moved a clause the object of which was, he said, to give local authorities in Scotland the opportunity of deciding whether or not they would adopt this very expensive Bill. The measure required that every local authority in Scotland should institute a new method of valuing land. It would impose considerable expense on the local authorities, and they ought to have the option of saying whether they would incur that expense or not. They were the best judges if they would get an adequate return for their outlay. In New Zealand, which had always been quoted as a model for this legislation. such option had been given the local authorities. He knew he might be told that in New Zealand there was also a national tax on land values, but perhaps. hon. Gentlemen were not aware that in New Zealand the national tax on Land Values was a substitute for the income tax. Was that what the advocates of land values taxation desired, that people who paid the land values tax should not pay the income-tax? There was, however, a further reason for giving the local authorities option in this matter. This Bill had never been before the country at all. It was introduced very late in the session and passed through the House on the Second Reading stage after one day's debate, going from thence up to the Grand Committee. He thought he might fairly ask the House to take warning by what happened last year in regard to a similar measure. On the Second Reading debate of last year's Bill he had the honour of moving the rejection of the Bill. His Motion was defeated by a majority of 258; but what happened? The Bill was referred to a carefully packed Select Committee, practically all the members of which were in favour of the measure. After having deliberated upon it, however, and examined witnesses, that Committee reported "that the Bill be not proceeded with." Such an instance as that afforded good proof of how easy it was for the House to vote for a Bill without knowing the meaning of it. A new situation had been created by the statement of the Government that they would not tax feu duties. When the local authorities demanded this Bill their whole object was to secure the taxation of feu duties. He quite admitted that there was some doubt as to whether the Government would remain firm in their resolve, and because of this uncertainty he put a question to the Prime Minister. He regretted that the right hon. Gentleman, did not give him a very clear answer. With reference to this question he had received a leter from the Parliamentary agent to the Manchester Unity of Odd-fellows, dated 15th August. It began—

"Dear sir,—I must thank you for your Question, No. 62, in the notices given last Monday with respect to the taxation of land values. Though tho Hearts of Oak Society put the subject forward this year the Manchester Unity of Oddfellows with its 800,000 adult members and £12,000,000 capital amongst its 4,000 branches is largely interested. Many of its lodges have invested in ground rents at prices which will produce less than 4 per cent. Their object was absolute security of income from which claims, as they mature in the old age of the members, could be properly met. As the leases are long no unearned increment will accrue to present members.…"

"I therefore await with much interest the Parliamentary news in to-morrow's newspapers to ascertain the view the Prime Minister takes."

He was sorry to say that the view the Prime Minister took was not very clearly expressed, but he still had confidence that the Government was resolved not to tax feu duties or to go back on existing contracts. He remembered warning the Liberal Party years ago against the danger of rushing into this morass. He told them they would find themselves in the position of ving to break existing contracts, or else finding that there was no money in the scheme. The burghs wanted money, they did not want a Bill which would give them no money, but would instead involve a great deal of extra expense. Greenock, which had originally supported the Bill, had now petitioned against it. A new situation had also been created by the reply of the Lord Advocate to a deputation of county councils which waited upon him a little time back in reference to this question. The right hon. Gentleman said—

"When the statute passes it will be found that county proprietors, equally with town proprietors, will be escaping taxation for improvements which they have made upon their land, and that any assessment which may be laid upon the land value is already paid on the composite value."

seconded the Motion of the hon. Member for Preston, who, he said, had expounded the questions raised by this Bill in a manner which he would not do, owing to their great difficulty and complexity. But he would remind the House that the Bill was made applicable to both urban and rural areas. In the Select Committee the question was never raised of including the counties, and no evidence was led in support of it. He was bound to say that the quotation by the hon. Member for Preston, of Clause 33 of the English Small Holdings Bill, was most damaging. It had not occurred to anyone on the Committee on this Bill upstairs. It had put the Government in an extremely difficult position, although he had no doubt his right hon. and learned friend would wriggle out of it as he usually did. An Amendment having the same object in view, but put in a different form, as the proposed new clause of the hon. Member for Preston, was proposed in Committee upstairs; but during the course of the discussions they were told by the Lord Advocate that there was a national purpose underlying this Bill, which would be entirely defeated were local option adopted. Before the House divided on this new clause they should know what that national object was. He had no doubt that in the view of the Solicitor-General it involved the taxation of existing feu duties, although they had been assured by the Prime Minister and the Lord Advocate that it did not. At any rate, it seemed that the view of the Solicitor-General was not to be accepted. If that were so, they were entitled to know what the national purpose was. He thought that this particular Bill was not thoroughly understood by the people of Scotland; it was not even understood by those who pressed for such legislation in connection with the Glasgow Bill of last year. He was quite certain that if local option were granted, it would be utilised in the way of rejecting the Bill altogether. He knew how the incidence of taxation would be changed if this system of rating were adopted in many of the small burghs in Scotland. He was quite certain that the rich manufacturer would ride off with a light weight of taxation, and the poor cottager would have to pay almost all the taxes. [MINISTERIAL cries of dissent.] He insisted that it could not be denied that that would be the effect of the Bill. Take the town of Ayr, which he represented. Suppose there a house which had cost £30,000 or £40,000 to erect, standing in its own grounds two acres in extent. And next to it, suppose a market garden, also two acres in extent. Would it be believed that the market gardener who had difficulty in making a living would have to pay the same taxation the rich man? That would be an atrocious cruelty. He thought the people should be asked whether they were willing to adopt a measure for the taxation of land values, before it was put in force in their localities. New clause—

"Within three months after the passing of this Act the clerk of every council of a county or burgh shall convene, with not less than one month's notice, a special meeting of the council to consider the desirability of adopt-this Act in that county or burgh, and if the decision of that meeting is against such adoption this Act shall have no force within that county or burgh."

said he regretted that he could not, on behalf of the Government, accept the new clause. The bulk of the argument delivered by the hon. Gentlemen who had moved and seconded the Amendment had been not in connection with a valuation Bill pure and simple, but with reference to the incidence of taxation and rating. What had the taxation of feu duties to do with a Bill for the ascertainment of land values in Scotland and for that alone? What did the observation of the hon. Member for Preston mean as to there being no money in it, or about people who would have to pay 30s. or 40s. a year on their land values? What did the observation mean as to who was to benefit by the Bill? And what did the observation mean as to the relations between the county council and the small landholder? What had all that to do with the Bill?

said that his argument was a perfectly simple one, viz., that these local authorities should not be put to the expense of getting information when there was no money to be got out of it.

said he understood that the concluding portion of his hon. friend's speech was to the effect, "By all means get at the facts." This was a Bill the object of which was to get at the facts. The hon. Member had said that they could get at the facts by taking two constituencies, one an urban and the other a rural constituency, and working out from them all that was required in regard to land values of Scotland. The hon. Member did him the honour to refer to his constituency, the Hawick Burghs. Assuming that in his constituency there was very little unoccupied land the capital valuation of the land would make very little difference indeed from the present valuation. But what they wanted to know was the capital value of the land in a large portion of Scotland where there were burghs with a large agricultural area some portions of which were being held up for building. What was the use of attempting to deduce from a single instance the whole value of Scotland for the purpose of a Bill to obtain nation al statistics? A single instance would not do. They must have the whole of Scotland valued in order to enable a second stage to be reached, whether there was to be taxation or whether there was to be rating. His hon. friend seemed to argue that this which was only a valuation Bill was a rating Bill which rashly provided for something which could be done without any inquiry at all. Surely his hon. friend's study of the literature of this subject must have convinced him that all the best authorities were agreed that any rating or taxation Bill must be preceded by necessary preliminary inquiries in the shape of the ascertainment of the land values, so as to enable the country as a whole, and if thought wise, localities individually, to judge whether the basis of individual rating or taxation ought to be altered. Of course that would be by a new Bill; but this Bill was confined to ascertaining land values. There was a provision in the Bill that until Parliament should otherwise determine no rate or tax should be put on in consequence of the information obtained under this Bill. He could imagine that nobody would refuse a Bill which made it optional to adopt it. When his hon. friend said that it all hung round the ultimate question of rating he would remind him that on questions of rating a great many points of admitted complexity would have to be considered. They must first get at the facts as a whole, on a national scale, upon exactly the same scale as the existing valuation. On those grounds, and feeling that the Amendment would render the Bill inoperative, he could not accept it. So far as their desire to obtain national statistics was concerned, the Government were following the best skilled advice which was contained in the Minority Report of the Select Committee.

asked if the proposal in the Bill had not reference to the abatement of existing rates.

said that his object was to show the necessity of preliminary inquiry. It was in the mind of everybody that they should have national statistics as to the land values on the same scale as the existing Valuation Acts in Scotland, which made no distinction between valuation for rating or taxation purposes.

said that this was a branch of the question which was quite different from the subject of whether they ought to give options as to rating to rural districts apart from this Bill. He had an Amendment on the Paper relevant to that point, and in the observations he had to make on this Amendment he would not refer to the comparison between agricultural districts and urban districts, which was at the basis of the right hon. and learned Gentleman's argument. The right hon. Gentleman said that this was a Bill for the ascertainment of national statistics, and he had two observations to make upon that. He gathered from the right hon. Gentleman that he wished the House to discuss this Bill on the Report stage, without reference to the schemes of local taxation, which he and his friends, not always speaking with one voice, desired to see subsequently adopted on the basis of this measure. It was, however, impossible for them to discuss the Bill in that abstract manner. The Lord Advocate wished them to regard the Bill simply as a matter of obtaining information without regard to the uses to which that information might be put, but one must remember the various uses to which the Government had announced that they proposed to put the information. The Solicitor-General for Scotland had announced that in his view the duties should be subjected to taxation. The Lord Advocate had not, he thought, got so far as that.

