speaking, the chief experiments of the last eight years not already dealt with many be divided into three sections.  These relate to (1) Finance; (2) Constitutional Reform; (3) Labour.  One of the first and—­to a New Zealander’s eyes—­boldest strokes delivered was against the Property Tax.  This, the chief direct tax of the Colony, was an annual impost of 1d. in the L on the capital value of every citizen’s possessions, less his debts and an exemption of L500.  Its friends claimed for this tax that it was no respecter of persons, but was simple, even-handed, and efficient.  The last it certainly was, bringing as it did into the Treasury annually about as many thousands as there are days in the year.  But inasmuch as different kinds of property are by no means equally profitable, and therefore the ability of owners to pay is by no means equal, the simplicity of the Property Tax was not by many thought equity.  The shopkeeper, taxed on unsaleable stock, the manufacturer paying on plant and buildings as much in good years as in bad, bethought them that under an Income Tax they would at any rate escape in bad seasons when their income might be less or nothing.  The comfortable professional man or well-paid business manager paid nothing on their substantial and regular incomes.  The working-farmer settling in the desert felt that for every pound’s worth of improvements made by muscle and money he would have to account to the tax-collector at the next assessment.  Nevertheless the Conservative politicians rallied round the doomed tax.  It was a good machine for raising indispensable revenue.  Moreover, it did not select any class of property-owners or any description of property for special burdens.  This suited the landowners, who dreaded a Land Tax, for might not a Land Tax contain the germ of that nightmare of the larger colonial landowner—­the Single Tax?  It suited also the wealthy, who feared graduated taxation, and the lawyers, doctors, agents, and managing directors, whose incomes it did not touch.  So when in the autumn the rumour went round that the Ballance Ministry meant to abolish the Property Tax and bring forward Bills embodying a Progressive Land Tax, and Progressive Income Tax, the proposal was thought to represent the audacity of impudence or desperation.  When the rumour proved true, it was predicted that the farmers throughout the length and breath of the country would rise in wrath and terror, scared by the very name of Land Tax.  Nevertheless Parliament passed the Bills, with the addition of a light Absentee Tax.  The smaller farmers, at any rate, took the appeals of the Property Taxers with apathy, suspecting that under a tax on bare land values they would pay less than under a Property Tax which fell on land, improvements, and live stock as well.  Since 1891, therefore, progression or graduation has been in New Zealand a cardinal principle of direct taxation.