INCIDENCE OF TAXATION. 583 



are drowned. If those possessing the preponderance of 

 voting power can be persuaded that capital is going to be 

 " got at,'' — that those who undertake all the risk of providing 

 the necessary means, and who must possess the skill and 

 knowledge essential for the successful direction of industries 

 are to be made to disgorge some of what are represented as 

 their ill-gotten gains, then the success of the poUtical adven- 

 turer who so persuades them is assured. Not by any means 

 the least of the evils attending the controversies so raised is 

 the bitter feeling of animosity between employer and employed 

 which is thus engendered or intensified, and which almost 

 hopelessly obscures the view of the mutual interest of capital 

 and labour which we may trust will become more plain as 

 the world grows wiser. 



To an assemblage such as this, however, and possibly 

 through it to the more thoughtful of all classes in Australasia, 

 some words may be addressed which will help to promote the 

 formation of views somewhat sounder than those which 

 unhappily often prevail on this subject. It is often forgotten 

 that when we speak of the cost of government we include 

 charges for services which are placed freely, and on equal 

 terms, at the disposal of every member of the community, 

 whether poor or rich. Such, for instance, are the services 

 rendered by an organised police force, and by all the 

 machinery of law for the protection of life and property ; the 

 services rendered by post and telegraph offices and by rail- 

 ways, and by the provision made for elementary education, 

 either free or at a merely nominal cost. While the cost of 

 all these services falls proportionately on property or income, 

 or both, yet there is no such proportion observed in regard to 

 the rendering of the services to individuals. That is to say, 

 for instance, if a rich man and a poorer man walking in the 

 street together are assaulted, and sustain bodily injury, or are 

 plundered, the whole machinery of police and of law is very 

 properly available equally for the redress of the poorer as for 

 that of the richer man, and for the punishment of his 

 assailants. And as to services rendered by a railway or other 

 state-maintained organisation, they are equally and on the 

 same terms at the command of the man who has contributed 

 to their cost and annual maintenance a sum representing 

 perhaps not one-twentieth of his income, and the man who 

 has contributed one-tenth or more of his income for the same 

 purposes. And yet the service rendered may represent to 

 the former, in facility for prosecuting his industry, or in the 