I said expressly and from the first that existing contracts as to feu duties must be respected.

continuing, said the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer, frightened and alarmed by the utterances of their rasher colleagues, had gone out of their way to explain that they did not propose to break existing contracts in connection with the taxation of feu duties and other contract values. That destroyed the whole value of this measure in the eves of those who wished to have it passed, and who were in effect its authors. The Propagandist Institution, which had been started at Glasgow, had no other object in view than the taxation of feu values and other contract values which the Solicitor-General for Scotland wanted, but which the Government now discovered would be very imprudent.

said he had always held that view, and stated the same thing.

said he believed that the right hon. Gentleman had always held that view, and if his words were susceptible of any other interpretation he withdrew them. But if the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer had always held that view, they might have communicated it to their hon. and learned colleague, and it would have saved a great deal of confusion in Scotland. It would have been better if one of the right hon. Gentleman's colleagues had not gone about Scotland preaching an economic doctrine which the Prime Minister, the Lord Advocate, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer repudiated. When the rioht hon. Gentleman said he held that view, however, he would like to ask whether he had always advertised it.

Yes, always.

Well, I do not know if that is so.

said he had supported the Bills on this subject which had been brought forward in the last two or three Parliaments and every one of them contained an exception in favour of existing contracts.

said he had not the least quarrel with the right hon. Gentleman, but it was sufficient for his purpose that one member of the Government held that these values should be taxed and that he had not only held that opinion but had preached it before the general election and after the general election.

said he had not done so since the general election.

said he would not dispute that point with the Solicitor-General for Scotland as it was sufficient for his purpose to point out that one member of the Government held that these values should be taxed while the Chancellor of the Exchequer thought it would be immoral to tax them. The original authors of this Bill, the people whose agitation had brought about this proposal, had always desired to put on the very form of taxation which the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer thought was a breach of the whole idea of public honesty and private property. Was not that a reason for giving localities in Scotland an opportunity of rejecting a Bill which would not carry out the objects which they had in view in promoting this agitation? The right hon. Gentleman had said that these statistics were to be obtained for a national object. Then why were they not to be obtained at the cost of the nation? He was told that a sober estimate of the cost of this valuation in Scotland was £2,000,000. The Government talked glibly about obtaining information for the nation at the cost of individuals, but they had not given the House any estimate of the cost. Twelve thousand separate valuations would have to be made in Scotland, including the burghs and counties, and they were asking proprietors of hereditaments to make valuations of great difficulty, involving in many cases expert advice. These individuals ought to be given an opportunity of objecting, not so much against the principle of the Bill, as against the cost of the Bill's being thrown upon them. The agitation with which this Bill was intimately connected had already done a great deal of harm. The Government had to choose between carrying out a policy which might benefit a good many ratepayers in the towns, but at the cost of public faith and morality and the interests of the best of the working class, and a policy which would be enormously expensive so far as the collection of information was concerned, but would be extraordinarily barren of pecuniary results so far as the ratepayers of the towns were concerned. When the towns and country districts realised that carrying out this Bill would be a very expensive operation and they would get nothing out of it, he thought the Bill would lose the little popularity it now possessed and the factitious support now accorded to it. An opportunity ought to be given to the Scottish ratepayer to relieve himself from the mesh which the Government were involving him in. They understood that subsequently a Rating Bill would be based on this measure, and he thought that burghs and counties should be given an opportunity of adopting it; if they did so the measure would be a success. It would not be an elaborate experiment from which large conclusions could be drawn. It would not be an experiment extending over a large part of Scotland. Why should not the Government allow the small section of Scotland which rated their Bill at its true value to escape from the unnecessary burden of perfectly useless taxation which it was proposed to throw upon them? In the interests of the ratepayers, of those who had to make this valuation, in the interests of the burghs, in the interests of the general requirements of the community, he earnestly suggested that local option in this particular might well be adopted by the Government. They might allow each locality to decide for itself whether it thought it worth while to adopt a very costly investigation for the very barren results promised by the Lord Advocate and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, or in the hopes that the more productive policy of the Solicitor-General as he understood it would be carried out. Let that section of opinion which had forced this Bill forward decide whether the policy was worth while, and if they thought not let the Government allow them to leave it to their friends in the neighbouring burghs to go through the perfectly useless procedure which the Bill attempted to impose on every burgh and county of Scotland.

said he had listened with great interest to many speeches delivered by the right hon. Gentleman opposite, but this was the first time he had heard him address the House in favour of the principle of local option. Like many new converts, the right hon. Gentleman had applied that principle in exactly the wrong way. The earlier part of his speech, in which he sought to establish a difference of opinion between Members sitting on the Treasury Bench with regard to the taxation of feu duties, was, except in one particular aspect, wholly irrelevant. But as the right hon. Gentleman had raised that point, he desired to say in a sentence, speaking for himself, and he believed for the vast majority of those who sat on the Ministerial side in this Parliament and on the Opposition side of the last Parliament, that they had repeatedly had before them measures dealing with this matter, and in every case, so far as he knew, there was a clause in the Bill which excluded its application to existing contracts, and nobody had ever welcomed a measure of this kind except on that assumption. In his view that was an elementary condition of any reform.

asked whether it was not the fact that the right hon. Gentleman voted for a Bill last year which contained no such clause.

said that might be so, but on that occasion the Lord Advocate laid it down in the most explicit terms that that was the only assumption upon which that Bill could be accepted. The only relevance of the right hon. Gentleman's reference to this topic was his suggestion that the various local authorities in Scotland who had interested themselves in this matter would not have done so unless they had thought that existing contracts and feu duties were going to be the subject of taxation. From that he inferred that if the principle of local option were allowed to have full effect, the same keenness would no longer be shown. It was extraordinary, if that was the case, that the various municipalities not only in Scotland, but in England, should have joined in supporting a Bill of an hon. Member which had always contained that very restriction.

said that the right hon. Gentleman must have surely forgotten that while the Bill of the hon. Member for the Elland Division excluded feu duties, the Glasgow Bill did not.

said the so-called Glasgow Bill was not a Glasgow Bill in any sense of the word.

said the Bill to which he was referring concerned the kingdom as a whole. He thought he was justified in saying there was no reason to think that the municipalities of the country would be any less willing to adopt this reform because it was so restricted. The right hon. Gentleman had referred to the supposed expense which the operation of this Bill would entail. He did not think the operation would be a very expensive one, and he was certain that when it had once been performed, when the initial expense had once been incurred, subsequent developments would be very inexpensive and simple. As regarded the expenditure of the proprietor, the expense of a rough estimate was all that he would be put to. That estimate would be subsequently revised by the burgh and local surveyor, and he did not think that would be a very heavy tax either in time, trouble, or cost to the owner. But assuming local option were adopted, and the great bulk of the burghs and counties took advantage of local option, there would be no relief in the expenditure, because the only expense which would be removed in such a case would be the expenditure of the council itself. If they refused to adopt the Act, the owner also would be entitled to refuse to do so. If the council decided to adopt the Act, the ownernolens volens would be put to the same expense. He desired to point out that the great virtue of the Scottish system was that there was a single valuation for all purposes. This was a very great improvement on the English system. Under the Act of 1854 these valuations were conducted by a single officer, and in a great number of cases he was an Imperial officer performing duties for the Inland Revenue. They felt it would be dangerous to introduce into that system any practice which would not be uniform. He considered the step now proposed a useful one from a purely statistical point of view, but he did not attempt to conceal the fact that many of them regarded it as the first step towards a great reform. He agreed that the object of the promoters of the Bill was to take measures for ascertaining facts on which local authorities would be enabled in future to make use of fresh sources of revenue.

said he only intervened to say a word in reference to something which had fallen from the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The right hon. Gentleman said it was the first time he had heard the Leader of the Opposition express his views in favour of local option. His right hon. friend might never have addressed the House upon the subject before, but as the head of the Government he had more than once been responsible for Bills which had adopted the principle. He reminded the right hon. Gentleman that the great body of statutes which controlled the public health of the country nearly all rested on what had up to now been considered the exceptionally sound foundation of the option for the local authorities to adopt them if they thought fit. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had used an argument against the adoption of the clause moved by the hon. Gentleman opposite, namely, that the Scottish system of valuation was far superior to that existing in England. With that observation he entirely agreed. It had been the aim and object of most of those who had striven to amend the valuation laws in England to take the example of Scotland as their model, and try to work up to that higher standard. He entirely agreed with what the Chancellor of the Exchequer said. He did not agree, however, that inconvenience would result from the application of a different system in different parts, for this reason, that they had had it laid down repeatedly that the intention of this particular Bill was not to create a new system of valuation but to take a first step in that direction, and to accomplish the result by subsequent legislation. If that were the case, what stronger argument could they have for this clause than the fact that this legislation was to be followed by other legislation, which would never be introduced, however, by any Government, no matter how powerful, unless the first step had been taken which would not only justify it in the places where it was to be enforced, but which would have the general consensus of opinion is the country to which the law applied. He did not understand how the Chancellor of the Exchequer could justify the opposition he had offered to the clause. He regretted very much that the Government did not see their way to adopt the clause, because he thought it would if accepted, lessen the feeling of opposition which existed in many quarters to the Bill. The whole system of valuation was so complicated, so difficult, and so important, that any step they took to amend it should not only be well considered, but be supported by popular opinion. He believed it would have been of enormous advantage to have had behind them the expressed opinion of the local authorities who, by the adopting of this Act and the working of it, would have shown in the first place that they believed in the principle, and, secondly, in the views of the Government in introducing the Bill and carrying it through the House.

