AT this particular
iuncture, when unusually large disbursements
are to be met, nothing could be more ill-advised
than any attempt to curtail the means by which
they are to be made and nothing more i%neonsist-
ent and childish than to attempt the relief of a
burden by merely changing its relative position.
How absurd the attitude of n country largely
burdened with debt, and asking for extra and
untried taxation to meet its heavy obligations,
yet remitting it in a form which has never been
Objectionable, and which has had the superior
sanction of years of trial. But one cannot
I wonder SO much at the action of thoughtless
native Representatives in matters like this, as at
their sanction by government. The Minister of
Foreign Affairs especially advocated the passage
| OF the bill when it first came up. The states
manship which would favor the %abrogation of
| the Poll Tax is too deep for onr comprehension
| Men everywhere value n thing in proportion to
| what it costs them and if we are to give our
| people the protection and benefit of government
| without any appreciable cost to them, they will
| soon begin to regard it with contempt. There is
| not q native in the islands who cannot earn a
dollar with which to pay the annual Poll Tax,
and in the effort to earn that he earns more,
wherewith to better his condition in life but
take away the demand of the law to earn q dollar,
and in just SO much you encourage his natural
inclination to be idle. We hold therefore that
a fair, reasonable amount of taxation has a TEN
dency to morally elevate a people like the Haw-
aiians. But no such considerations as these
appear to enter into the speculations of the
Hawaiian statesmen of to-day.
Upon the third reading of the bill, the Attor-
ney General and the Minister of Foreign Affairs
spoke in the same strain, and to this effect
SO That previously they had favored the bill, and
had voted in the majority on its first reading
that their action then, had been guided by an
anticipation of the completion of the treaty in
the near future, but which event had been de-
| layed beyond expectation, and that their minds
had been changed accordingly. They thought
that if the treaty had come into operation, they
| could have afforded this large remittance of tax {;
but under the present outlook it was not advisa-
ble.'
Have the Ministers lost faith then in the final
anu SPECIFY comPteliOH u tue treaty II 81 1hey
had better also modify in as speedy a manner as
possible their views on the question of estimated
expenditures, and Immediately go to work to
reduce an Appropriation Bill that the country,
under such circumstances, cannot be made to
bear. With so uncertain and visionary founda-
| tons as they have laid, their conduct must
forever be subject to yaeillation, and it is no
! wonder that the country should have ceased to
place trust in men who have ceased to trust
| themselves who vote one day, and beg to explain
the next. Perhaps they have already begun to
change their views in regard to the distribution
of taxes, and are now about initiating a " policy
the very opposite of which they once intended to
pursue, which was, to lay the burden of taxation
as heavily as possible upon those who would be
directly benefited by the treaty = and, since the