realised property, however small or however large their holding may be, to scrutinise carefully the contagious nature of the principles on which this Budget is framed." The unearned increment exacted from land would undoubtedly soon spread to all securities, as was evidently intended, if not by the Government, at any rate by "their instigators and impellers," and no form of property therefore would be safe from this extraordinary tax. Ruining the THEY were told in spicy platform speeches that these new taxes applied chiefly to dukes. "Well, I have not much experience of dukes naturally, but I have always found them a poor but honest class." It was, however, a great mistake to think that they only touched dukes and did not apply in a very searching and general manner to working men themselves. The Friendly Societies were all liable to reversion duty and undeveloped land duty. The United Kingdom Temperance and General Provident Institution, with a capital of nearly £9,000,000, possesses about £1,500,000 in mortgages, £500,000 in freehold, £100,000 in leasehold, and nearly £2,500,000 in ground rents. The Prudential Insurance Company, which was a favourite workman's insurance company, had a capital of 58 millions, of which 26 millions and a half were invested in real property. "Well this is money not belonging to dukes but collected by pence every week from the working man, and I recommend working men who are interested in these societies to bear these figures in mind." The Budget had introduced total insecurity to an important trade, selecting one kind of property for exceptional dealing on grounds which might easily be extended to all other property, and which must immediately result in increased unemployment. Still graver were its dealings with capital. Why in an implacable war against poverty it should be necessary to carry on an implacable war against capital, which was the twin sister of labour, Lord Rosebery could not understand. Personally he would infinitely prefer to pay a higher super-tax, objectionable as was the inquisition inseparable from it, than that additional fines should be imposed on capital as was done by the new scale of death duties, which ought properly speaking to be reserved for war and similar emergencies, but which were popular with all Chancellors of the Exchequer because they enabled them to spend capital as income "with a smiling conscience and an unembarrassed countenance." They were also objectionable because of their uncertainty. In a weakly family death duties might fall four or five times on the same property in fifty years,* while on another property belonging to a robust family they might not fall at all. The Chancellor of the Exchequer's attitude towards death duties might be gathered from his astonishing statement that children had no legal right to expect any property from their parents, and he was certainly doing his utmost to make it impossible for parents to provide for their children. That we had reached the danger-point was shown by the diminishing number of large estates, which might be unpleasant to the rich, but "still more is it unfortunate for the poor, because their wages to this extent being diminished, these great chunks of capital-for I can use no other expression-are so much taken from employment, from the individual, and taken by the State for purposes which we scarcely know." Primâ fàcie it sounded pleasant to tax the rich in order to give to the poor, but that was an operation which frequently percolated to the poor. According to the unprejudiced evidence of the inspectors of the Local Government Board, the men most conversant with the life of the poor, which might be respectfully commended to those who regarded this as a poor man's Budget, "the idea that taxation takes from the rich to give to the poor is a pernicious fallacy, for all taxation in the end filters down to and poisons such comfort as is possible for the very poor. Heavy taxation may inconvenience the rich, but it starves the poor." * Upon this a correspondent writes to the Spectator (September 18): "In my parish a case in point has occurred to corroborate this assertion. An old lady, aged ninety-three, died. Her estate of four farms, rental £1200 a year, descended to a cousin, an old gentleman. Death duties No. 1. He did not live long, and was succeeded by his sister, an old lady who lived two years. Death duties No. 2. Her sister, an old lady, succeeded, and only lived one year. Death duties No. 3. The next successor was a cousin, a clergyman, who died last November, aged seventy-two. Death duties No. 4. His sister, aged seventy is the present owner, which will be Death duties No. 5 at no distant date. To what figure, then, will the gross income of these farms be reduced to this lady's successor ?” Squandering MOREOVER, we were depleting our war fund. The expression "sinews of war" had been more true of Great Britain than of any other Power, for it was capital which carried us through our great wars, and had enabled a population not much larger than the population of London to-day to wear down the great Napoleon. Had the reign of peace arrived? "Why, gentlemen, it is notorious, on the highest authorities, whom we heard as short a time ago as last June, that the reign of peace was never so remote as it is at this moment, and therefore by these enormous taxes on capital, you are, as it seems to me, strangling in the time of peace the goose that laid the golden eggs for time of war." How again would these great "chunks" of capital be spent by the Government ? They propose to spend them, like all spendthrifts do, as income. The State, to that extent, to the extent of the death duties, is living on income. The Government boasts that it has paid off 40 millions of debt, and forthwith begins to spend 16 millions annually. That in an individual would spell ruin. I suppose it spells prosperity to the State. The Government boasts that it does not borrow, but speaking financially I do not see much difference from the moral point of view