said the policy of this legislation was based on the not very scientific gospel of Henry George, the supporters of whose policy thronged the benches behind Ministers. He challenged any supporter of that gospel to tell him the name of any economist of any reputation, living or dead, of the old school or the new, who was a supporter of the doctrine underlying this legislation. A few weeks ago he had discussed in that House the point that the taxation of incomes should not proceed without a knowledge of the facts, and he had moved an Amendment which was aimed at securing knowledge about incomes before proceeding to tax them. It therefore followed, he need hardly say, that he strongly supported the Lord Advocate in his desire to gain knowledge of statistics through this Bill so far as that was the object. As the Leader of the Opposition had said, it was impossible to consider this clause, or indeed any part of the Bill, without reference to what would follow this particular first step. What was the object of the Bill? It had been described by the Lord Advocate, on the Second Reading, as a step towards the taxation of values largely created by the enterprise of the community. He ventured to differ from that observation. There were no social values existing in this country which were not taxed already by existing methods of taxation. He would add that if the Government desired to tax social values as they ought to be taxed, they would find a much more scientific. much more common sense and practical method of getting at those values by reforming the existing system of taxation, than by setting up this new method of taxation, to which they themselves had to make important exceptions. They themselves confessed that they could only apply it partially, and could only apply it to some people and not to others. It was an entire mistake if anyone supposed that social values entirely attached themselves to land. The greater part of the social values of this country created by the community did not attach themselves to the land, but to other things. The exaggerated ideas with regard to this particular policy of taxing land values, which were doubtless entertained by a great many local authorities on imperfect information, had been very well expressed by one of the most able advocates of this policy who now sat behind the Lord Advocate. The hon. Member had said in very plain words that he would substitute a land-values tax for all other local rates, and, when he had done that, he would logically proceed to place all Imperial taxation on the same source. But that was not statistically possible. The most liberal estimate of the land values of the country was a sum not large enough by one-half for the purpose. They did not come to that House to talk fine theories; they came to frame, if they could, sensible and practical policies which were capable of application to existing circumstances. He thought they must always bear that in mind. What was this policy in essence? It was to relieve capital of taxation at the expense of the landlords. Let them take, for instance, a tea shop in the Straud. It would be hardly a proposition in accordance with common sense to relieve that tea shop of the cost of police, of the maintenance of the roadway, and of all the other beneficial services performed for it by the local authority. Was it really a common-sense proposition that in connection with this thriving business, which drew from the community social values, five, ten, twenty times that which was drawn by the landlord, the capitalist or body of capitalists should be relieved of taxes? Surely if there was any doubt as to the social values in such a case they had only to compare the value of the site and its increment with the amount of interest drawn from the business, which only meant the employment of girls at a cheap wage, and not very much enterprise. If they went to the Stock Exchange, they would find the £1 shares of that business quoted at something like £5 or £6. The landlord did not draw the lion's share of the work of the girls, or the social values created by the presence of the community; they who drew those values chiefly were a body of idle capitalists, who had put their money into the tea shop. The local authority must really have regard to what the rates were, and it could not be too clearly borne in mind that even in regard to what were called onerous rates, they were really beneficial to the occupier. If a local authority desired to reform its taxation ought it to proceed upon the policy to which this measure was the first step; or ought it rather to have proper regard to the means of those who lived within its borders? The whole matter became plain when they considered where the injustice of rating lay. Let them take the case of a man with an income of £4,000 a year living under the beneficent sway of one of the London Borough Councils. He would probably live in a house assessed at £200 a year, and the rates would be, say, 7s. 6d. in the £. That man would pay in rates £75 a year. Regarded as an income-tax that rate was 4½d. in the £ on his income. Let them contrast that with a man earning £400. He would probably live in a house assessed at £45 a year, and would pay £16 7s. 6d. in rates, or an income-tax of 10d. in the £. Would this Bill or the policy it was intended to lead up to remedy that injustice? It would not. Some sort of an income-tax or an ability-tax would have a fairer incidence. The policy to which this Bill was the first step made not the slightest impres-upon these injustices. While he advocated a local income-tax he did not desire to overlook another important point in the question of rate incidence to which he would now refer. While he did not for a moment acknowledge that the landlord bore the entire burden of local rating, he did agree with Professor Marshall that such part of local taxation as was levied upon the site value tended to decrease the rental and was in some sense a burden on the landlord. If a local authority were to levy an income-tax, and the present unfair house rate was abolished, the landlord would stand to gain. In that case the valuation of sites might be useful. They might levy a new local land tax directly assessed upon the valuation ascertained by such a Bill as this to compensate for the benefit gained by the landlord. Thus, they might find a common ground of agreement in the imposition of a land tax combined with a local graduated income-tax, which should have a fair incidence, according to ability to pay. Any legislation which contained so many exceptions as this Bill stood condemned on the face of it. The exceptions were so numerous that it would not be worth pursuing this policy. Moreover, the policy of taxing land values, with present contracts excepted, would not obtain for the community the unearned increment. How could they get at the increment which attached to sites due to the presence of the community? It was not difficult, and it could be done by a local transfer tax on the German pattern. Such a tax was in force in Frankfort. The tax varied according to the time which had lapsed, and according to the amount of increment which had occurred since the last transfer at sale or death, and a certain proportion of it was taken for the community. That was a direct and sensible method. The longer the transfer was delayed, the more the value rose. If they combined the income-tax with a new land tax and with an increment tax, they would get a fair and equitable scheme of local taxation. He did not advance this view dogmatically, but he thought it should have consideration before they went further with a policy which would only add very greatly to the complications which already existed

said it had been stated that the people of Scotland did not understand the subject before the House, and probably that statement was correct. He did not think, however, that the people of Scotland would understand it much better to-morrow. This was a very intricate question which was not grasped by everybody and which he for one did not pretend to grasp in the higher branches. There were, however, one or two practical considerations which were understanded of the people. He agreed that it would be most inexpedient to upset the general system of valuation in Scotland. From the humble, but practical standpoint of the local authority he should very much deprecate the introduction of local option in rating matters. They had a certain amount of trouble now with regard to appointments under local authorities, but if they were allowed to regulate their own basis of valuation as was proposed under this local option clause some disturbing elements might be introduced which would not conduce to the harmonious working of local institutions. Therefore, they had to take the Bill generally as part of the valuation system of the country. The point which was really raised by this new clause was the cost. If for a national object information was required, the cost of obtaining it should be borne by the nation. He was certain the local authorities would expect material assistance to be given them sufficient to cover the cost of this new entry. That was needed, and he thought the Chancellor of the Exchequer ought to have made some reference to that subject. As for the cost, he did not think it would be anything like £2,000,000. Some assessors had estimated their costs at very considerable sums, but they would amount to nothing like £2,000,000. He did not think in the case of landed estates the cost would be anything out of the ordinary course. He had consulted several people, and he was inclined to think it would not cost anything. With all due respect to the members of the Committee he attached less weight to the last inquiry than to the inquiry into the incidence of taxation held under Lord Balfour of Burleigh. This valuation was just as necessary to carry out the minority Report of Lord Balfour of Burleigh's Committee of inquiry as to carry out the recommendations of the last inquiry. It was necessary to separate house and site values. At any rate Lord Balfour of Burleigh advised separation in the valuation, and that could only be carried out by some such proposal as that contained in the Bill.

reminded the hon. Member that the separate valuation which was recommended was purely for the purpose of giving deductions on poor rates and so on. It was for a different purpose altogether from that to which the hon. Gentleman was referring.

said that if he were to build on this in the future he would take the Report of the Joint Secretaries to the Treasury as the basis of legislation. He would not take the basis of the last inquiry, nor would he limit himself in any way to the proposals of the minority Report or that of the Joint Secretaries. If the only purpose required was a separate valuation that was all they would get by this Bill. The real point raised by the Amendment was the question of cost. The scheme being a national one, he thought the local authorities had a right to expect a lead from the Treasury in respect of the first valuation. The question of local option might come in later on, but he did not think it could possibly come in now. The right hon. Gentleman had laid considerable stress on the policy advocated by the Solicitor-General. He was not himself a supporter of the full policy of the hon. and learned Gentleman, because he did not think it would be just if applied in certain cases. A number of inquiries into this question had taken place and a variety of proposals had been made. The proposal in the Bill was one which ought to be carried out. He did not believe that at the beginning there would be much money in the scheme, but eventually it would lead to increased revenue which might become considerable, He believed in taking the whole of the increment for the benefit of the community which had created it. They might all unite on this valuation, which committed them to nothing, but which was absolutely essential if they were to do anything. Whether in respect to agricultural land or urban land he could see no difficulty in carrying out the proposals of the Government. He had always maintained that the increased value of agricultural land was created by the owner, and that the increased value of urban land was not created by the owner, although he reaped the full advantage of it. It was in order to mitigate that irregularity, as he conceived it to be, that this valuation was an essential preliminary to any readjustment of local taxation or of any scheme for the endowment of the community with a better proportion of the value it created.

said the cost of making this valuation would be about £4,000,000. [MINISTERIAL laughter.] Hon. Members opposite laughed, but he thought he could prove the statement. He found that the rateable value of property in the city of London was £43,000,000 per annum. Taking that at twenty years purchase the capital value was £860,000,000. It occurred to him that it was possible the whole of Scotland might be worth half the capital value of the city of London. He thought it was worth more, but for the purpose of his argument he would reckon it at half. That gave the capital value in Scotland at £430,000,000. They could get it valued for nothing by people who did not understand the work, but if they got it valued by people who did understand the work they expected to be fairly remunerated. If they took as representing this work 1 per cent. on the £430,000,000 they found that the cost would be £4,300,000. He noticed that hon. Gentlemen opposite did not laugh now. Considering the amount of work which the surveyor would have to perform he did not consider 1 per cent. too high. No man of repute in his profession would do it for very much under 1 per cent., but even if the cost was only a half per cent. the amount would be £2,200,000. When it was done it would not be worth for practical purposes the paper it was written on, as everyone who had dealt in property would admit. When a man had a property to sell he consulted a surveyor, but it often happened that the prices realised in the market differed very considerably, up or down, from the estimate which the owner received of the price the property would probably bring. The valuation under this Bill might be made by some person who spoke in a flippant tone of something which he did not understand at all. He was confident from his long experience that if they were to get a proper valuation of property in Scotland they would have to pay at least £2,000,000 for it. Nothing was more difficult to get than a correct valuation of property. It must be looked at from the point of view of both the buyer and the seller. In this case there would be a tendency on the part of surveyors to put up the value however much they might guard themselves against forming a partial judgment.

