194 A HISTORY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



817 persons, who were thus roughly selected out of a population of 

 840,000 to contribute a sum which was calculated to be equivalent 

 to their paying an income tax of Is. in the . Granting the propriety 

 of singling out land from all other forms of property to carry special 

 taxation, it should not be very difficult to devise a scheme whereby 

 its incidence should be at once general and equitable. And yet the 

 three consecutive experiments which had been contemplated by the 

 Victorian Parliament all came short of justice, and gave very reason- 

 able grounds for complaint by those who were to suffer under them. 

 Mr. Service's proposal was crude and experimental. No land 

 tax had been sought to be imposed by any of the other colonies, and 

 European countries offered no guidance. His Bill provided for a 

 tax of 4d. per acre upon all holdings over 320 and under 2,000 acres, 

 and 6d. per acre on all properties exceeding 2,000. But it could be 

 seen at a glance that there were scores of properties, say of 500 acres, 

 liable to pay 8 6s. 8d. per annum, that in market value and revenue- 

 producing capacity were worth more than other remotely situated 

 properties of even 5,000 acres, which would nevertheless have to 

 pay 125 yearly to the tax-gatherer. In Sir James McCulloch's Bill 

 an attempt was made to get over this difficulty by taxing the annual 

 value of land, on the basis of shire rating adopted under the Local 

 Government Act. Here again there were grounds for objection, 

 seeing that the ratio increases with the value of the occupier's 

 improvements, and so becomes a tax not so much on the raw land 

 as on the labour and outlay bestowed upon it. In Mr. Berry's Bill, 

 the exempt area having been doubled and the measure mainly con- 

 cerning the pastoralists, it was decided to standardise value by 

 capacity for the agistment of sheep. The absurdity of this measure- 

 ment lay in the fact that the land with the largest sheep-carrying 

 capacity was in the Western District, some 250 miles from the Metro- 

 polis, and it paid often a higher rate than many fine properties lying 

 within twenty miles of Melbourne, or closely adjacent to such excel- 

 lent markets as Ballaarat or Geelong. The monetary difference in 

 the tax between Mr. Service's average of 5d. per acre and Mr. Berry's 

 percentage was that in the latter case the tax on the four classifi- 

 cations came to 3d., 6d., 9d., and Is. per acre respectively. It was 

 certain that there would be many disputes over the classification, and 