between borrowing and living on your capital. The transference by enhanced death duties of a great mass of capital from the individual to the State must react most injuriously on our reserve power, and disastrously diminish the fund for employment, while the expenditure of capital for income was financially vicious, and apart from the capital they were bleeding here, there was the beneficent capital they were driving away, "the capital that would have come here and will not, and the capital that is here but which will go, is going, and has gone elsewhere." It was impossible to exaggerate the danger caused by the general feeling of insecurity produced by the Budget, which was already paralysing investment and employment. "The Government know, they cannot deny the fact, and they rather welcome the transference of capital elsewhere. While our gilt-edged securities, from Consols downwards, are flatter than they have ever been known, whereas capitalists in ordinary times would have gladly bought them and sent them up, capital is going elsewhere-and the Government professes to rejoice at the fact to develop other countries." LORD ROSEBERY emphasised the contrast between the new Liberalism and the old Liberalism, declaring that if Mr. Gladstone were alive, and the present Government approached him with such a Budget as the present, "I venture Old and New to say that he would make short work of the deputation of the Cabinet that waited on him with this measure, and they would soon find themselves on the stairs if not in the street." For one thing it established an inquisition previously unknown in Great Britain, if not unknown to mankind. Lord Chatham, who was claimed by the speaker as a great Liberal Imperialist, in one of his famous flights of eloquence, alluding to the maxim that the Englishman's house was his castle, declared, "The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail, its roof may shake, wind may blow through it, the storm may enter, the rain may enter, but the King of England may not enter, all his forces dare not cross the threshold of that ruined tenement." Possibly the “ruined tenement" might remain safe, but henceforward the ordinary householder would be accompanied by the King's inquisitors, the King's tax-gatherers, and the King's inspectors, from the cradle to the grave. "They will be with him at the cradle to make sure that he is a fifth child, and so exempt from taxation. They will be with him all through his life to watch his incomings and outgoings, to see that no unearned increment may escape the inspector. They will be with him in the prime of life to see that he gives nothing away without their knowing it. They will be waiting at his deathbed to hear the death-rattle in his throat, so that they may measure and mulct his substance." He could not imagine why this Government was so hostile to individual liberty, and so partial to bureaucracy,* which had always been the antithesis of the old Liberalism. * The extent to which the Government are introducing the American "spoils" system into this country is hardly realised by the general public. Behind every Radical Bill are many Radical billets. Even the Daily Chronicle protests against the ceaseless multiplication of officials. Besides the proposed separate Board of Agriculture for Scotland with headquarters at Edinburgh, and a separate staff of inspectors, our Liberal contemporary tabulates the following reforms involving further staffs and fresh expenditure: "Census of Production (Board of Trade staff increased); Small Holdings Act (new inspectors); Labour Exchanges Bill (superintendents and clerks); Finance Bill (surveyors and Then again, another contrast between new Liberal measures and old Liberal tenets was the administration of the land taxes by commissioners without appeal. "Well, I understand that is dropped, though one doesn't understand what is dropped and what is not dropped. The super-tax-this I know is not dropped, unless it was dropped this afternoon-is to be administered by the Commissioners, from whom there is to be no appeal except to themselves. This sort of tyranny is not Liberalism, it is Socialism." Exit Free AFTER pouring such withering ridicule upon the provision of the Finance Bill reckoning all gifts inter vivos for death duties for five years prior to the testator's demise, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has since been compelled in very decency to mitigate its grosser monstrosities, Lord Rosebery contrasted the fierce indignation aroused when excise duties were first imposed by Sir Robert Walpole with the tameness of those who were prepared to submit to the inquisition and tyranny about to be set up by the Government, and wondered whether the national character had changed, and "our ignorant impatience of taxation has been succeeded by something more like an abject patience of taxation." But the new inquisition was not to stop at this point. It was not content to ascertain how much a man had got, but wanted to know how he had got it. That further question had, according to the President of the Board of Trade, been " postulated by the Government," and "is vibrating in penetrating repetition throughout the land." Spain in the palmiest days of the Inquisition made no such inquiry as this. "Surely, it is coming to a very strange pass in this Great Britain of ours when a Liberal Government thinks of such doctrines as are promulgated. (These are not jests, these are all serious policy; they embody a tyranny not belonging to Liberalism, not belonging, for that matter, to Toryism either, but belonging to Socialism." Where was the old Liberal device, "Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform," still invaluers); Housing Bill (new inspectors); factory inspection (large increase in staff). This tendency to multiplication of officials is unfortunate, but apparently it is an inevitable accompaniment of all progress in the region of social reform. Not a voice is raised in protest or inquiry. The old zeal for economy is dead." |