said the new clause seemed to him to be an exceedingly reasonable one. The different localities which would be affected would, if it were passed, have the option of saying whether the measure should be put into operation in their areas. They would be able to consider whether it would be worth while incurring the cost; they would also be led to consider whether it was just, and what they were likely to get out of the measure when it was put into operation. The Bill provided for ascertaining certain facts, but they all knew that the ultimate object was to make those facts the basis of the rates and taxes which should be imposed hereafter. It appeared to him that the Bill would work a very unjust revolution in rateable value. Rates had hitherto been made on annual value—at what the property could be reasonably rented at from year to year. The Bill had in view assessing the rate on the capital value of land, which was a very different thing. He considered that would be most unreasonable and unjust. Why should a particular kind of property be selected from all other kinds to be taxed on its capital value? No one liked paying rates. Why should different kinds of property be unequally treated? A large amount of property was now not charged rates at all. On the average it was supposed that what was inside a house was twice the value of the house itself, but there was an Act which was renewed from year to year by which all that kind of property was exempted altogether from liability for rates. Why not rate that if any change was to be made? He could conceive nothing more unfair than to charge land rates on its capital value while all other kinds of rated property were rated on their annual value. He was very glad to think that this revolutionary system was to begin in Scotland if at all. The Scottish people were good economists and possessed of sound common sense, and he believed that when they came into close quarters with the Bill they would not put it in practice. At any rate the Bill should only be put in practice in those localities which agreed to adopt it. As an English Member and having an eye to what might come to England if the Scottish people liked the Bill—although he did not think they would when they came to know what it involved—he was in favour of the new clause because it would minimise the opening effect of the measure. If the Scottish people, speaking generally, did not wish to incur a good deal of expense in taking the first step on this new and dangerous road, it could be tried in the first instance on a limited scale only. Fortunately this was not a party question, and he would vote for the Amendment.

said that anyone listening to the debate would not imagine for one moment that they were discussing a Bill the object of which was to ascertain land values in Scotland. All those who had taken part in the discussion, except the hon. Member who seconded the Amendment, were English Members who, with all respect to them, did not understand the system of Scottish valuation. The right hon. Member for South Dublin paid a tribute to the method of Scottish valuation, and during a previous Administration had introduced a Bill to bring the English system up to the Scottish system. Did the right hon. Gentleman imagine that Scotland was to be kept standing still until England was brought up to the existing Scottish system? He would say to the right hon. Gentleman that they in Scotland were desirous of forging ahead and taking a further step. The right hon. Gentleman would admit that hitherto they had been able to demonstrate that the Scottish system of valuation was one of uniformity and simplicity. Any Amendment to the Bili like that proposed by the hon. Member for Preston would cut at the root of that uniformity and simplicity which had hitherto obtained. He knew that all those who supported the Amendment did not do so because they were in favour of local option in adopting the Bill, but because they were opposed to the Bill altogether. The Leader of the Opposition had made a most extraordinary statement. He had listened to many speeches from the right hon. Gentleman, especially in the last Parliament, notably those on the fiscal question, but he had never heard a more extraordinary statement than the right hon. Gentleman had made that day, viz., that the cost of land valuation in Scotland under the Bill would amount to £2,000,000. He admitted that the right hon. Gentleman had been supported in that view by the hon. Baronet the Member for Taunton, who said that it would cost £4,500,000. The hon. Baronet might just as well have said £10,000,000 or £20,000,000. The sums stated were altogether absurd.

asked if the hon. Gentleman would make a calculation showing where he was wrong?

said he would. He understood that the hon. Baronet was a great authority on rating. They had had his assistance in the Committee upstairs, but whatever experience the hon. Baronet might have in England—and no doubt it was great—he was quite sure that he had not come to close quarters with the system in Scotland. The hon. Baronet made his calculation on the basis of the employment of expert witnesses. That was not the system in Scotland. There the assessors had the confidence of those who rated and the people who paid the rates, and they proceeded in a much simpler and cheaper way. The assessor of the City of Glasgow, who actually made the valuation of that city, stated before the Committee that the cost of this Bill if put in operation would amount to £6,000.

That is purely hypothetical

And the assessor for the City of Edinburgh calculated that it would cost the public to make a similar valuation in that city £4,000,

Not at the public expense.

The hon. Member knows nothing about Scottish valuation or he would not have made that interruption.

I beg pardon; I do know something about Scottish valuation.

said that the assessors were paid by the public. Taking Glasgow and Edinburgh, the cost would amount to £10,000; that would of course be exclusive of any sum paid by private owners who wished to contest the assessor's valuation. He could assure the House that in Scotland they had very few appeals from the valuation of the assessors, who had the confidence of the community. He was sowewhat astonished by the speech of the hon. Member for North Paddington, who was an authority on questions of taxation. Before the Income Tax Committee the hon. Member and others complained seriously as to the lack of statistics in this country. One witness before the Committee went so far as to say that there was no country in the world so lacking in statistical information as Great Britain. He would have thought that the hon. Gentleman would have been delighted to see a Government which was trying to obtain accurate statistics. He was sure that the hon. Member did not want that the land should bear no taxation. When they remembered that the valuation of land in this country was made in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, he thought it was time that a new valuation should be made as the basis of a reform, not only of local but Imperial taxation. If they were to have reform they must know what were the different elements which were to compose the subject of taxation. The hon. Member for Preston had said that there was no money in this Bill, but he did not seem to have much faith in his own view. If there was no money in it, the Bill would demonstrate the fact. The hon. Member for Preston was more lucid on other questions of taxation, but on this he was like his distinguished predecesor who always brought in King Charles's head. The hon. Member had got a wrong view of the question which was not supported by political economists. He would remind the hon. Gentleman that John Stuart Mill went very much further than the lines of this Bill; he recommended that all the increased value given to land by public improvements should not only be taxed but confiscated. The hon. Member for Preston seemed to think that he had scored a point when he referred to the English Land Holdings Bill, and said that difficulties would arise with the county councils, but he might point out that this was a Bill for the valuation of land in Scotland, and they would have no such difficulties in that country as the hon. Gentleman anticipated if the Bill passed this House and another place. Not only so, but they had a practical demonstration of the soundness of the view which the Government were putting forward in this measure by the system of taxation which exempted improvements and rated the land value only under the Crofters Act, which had been a success for twenty years. The passing of a Bill like this and the taxation consequent upon it, would be a relief to agriculture which hon. Members were so anxious to have put in a satisfactory position. The hon. Member for Preston put forward his case for local option because he said it was carried on in New Zealand, but that was not so. It was taxation of land value by municipalities that was optional in New Zealand. The valuation was made, and therefore that argument fell to the ground. He thought that the effect of the Bill would be to supply them with information which would be of the greatest possible benefit to the nation.

said he would not have risen but for the fact that the hon. Member referred to him as not knowing anything about the system which prevailed in Scotland, and he had jumped up and said that he did understand it. He thought that one might live a very long life and not understand a measure of this kind which, in his judgment, should not be rushed through, because it might revolutionise the land system of the United Kingdom. This was but the first stage of a very much larger measure, which might later on be made applicable to England. What was the case for the Bill, if, as was alleged, they intended to protect existing contracts, because they knew that it was the intention of the vast majority of the supporters of this Bill if it was passed to propose not only the breaking of existing contracts but also the taxing as far as they possibly could the landlord out of existence? On the Front Government Bench they had the Solicitor-General, who, if he was not actually a member of the Scottish League for the Taxing of Ground Values, which was brought into existence to support and carry out the proposals of Mr. Henry George, was a supporter of it. The Solicitor-General supported that league, and so did the Lord Advocate and three or four other members of the Front Bench opposite. If they were not members of it they spoke at its meetings. Three or four members of the Government were also members of the English League. He had been laughed at for calling Mr. Henry George a half-educated man, but he repeated the assertion, and he was sure that anyone who examined his works would agree with him; and no less a person than Mr. Gladstone, whose words in some quarters seemed now to be forgotten, although they should command respect, not only in this House, but throughout the country, on the 27th February, 1891, said that there were persons who viewed the proposals of Mr. Henry George as being of a very enlightened character and who very much resented the use of hard words with regard to him, but so far as his knowledge and examination of his proposals went it was difficult, he confessed, to exclude them or extricate them from the category of those plans to which hard words were commonly applied. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had objected to there being any idea that he would be a party to breaking existing contracts, and he had explained to the investors in the City the other day that they need not be afraid of there being any measure for breaking contracts passed by this House. He was afraid the City had not given the amount of weight to his words which they ought to have done, and the right hon. Gentleman did not seem to have shifted the feeling of unrest which everybody knew to exist. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, although now he said he did not wish to break existing contracts, had supported the Bill of the Glasgow Corporation which did so. How was the outside public to judge? Let them take the case of the London County Council. A bogie was started that London was owned by half-a-dozen great landlords. The Council ordered that a ground plan of London should be made, but it was not yet finished, although it had cost some thousands of pounds. Why was it not finished? Because it had been found that, instead of half-a-dozen landlords, there were thousands and thousands of owners and that there was no foundation for the statement. They were told by the statistical officer of the London County Council that he could value the whole of the land of London for £25,000 the first year, and £5,000 a year afterwards. Then why did he not make the ground plain at a fraction of that cost? The Lord Advocate knew perfectly well that the cost of the valuation would be much more than £25,000 if it was ever finished. If he could rely on his figures let him insert a fixed sum in his Bill and put in the words "not exceeding" before it, and he would soon see who was right and who was wrong. They could not make a register of the streets of Glasgow for less than £20,000. If this was made the subject of a non-party vote the right hon. Gentleman would find the result very different from what he anticipated.

