Development and Taxation. 93 



by means of profitable schemes that will pay at once. Well, there is one 

 way I think which that could be done, and that is by carrying out 

 judicious irrigation of suitable portions of the coast Jands. We have 

 asked and the Combined Court has granted the money, * and I have 

 asked the Secretary of State to select an experienced irrigation engineer 

 to advise on such schemes, but they are evidently not to be picked up in 

 the hedgerows, for the Secretary of State has been searching for six 

 months and has not yet found a man. May we take that as a happy 

 augury that he is taking great care in the selection, and ultimately we 

 shall get a very good engineer." 



Saving of Lives. 



Mr. Nunan spoke of another way of retrenchment and it was a very 

 important waj', and that was in the saving of lives. Every life that died 

 unnecessarily in the colony was a great loss ; it was a loss of capital and 

 they must try to reduce the death-rate and there was one encouraging 

 thing about reducing the death rate, that wherever they were successful 

 in reducing the death-rate they increased the birth-rate. At any rate 

 that was the experience so far in tropical countries although in recent 

 decades it had not been the case in Europe. The results of the census 

 of 1911 came, he thought, rather as a shock to the colony. For reasons 

 of economy for 20 years no census had been taken and it was found that 

 there had been little increase during those twenty years. But he did not 

 think that they quite got at the real causes of the unsatisfactory total. 

 He believed that a good many people left the colony to seek a living else- 

 where. He at once asked that question whether it was not so, and he was 

 surprised to find that no one could answer it because no statistics were 

 kept of immigration and emigration. He thought they had noticed that 

 those statistics were being kept and as far as they had gone the figures 

 seemed to show that a good many more people left the colony than came 

 into it. He was leaving out East Indian immigration of course. Now, 

 as to the question of development without taxation and as to the question 

 of taxation itself. He must say he did not look upon the system as 

 enforced here as perfect and he thought that on some points it did press 

 unduly upon the lower classes. He was still learning in this colony and 

 he did not venture to give any concrete instance at the present moment, 

 but he had been thinking over the matter. 



High Taxation. 



There was also a very prevalent belief that this colony was very 

 heavily taxed per head cf the population. Well, it was very heavily 

 taxed indeed, in the way of Customs duties, but not in other directions. 

 He had had three distinguished Dutch visitors lunching with him that 

 afternoon and one of them remarked to him " Your Customs taxa'ion is 

 very high." He said " Yes, it is, but there is very little behind it," and 

 the visitor said, " Have you no income tax ? " and he said, " No, we have 

 not," to which the visitor replied, " Then I don't think your taxation is 

 high." That was the way an outsider looked at it. Well, he should be 



