The Ministry of Finance, we are told, is contemplating raising the wind by putting a tax on mar-{ riage contracts, and hopes thereby to gather in about $800.00. In any other country we should know! exactly what to say about such proposal, for so concerned has everybody become about posterity that in condemning it we should earn the plaudits of a whole race. We should treat the proposal with scorn. and for a moment, at any rate, incline towards a tax on bachelors' as an infinitely better substitute. Here, however, we have no such straightforward path toi tread. China certainly need not bother her head about seeing that there will be a posterity to succeed to the coming generation. So well has she looked after posterity in the past that—well look at the teeming population, and remember which country it was which provided the labour necessary to win the war, once the supply in other quarters showed signs of failing. Moreover, a tax on bachelors—the stand-by of amateur economists—would be worth nothing in this country, and as there is nothing wrong with the marriage and birth rates, the only thing the Ministry of Finance can do—unless it paid heed to articles like umbrellas and handkerchiefs—is to tax the wealthier contracting parties. For it could conceivably be argued that marriage is a luxury here.
Mar. 17.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.