said he was glad to find himself in agreement with the Government in their endeavour to get this valuation for Scotland. He could not agree with the hon. Member for Preston that local option would be desirable, because what the people of Scotland wanted was a valuation of the land of Scotland, and they would not be satisfied until they had it. He agreed with the hon. Member for East Edinburgh that the cost would be small—£8,000 at the most. He was not quite in agreement with those who thought great results would be obtained from this valuation. He had given some thought to the matter and taken out some figures from the valuation rolls of Scotland. He found the total annual rateable value of the burghs of Scotland amounted to £17,000,000, whilst that of the agricultural land amounted to £15,000,000. He believed the land value of Edinburgh ranged from 20 to 33⅓ per cent. of the rateable value, but in order not to take too small an amount he would put it at 20 per cent. of the whole value of £6,000,000. He did not in this connection take into account site values, as they were not rated, but in order that there might be no discrepancy, he would add £1,000,000 for those, which would bring the capital value out at about £7,000,000. The hon. Member would be surprised to know that the assessments of the local authority in Scotland amounted to almost as much as the total annual land value. Therefore enthusiasts who regarded the taxation of land values as something which would mitigate all the evils under which we lived would admit, now that he had given them these figures, that they were labouring under an hallucination. There was one other point. Both the Lord Advocate and the Chancellor of the Exchequer admitted that they could not break contracts and could not tax feu duties. There was no method at present of taxing them, and he could not find what the total amount of the feu duties was. If there was any possibility of getting at that, then he thought it ought to be obtained, because then they could easily estimate what a tax of 20 per cent. on the land value of Scotland would bring in.

said that although the speech of the hon. Member who had just sat down was in favour of the Bill, it had given them a serious object lesson as to the result of the Bill if it passed. But he wished to put two considerations before the House very shortly, which applied solely to the real point of this Amendment, and not to the general principles of the Bill—to the question of option. The best argument in favour of option was found in the speech of the hon. Member for East Edinburgh, who said that this was not for local purposes only, but for Imperial purposes as well. There was a strong argument for option there, because if this was for Imperial purposes the Bill itself only applied to one part of the Empire. How was it to be used for Imperial purposes under those conditions? Were there not also differences in different localities which made option necessary? Let them take the small decaying burghs which were so frequent, unfortunately, in Scotland. In the case of those burghs, there was practically no land value. The buildings were let at a price at which they could not now be built, setting aside the value of the land on which they stood. With a diminishing value for rating purposes, and hardly touched by local taxation, surely some option must be given to them. And the same rule must be extended to urban areas where the property was constantly increasing in value. He would only quote one case to show how absolutely impossible it was to apply land values to all the are is. They knew quite well in watering places what was the value of a pier. He had in his eye one of the southern watering places, where the £1 shares in the pier were now selling for £13 or £14. The value was enormous. Almost the whole foundation was below high-water mark. Suppose they had to value that property which now gave an enormous return that was easily gained by the shareholders; suppose they were asked to estimate the land value of that property. What land value could they give? Not only was it almost impossible to value the land, but it should be remembered that all such properties as this absolutely claimed exemption from the rates altogether. The Lord Advocate and the Solicitor-General had said that the object of the Bill was to exempt all buildings and improvements, and solely to take the land value. But was there not in various localities a large amount of such property of which it would be absur to attempt to estimate the land value, and which it would be still more absurd and unjust to attempt to exempt from rating altogether? The fact was that the Bill had been promoted by extremists, like those who promoted the Glasgow Bill. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had mistaken his interruption as to "the Glasgow Bill." It was not intended to interfere with the right hon. Gentleman's argument, because the Glasgow Bill, a measure which derived that description from the circumstance that it was promoted by Glasgow gentlemen, applied to the whole of Scotland, and not merely to Glasgow. In connection with this Bill they wanted to throw a sop to the followers of Henry George; it asked them to incur an unwarrantable expense, to attempt to do something which was almost impossible of accomplishment; in fact, they were holding out hopes which he, for one, contended could never be realised, while they would deprive the community of a valid rate which was now easily and readily and justly paid.

rose in his place and claimed to move "That the Question be now put. Question put, "That the question be now put." The House divided:—Ayes, 248; Noes. 51. (Division List No. 437.)

on Clause 1 moved to leave out the words "and of each subsequent year," the effect being to confine the making of the new entry in the valuation roll—capital land value—to one year. He said that anyone who had listened to the debate must be convinced that the fewer times these operations had to be gone through in order to add the third column to the valuation roll, the better it would be for Scotland. The Lord Advocate had told them that the object of this Bill was to get certain facts. He submitted that once they had got those facts they did not need to repeat the inquiry every year. Once the facts were obtained that ought to be sufficient for the object they had in view. The right hon. Gentleman had stated that this Bill was required solely for the purpose of obtaining information, and the Solicitor-General had told them that one of its objects was to simplify land transfer, At any rate all would agree that the information should be accurate, but the facts they would obtain under the Bill would obviously be inaccurate. The right hon. Gentleman had taken pains to point out that no rating was to ensue until a Rating Act had been passed, Surely that would be the proper time to renew the valuation. Although the Lord Advocate required all this information, he was not prepared to pay for it out of Government funds. The right hon. Gentleman wished to drink deep at the spring of the unfortunate owner. This expense would fall in many cases on persons who could ill afford to bear it. A large landowner would be perfectly safe, because he had got his factors; but what would happen to the small landowners? A much larger proportion would fall on the small man than upon the large man. As to the question of cost, how was it that no estimate had been placed before the House? Before rushing into this scheme it would only have been proper for the Lord Advocate to have taken some means of ascertaining what the cost was going to be. He concurred with the Leader of the Opposition that the cost to Scotland of the valuation roll would be something like £2,000,000. No attempt appeared to have been made to ascertain the cost. In the county of Aberdeen, including the city of Aberdeen, there were upwards of 92,740 voters on the valuation roll. He wished to know whether the Government could give any estimate of the cost of the surveys which would be necessary when this Bill became law? He ventured to say that an enormous cost would be thrown on the county of Aberdeen. It had been stated that a Glasgow assessor had expressed the opinion that it could all be done for £5,000 or £6,000. Glasgow had made up a register which had already cost £20,000, and there were still 5,000 appeals oustanding against the assessor. Any hon. Member who had had to do with such appeals knew how costly they were. An hon. friend had informed him that one of these appeals cost from £100 to £1,000. This was an expenditure which the Government proposed to put on, not once, but year after year. Ac cording to the evidence of Mr. Marwick it would take thirty valuators working six days a week for four and a half years to make a valuation of Edinburgh alone, but an enthusiastic Glasgow assessor had said that after the first valuation had been made the others could be made in five minutes. Could any hon. Member really imagine that valuations made at that rate would not necessarily be the subject of appeal. The Bill said that it was to come into force in respect of Whitsunday, 1909. The Lord Advocate seemed to think that he had made a concession when he altered the date from 1908, but the same difficulty would arise in 1909 as if the measure came into operation in 1908. The only advantage of altering the date would be that the public would have a little more time to become acquainted with the terms of the Bill. When Whitsunday, 1909, came, notices would have to be sent out by the assessors, and as the valuation roll had to be returned by 15th August, all the time available for the making up of the roll would be three months. The assessor retained the valuation roll till 8th September, and then it was transmitted to the county clerk, and the appeals had to be heard by 25th September. That was a totally inadequate time to attend to the appeals which would arise. The voters roll had to be made up between 25th September and 15th October. All this work had to be done by the same assessors at the same time. An impossible task was being thrown upon them. The Association of Assessors said that it would take two years to carry out the work. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had announced through the Lord Advocate that in regard to the expense he would give fair consideration to the cost that might be imposed on the assessors. Did the right hon. Gentleman propose to give fair consideration to the cost that would be imposed on the owners as well? These costs would be of an extremely onerous character. It had been suggested that we ought to copy the New Zealand system, but he would point out that the valuation there was not made annually. It could not be made at a less interval than two years. Why should the valuation roll be revised every year in the case of unfortunate Scotland? What changes did the right hon. Gentleman expect to take place from Year to year? He admitted that probably a change of Government would increase the capital value of land in Scotland. The legislation of the present Government had had a most depressing effect on feu duties. At one time they were absolutely unsaleable, and it was only after the intervention of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Prime Minister that it was possible in Glasgow to sell feu duties at any price at all. Enormous difficulty would be experienced by the owners and occupiers who desired to carry out their duties in regard to valuations. Whit Sunday was the common period at which properties were handed over when sales took place. There would be a valuation placed on the roll in respect of a property at that date, but under the scheme of the Lord Advocate the new owner would be responsible for the accuracy of the valuation, and he would be liable to a penalty of £50 for an inaccurate valuation. That would throw an unnecessary burden on the individual. Once the valuation had been given that should be sufficient for all reasonable purposes. In Glasgow, for example, there would be complicated issues at stake and it would be three or four years before the valuation column could be made at all accurate. There were small counties in which it might he done in a year. Power was given in the Bill to delay in certain cases, but where that power was not applied this valuation would be made from year to year at great cost. He submitted that the object the Government desired would be served if one valuation was made, and that then from time to time as it became necessary a revision could be made by Order in Council. His desire was not to put the country to the expense and inconvenience every year of the preparation of a valuation roll. He hoped the reasonableness of his proposal would appeal to the Lord Advocate. He begged to move. Amendment proposed—

"In page 1, line 6, to leave out the words 'and of each subsequent year."'—(Mr. Cochrane.)

said he was sorry that the Government did not see its way to accept the proposal of the hon. Gentleman. The House had already settled that there should be a valuation roll made up for the first year, viz., the year beginning Whit Sunday, 1909. That being so, and if by universaladmission, the expense, of which so much had just been made, would be very largely in excess in the first year of any expense which would be incurred in subsequent years, the deletion of the words "each subsequent year" would be most inadvisable. It was altogether out of the question that in a Bill so fashioned as to adapt itself to the system of the valuation of land in Scotland they should add a column departing from that system which had answered so well for more than fifty years. That was the broad ground on which the Government adhered to the Bill as it stood. He knew that there was a quin-quennial system which obtained in London. Such a system had never been, and he hoped would never be, applied to Scotland. The precedent of New Zealand had also been quoted, but when that was set up for the first time in the Colony it was from motives which did not apply in Scotland. The motive of the Government was to dovetail into the Act of 1854, which had by common consent worked so smoothly and effectively, the proposals in the Bill. Calculations of a most fantastic nature had been made as to the enormous expense which would be incurred. The hon. Baronet the Member for Taunton had said that the cost would be £4,000,000, but by way of being very generous he reduced that sum to £2,000,000. An estimate had been made with regard to the cost to Edinburgh and Glasgow. His hon. friend the Member for East Edinburgh had put the cost for that city at £4,000. As a matter of fact it would only cost £2,000, He would throw the £2,000 to his hon. friend, just as he had taken the reduced estimate of the hon. Baronet at £2,000,000. Assume that it would cost Edinburgh and Glasgow £10,000, let them work it out by the rule of three. The valuation of Edinburgh and Glasgow amounted to £8,000,000 per annum. The cost of valuation which the hon. Baronet would reach on his estimate, would be £160,000. The people on the spot, the most skilled valuers in the United Kingdom, told them that that was a most fantastic statement, that the cost of valuation of the land in Edinburgh and Glasgow would be £10,000 and that a figure of £160,000 was sheer nonsense.

The assessors are not valuers.

said that his experience, both as arbitrator and as counsel, in the course of a long professional life showed him that the assessors were most skilled valuers. This matter of expense did not terrify them in Scotland at all. The valuation, though it might appear large for the first year, would be taken advantage of each subsequent year, and the expense would consequently be diminished. He asked the House not to sterilise the Bill by accepting the Amendment. What they wanted to get at was the valuation each year showing any increment or decrement. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the value would be repeated and the assessor would say that he saw no change in the value.

said that the hon. and learned Gentleman asked them not to sterilise his Bill by accepting the Amendment. He failed to see from the explanation given by the Lord Advocate that the Amendment, if carried, would do the least harm. If the object of the Government was what they had told the House, to get some notion of what the value of the land in Scotland was for the purpose of guiding them in future legislation, then he thought that one valuation would be enough, and there could be no object in an annual valuation. If the Bill was to have some operative character and the information obtained was to be purely academic, for which, however, the proprietors of Scotland would be asked to pay, then the experiment should be made as cheap as possible. He agreed with the right hon. and learned Gentleman that the cost in the valuation in the subsequent years would not be as great as in the first year, but he did not agree with him as to the cost of the first year. On the contrary, he thought that the right. hon. and learned Gentleman had greatly underrated it, and that he was wrong when he stated that the amount of the expense to the individual proprietors would be negligible, It would involve landed proprietors going through all the accounts of their estates for more than twenty years to see when certain improvements had commenced, and there would require to be continual revision of the valuation. That could not be done without some cost, and he earnestly suggested that all the information required could be obtained if he and his successors were content with the valuation for one year.

heartily supported the Amendment. What was the object of the Bill? As stated by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Bill was introduced in order to collect statistics merely for the pleasure of collecting them, but obviously the object was to obtain figures which would justify the imposition of a rate. In Committee they could get no information as to the nature of the rate, and when the Lord Advocate first introduced the Bill he indicated that was a fishing and exploring measure in order to see whether legislation could be introduced. The Government under this Bill were not going to impose any rate, and before they did so they must introduce another Bill. Meanwhile what did this Amendment suggest? The Amendment was that when they had got that information they should stop and consider whether they should go on, and if it was found possible to bring in a rating Bill they should do so. But what was the position of the right hon. Gentleman? It was that this valuation should be made every year, a proceeding which would be most unfair. Let them take the case of two adjacent counties, Peebles and Lanark. Peebles was a small county and was likely to finish its valuation quickly while, Lanarkshire being a large county, the work in it would take a longer time. What would be the result? Lanarkshire would probably make one valuation, while Peebles, the work being lighter, would make two, three, or four. The result would be not to give the right hon. Gentleman any valuation which he could go upon in founding a rating Bill, because the dates of the valuations would vary. If the right hon. Gentleman said that after the first valuation was made the process should be annual, there might be something to be said for the proposal, but there was nothing to be said for a suggestion that while one county was to make half a dozen valuations other counties were to only make one. The right hon. Gentleman had been pleased to say that the estimate of the Leader of the Opposition that this valuation would cost £2,000,000 was a fantastic figure, and that for the City of Glasgow the cost would be from £6,000 to £8,000. What he wanted to ask the House was to consider whether, when they were making an estimate, it was not a fair basis to take ¼ per cent. to ½ per cent. as the cost of the valuation; and if they did so the estimate of £6,000 to £8,000 was totally inadequate. The annual rental of Glasgow was £5,750,000. Taking the capitalised value of that not at twenty years purchase, but at only fifteen years, would give them a capital value of £86,000,000. The remuneration of £6,000 or £8,000 to those who had to make the valuation of that amount of property would work out at 160th of one per cent. Was that reasonable? The right hon. Gentleman would not venture to offer such a rate of remuneration to any assessor, or if he did he would hear a very strong opinion from the assessor in question. He asked whether there was any precedent—he knew of none—for making valuations apart from rating an annual obligation. He therefore suggested to the right hon. Gentleman, as this was simply a Bill for inquiry on which to base future legislation, provision should be made safeguarding those counties which had got through their valuations quickly from being compelled to go on making valuations until those counties which had moved more slowly and less skilfully had completed theirs.

said that as he understood it, these assessors were not to be professional men, and yet they were the gentlemen who would have to work out one of the most difficult calculations that it was possible to think of. They had not only the superficial area of the land to deal with, but the miners and other values which pertained to it. If the Lord Advocate thoroughly be lieved in the proposal which he had brought forward and thought the expenses would be only the amount which he had indicated, why not say in the Bill that the cost should not exceed £6,000, £8,000, £10,000, or even £100,000, because he was sure the last-named figure mentioned would not cover the cost. The whole virtue of the valuation depended upon the man who made it, and if these valuations were to be made not by experts but by novices who were unacquainted with the work so far as capital and rental values were concerned, their estimates would not be worth the paper upon which they were written.

hoped that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would receive favourably the suggestion that the Treasury should bear some of the cost about which they were hearing such varying statements. Leaving out the question of necessity and for this purpose admitting that it was necessary to make such a valuation, it seemed to him unreasonable that it should be made every year. His hon. friend the Member for Lanark had advanced unanswerable arguments as to one county making the valuation more quickly than another, and had therefore demonstrated that it was unreasonable to have this valuation every year. What good did the Lord Advocate think was going to come from this annual valuation? He quite agreed that the valuation should be made at recurrent periods, but he did not see why it should be annual. In London we had a quinquennial valuation, but in country districts and other large towns the valuation was not made so frequently. If the Lord Advocate had proposed a quinquennial valuation he did not know that he would have had much to say against it, but he did not see the necessity for an annual valuation. Did the right hon. Gentleman think that property in Glasgow was going to fluctuate appreciably every year? He did not think that that would be the case, and he trusted it would not be, in spite of the extraordinary legislation which was going to be triel upon that city. Evidently the fluctuations could not be very great, and even the unearned increment of which they heard so much would take some years to accrue. As to the question of expense, he altogether failed to grasp the argument of the right hon. Gentleman, and he thought that his statement of £6,000 or £8,000 could not be made seriously. The Lord Advocate seemed to have omitted altogether the consideration that the people whose property was going to be valued had already made some valuation on their own behalf and might or might not accept the valuation of the assessor. It was inevitable that an expert must be called in and that a considerable expense would be entailed on that account; because if the unfortunate man sent in an inaccurate valuation and the Corporation asked on what it was founded, and he said it was a guess, they would not accept it, and he would have to employ an expert in order that the valuation should be founded on a proper basis. He agreed that the work would not be so difficult the second year. If it was necessary to include a fixed date he hoped the Lord Advocate would make it a longer period than a year.

said having had considerable experience in the valuation of property, he might be able to throw some light on this matter. The annual assessment was an absolute necessity. During the last thirty years, the property in Cripplegate Without had grown in annual value from £70,000 to £230,000. During the whole of that period the annual valuations for rating purposes had passed under his hand. The revision of assessments and valuations took place every year and the quinquennial assessments had been arrived at from the annual valuations. The rental value of the property in that district being £230,000, the capital value might be put at £4,000,000, and during the whole thirty years, all the valuations, including the quinquennial revisions, had only cost £200 a year, or less than a hundred and sixtieth of the 1 per cent. which had been spoken of as an impossible figure. He himself would be glad to undertake the valuation of the whole of Scotland at that impossible figure, and would guarantee that it would be properly done. If it was done annually, it was a comparatively easy thing to do.

pointed out that in this case they would have to make a hypothetical situation. They would have to divest the site of its building and value it not for the purposes of the building upon it, but for the purposes of the building which the assessor thought ought to be upon it. Under such conditions it was obvious that the valuation would have to be much more carefully made, and would take a much greater time.

said it appeared to him that those who opposed this Amendment lost sight of the fact that there was no precedent for going to the expense of a valuation of land without the intention of making immediate and practical use of the information obtained. It was proposed in this case to make a valuation of the capital value of the land of Scotland, first, for the purpose of determining whether or not it was expedient or judicious to base fresh taxation, Imperial or local, on the information obtained, and secondly, to base the taxation on the figures obtained. For the second purpose he admitted that the information must be substantially accurate, but for the purpose for which this information alone was sought, rough general information was sufficient. To decide whether or not it was expedient, judicious, or just to impose fresh taxation of the kind suggested, it was not necessary to know the exact value of the land; an approximate estimate would be sufficient. No one could deny that the cost of the annual revision would be considerable, and it appeared to him, having regard to the purpose for which the valuation was wanted, that the cost of the annual revision would be a waste of money. Question put. The House divided:—Ayes, 238; Noes, 51. (Division List No. 439).

in moving an Amendment to limit the operation of the clause to burghs, said the Amendment was one which he would have thought the Government would find no difficulty in accepting. The question of the taxation of ground values in towns had long excited much interest, and it had been dealt with in many different ways. As far as he knew, the Government suggested that the same system should be adopted with regard to agricultural land as was adopted in towns. There had been inquiries into the land system in the towns, there had been Commissions and Committees of Inquiry, but so far as he was aware it had never been suggested that the policy which might seem possible and advisable in towns should be applied equally to agricultural districts. No reason had yet been given by any member of the Government for this new and singular innovation, that methods adopted with regard to urban areas should be extended to other areas of a wholly different character, and governed by very different economic considerations. He wondered whether it was a mere love of doctrinaire uniformity. Otherwise, what was their reason? Nobody for a moment sup posed that the bare, unimproved agricultural land of this country was going to be a mine of wealth. He could understand, though he did not agree, that the land of our great towns was regarded as an untaxed source of revenue which might come to the relief of overburdened ratepayers; but no human being had ever for a moment dreamt that in the unimproved value of any agricultural district there was a mine of wealth. The only doubt was whether, if they suddenly cleared land on which a great deal of money had been spent and left it derelict, it would be worth anyone's while to make any improvements upon it at all. If that were true, and he did not think anyone would deny its truth, the idea that there was any financial gold mine in agricultural land was wholly absurd. Then in the case of agricultural land they were asking the owners to answer a perfectly absurd question. They were putting to them a conundrum as to the value of unimproved land to which he believed there was no rational answer at all. When he suggested that point to friends of his, they replied that a valuer could always be got to value anything they liked. Let them ask a valuer to put a value on anything in the world and, of course, he would put it. If a man's trade was to give an opinion for money he would give an opinion for money on whatever question they chose to ask him. But they had no right to ask him, through any owner of land, to answer a question to which there was no rational reply whatever. It should be remembered that when they were dealing with a bare, neglected site in a town they were dealing with a thing which came into the market every day in the week. Everyone knew that where a house had been pulled down there was a site of which they might estimate the value, and the difficulty which was experienced in regard to agricultural land did not arise. No one had ever seen the arable tracts in Argyllshire and Fifeshire in the unimproved condition which might be hypothetically supposed; and they were, therefore, asking first the owner, and then the valuer, to make a hypothetical judgment on a subject on which they had, from experience, no means of gaining any information whatever. He would very much like to know how the Government themselves thought the valuation ought to be carried out. He was not now thinking of the valuer who was obliged to give an opinion for money. He was asking the right hon. and learned Gentleman how he would proceed to value the bare soil of a Fifeshire arable farm. The Government themselves did not believe in their own theory, for in this Bill, as originally brought in, there was no bare agricultural value; on the contrary, everything was included — draining, fencing, plantations, water supply and other things. How that matter stood now he did not know. The Government made some Amendments in Committee, but whether those Amendments went the full length of clearing the land in imagination of everything upon it, he was not aware. He rather doubted it. He though simpler language ought to have beet used if the Government really mean what they said in regard to the land which was to be subject to this land value system. They had a great many qualifications in the third clause, but he did not know whether they covered all improvements. It was possible to draft a subsection in the third clause in such a way as to apply to what they had said in all their speeches they meant, namely, the absolute and unimproved value of the land. The problem in the country was quite different from the problem in the town in this respect. The value of sites in towns was according to the best kind of buildings which could be put upon them, and one of the objects of this Bill, according to the learned Solicitor-General for Scotland and the Lord Advocate also, was to induce people who owned houses in towns on sites where better buildings could be erected, to pull down those houses and erect those better buildings. But the view of the Lord Advocate and the Government was that the man who was not putting on the ground that he owned in the town the most vaulable building suitable to that site, was so far robbing the public of some wealth that ought to belong to it. He did not argue that proposition now, but he thought it plainly inapplicable to the country districts. There was a vital difference in the state of things in the country. He did not know on what principle the Government meant the valuers to proceed, but at all events, nobody wished to have buildings put on a farm which would leave the land of no value at all. They had to consider for what sum they could replace all the buildings, drains, hedges, and other things, and allow interest on that sum in order to get at the unimproved value of the soil. If they were not going to take the farm as equipped, including the cost of equipment, what other principle were they going to adopt? There was plenty of unimproved land, and they knew what grew upon it, but in the case of the rich land they never saw what grew upon it, and it was ludicrous to ask the House to base a system of valuation upon this remote and unfounded hypothesis. He wished to know what view the Government took as to the effect of the Bill on their own scheme. Hon. Members opposite talked as if the Bill was in thorough harmony with previous legislative proposals dealing with the crofters. It was clear that if the Bill passed it would have a disastrous effect on the crofters. The crofter improvements, which now escaped taxation altogether, would cease to do so. It appeared to him that the Government were indirectly raising a question which when thoroughly understood, would produce in the crofting counties a very startling effect as to the genuineness of the Government's desire to help the struggling population in those parts of the Highlands. He was at a loss to understand why the Government had taken so many unnecessary difficulties upon their shoulders. They had brought upon themselves all the difficulties of their scheme in connection with agricultural land, and deprived themselves of all the advantages to be hoped from it in those places which were already built over or likely to be built over in the next few years. He thought they would do well to lighten the series of strange proposals they were putting before the House. Amendment proposed—

"In page 1, line 7, to leave out the words 'county and.'"—(Mr. A. J. Balfour.)

did not think the case which had been raised by the right hon. Gentleman would arise under the proposals of the Bill. He totally differed from the view presented as to the distinction between the town and the country cases. He quite acknowledged that short as the Amendment was it raised a serious question of principle, and he wished to deal with it in a proper spirit. The right hon. Gentleman was wrong in his first proposition that this proposal was being made by the Government without any consideration of the problem. The Bills which had dealt with this topic in the House of Commons in the past had been confined to urban areas, but in view of the overwhelming vote in the House of Commons last year it was necessary to remit the whole of the question to a Select Committee. The right hon. Gentleman would quite understand that he was not going into certain matters contained in the body of that Report, but it was only right that he should refer to the particular recommendation which bore upon the point raised in the Amendment. The recommendation laid down that the moment they confined the operation of a principle of this kind to urban areas they would find themselves, as it were, at the dividing line between burgh and county, and they would meet cases of such extreme difficulty that the only way to ease the situation was to make a uniform system. The second recommendation was that a measure should be introduced making provision for a valuation of land in the burghs and counties of Scotland apart from the buildings and improvements upon it, and that no assessment should be determined upon until the amount of that valuation was known and considered. He had gone to this length to show that it was a mistake to suggest that no inquiry had been made upon the subject, it had been a matter of the most anxious inquiry. One of the advantages of the Bill was that at all events it would show all investigators of the subject and all local authorities exactly how the balance of valuation stood. He agreed that it was extremely important that they should proceed upon prudent lines before assessing for taxation. The scheme would not produce a new gold mine, but it would effect a certain readjustment. He did not wish to pose as a prophet, but one could not study this problem for a long period of years without feeling that the readjustment would enure to the advantage of thebona-fide agricultural proprietor in Scotland. If the scheme of this Bill was carried out all those improvements effected upon purely agricultural properties would henceforth be improvements with regard to which thebona fide owner would know that he would not be penalised by taxation. In the county area the man who would be relieved would be thebona-fide agricultural holder, and the man who would be hit would be the land speculator who bought in the county area land which was in the ambit of a town. The effect would be that instantaneous relief would be given to the class of ratepayers in Scotland whom he called thebona-fide landowners. To the extent to which the speculators would be hit others would be relieved, and therefore, in the respect which he had indicated, the benefit in country districts would be of the greatest kind. He had thought it necessary to give that explanation, because there seemed to be a misapprehension on the subject. Of course, the Government had no wish to discourage building. They wished to encourage all kinds of improvements upon property, and the best of all inducements to make such expenditure would be the consciousness that people would not be penalised for making improvements. The right hon. Gentleman was very anxious to get an opinion from him without a fee. When a question of that kind was asked he always remembered what the late Lord Young said, "Whenever you get the opinion of counsel for nothing, it is worth just exactly what you pay for it." Accordingly he was not going to enter into that barren country. If the valuation were to be done by a skilled witness he would not attach much importance to it, but when the first step was to be taken by the proprietor himself, he thought that was a good starting fact. The exclusion of every county in Scotland under the proposal of the right hon. Gentleman would mean a very great deal even on the site value basis, the cogency of which was admitted. The exclusion of the county areas would be the exclusion at one swoop of all those acute cases of suburban areas which had really provoked this question year after year, and made it become a great issue of State. Then there was the case of villages and the land surrounding them. Sometimes most extraordinary examples were given of how great was the value of land in the estimation of the proprietor. One case which he had in his mind affected a burgh where a riparian owner compelled the burgh to purify a river. The burgh could only purify the river by obtaining land for filtration purposes from the very proprietor who compelled the carrying out of the purification works. The burgh had to pay an enormous price for the land; he could not say how much it was in excess of what might be regarded as its real value. If the Amendment were carried, suburban land would be excluded from the operation of the Bill, and serious cases would slip through. Under the law of Scotland there was a far more acute case than any which had been mentioned. The right hon. Gentleman did not seem to be aware that all the police burghs of Scotland, which represented the modern side of urban energy in country places, and which did not send or contribute to sending a Member to Parliament, were for valuation purposes reckoned in the county. Therefore, under the Amendment there would be excluded not only suburban land, village land, and the land surrounding villages, but actually the police burghs to which he referred.

said that no evidence was laid before the Select Committee last year in regard to the inclusion of county areas. The evidence dealt entirely with urban areas, and the conclusion come to by the majority was forced on the Committee without their having an opportunity of hearing evidence or being told on what facts the Committee proceeded. The hon. and learned Gentleman had avoided all reference to the great difficulty of valuing sites in the country. The third clause defined "improvements." He thought the clause now before the House would be improved by the adoption of the Amendment. It was extremely difficult in valuing land to divorce it from improvements in the way the Bill suggested. An extremely difficult task was placed on the assessors and little guidance was given to them as to how they were to perform their duty in allowing for improvements. During the debates in the Committee he understood the Lord Advocate to promise that he would prepare some directions for the assessors. He did not know whether the directions were to be incorporated in the Bill or whether they were to be issued in another form. The House was in entire ignorance on that matter, but much of the success of the assessors in making the valuations would depend on the directions. There was, for example, the difficult question of minerals which lay beneath properties. Who was to make the return in that case? Was it the man who owned thesolum and not the minerals. Similar problems arose in regard to fishing and shooting rights, and no direction was given in the Bill to help towards a solution. Hon. Members were aware that in Scotland, and he presumed the same thing occurred in England, as soon as suburban land became building land, the boundaries were so adjusted at the instance of the town council as to include the land which was ripe for building purposes. That suburban land, therefore, would come within the four corners of the Bill. The Lord Advocate claimed that he was proceeding on prudent lines, but he could not agree with him. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman had begun by confining the Bill to urban areas he would have been proceeding on prudent lines, but when he included the mountains and glens and asked that a land value should be placed upon them, he thought that the lines were not particularly prudent. He concurred with what had been said by the Leader of the Opposition as to the difficulty which would arise under the Bill in relation to the valuation of holdings occupied by crofters. The result would be that on such land the value would remain, but on ordinary farms the cost of the equipment was so great that the land value would disappear altogether. If this Bill were carried out to its logical result, certain proprietors would pay no rates at all, while the crofters would pay four or five times their present rate. Therefore, instead of a boon being given to the new small landowner and the wretched crofters, they would be in a very much worse position under the new than under the old system. The right hon. and learned Gentleman had given an instance of a sewage farm near Edinburgh; but the price paid there was paid in respect of the diminution in value of the neighbouring land. Nobody was likely to build a house near a sewage farm. Another case quoted by the Lord Advocate was Rosyth, but everybody knew that Lord Linlithgow and his predecessors had paid a fancy price for the land there, in order to maintain the amenity of Hopetoun House, and he was entitled to have that taken into account in the valuation. Another case quoted was that of the gas-works at Granton. Anything more hideous than the erections there could not be conceived. He himself had lived within an area of ten or twelve miles from the gasworks, and they were an eyesore to him, while they had spoiled the land for feuing purposes. Therefore the Duke of Buccleuch was entitled to receive a large price for that land. He did not suppose that the Lord Advocate would change his mind on this subject; his mind was obsessed with this idea of land values. He was glad to hear the right hon. and learned Gentleman admit that there was not a gold mine in the business; but on the other hand he thought that having respect to the future, while the Bill might reduce the present value of building land, at any rate it would not produce a very large sum in additional rates. He was very sorry that the Lord Advocate still adhered to his determination to refuse to accept the Amendment. He thought that the chances were that the Bill would extend the principle of the valuation of the land values to where valuation was difficult, especially when no proper line had been laid down for the direction of the assessor.

said he desired to support the Amendment. The Bill was not originally intended to include county areas, but to confine its operations to towns and cities. The reason for the admission by the Lord Advocate that he did not expect the Bill would prove a gold mine was that the Prime Minister had resolutely refused to include existing feus and contracts within its scope. Another reason why the Amendment should be accepted was that there was ample undeveloped land available to test the new basis of valuation proposed to be set up. He had listened with considerable astonishment to the Lord Advocate when he said that this measure would be a benefit to agricultural property. He utterly failed to appreciate that suggestion. His belief was that where they had land used for farming purposes within the hypothetical building zone, the operation of the new valuation would be in the highest degree detrimental to agriculture. He knew of a considerable estate which had been bought in the hope that it would turn out of some value as a building property. For many years it was occupied as a purely agricultural holding, and in the course of time a few villa sites were taken off the property, but owing to the demand for such sites not continuing, and to the demand extending to other suburbs, the value of that estate had never increased. To-day it had nothing but a purely agricultural value. No doubt, that was a contention which would be disputed by the assessor, because that particular property lay within five miles of the largest city in Scotland. It was a moral certainty that the assessor would insist on adding a hypothetical "building" value to the agricultural one. That was an illustration of the fallacy that this this Bill would be of value to the agricultural community. The Lord Advocate went on to deal with the building speculator. He wondered if the right hon. and learned Gentleman was acquainted with the broad facts of the present position of the city of Glasgow. He found from a Return recently issued that the area available for building amounted to 8,786 acres. Deducting for public spaces, streets, etc., 4,000 acres, there remained available for building purposes over 4,600 acres. These figures were brought out before the Select Committee, of which he was a member. The city assessor of Glasgow stated to the same Committee that at the present moment there were within the city boundaries 3,600 acres of agricultural land, and that the average amount of land called for annually for building purposes was only 60 acres. A very elementary calculation showed that within the city boundaries there was a sufficient acreage to satisfy the demand for building purposes for sixty years. He felt that on the whole, until they had more evidence of a demand for legislation of this kind from elsewhere than the city of Glasgow and the county of Lanark, the Lord Advocate would be well advised to accept the Amendment of the Leader of the Opposition. He was satisfied that if it had been thoroughly understood that the existing feu duties were not to be taken within the scope of the Bill they would have had very little demand from any part of Scotland other than Glasgow and Lanarkshire for the measure.

said that the one and only point was whether a Bill which included the whole area of Scotland should include the counties of Scotland or whether they should be excluded from its operation and only burghs included. The representatives of the counties who were members of the Committee over which he presided proposed an Amendment opining the operation of the Bill to burghs, but every witness who gave evidence in favour of the Bill was of opinion that if the proposals were going to have any effect at all they must not be confined at burghs but must also be extended to counties. [An HON. MEMBER: No.] He insisted upon that and for this reason, that he had the evidence before him and he challenged his hon. friend to point to any passage in the evidence of any witness who said that if the proposals of this Bill were passed they should be confined to the burghs. All the evidence was in favour of including the counties as well as the burghs and for this reason: that if the course now proposed were adopted they would be establishing a purely artificial line, because many large areas were included within the counties of Scotland which were purely building areas and which any man visiting the large towns of that country would suppose to be part of those towns. Every witness either for or against the Bill said that if they were to apply the principles contained in this measure they could not as rational men confine them to the burghs but must extend them to the counties and as he had pointed out that was singularly obvious for the reason that a large portion of the building land and the land ripe for building was outside the burghs in Scotland and was in the counties. He thought it would be obvious to any man who thought for a moment about this matter that to confine the Bill to the boundaries of burghs would be to introduce a difficulty which nothing in the conditions and circumstances of the soil would justify. All the members of the Committee were agreed upon this point, although they differed seriously on other points, that this measure could not be confined to areas around which artificial boundaries were drawn and which did not indicate the use to which the land was to be put. All those who were in favour of the Bill admitted that there was no Eldorado and no gold mine to be found in it, and nobody who really thought on the subject could entertain such an opinion. As had been said by an hon. friend of his, a plot of land never fumbled in his pocket for a coin. It was the owner who had to find the money, and he had never for a single moment denied that what they were in search of here was nothing more nor less than a test of a different standard of rating. What they were seeking was some measure of what the contribution of the ratepayers should be to the rates. Therefore they proposed to secure the valuation of the whole of the land in Scotland, and if they missed out the counties the valuation would be of no use whatever. The hon. Member for North Londonderry had said he did not believe that the Bill would ever have been brought forward or that so large an area would have been included but for the rich plum which was to be found in the taxation of the feu duties—which were not included in the Bill. A great misapprehension seemed to prevail as to the taxation of feu duties. The difference between himself and his colleagues on this question was easily stated. They proposed to leave the definition of owner in the Act of 1854 untouched. He proposed to extend that definition to include not only the owner who granted a 999 years lease, but the owner who granted a lease in perpetuity. He agreed with the principle of this Bill whole-heartedly, but he certainly wished to carry it further than his colleagues. He believed, however, that public opinion was not ripe in regard to his views, and on this subject he and his colleagues were exactly in the same position now as the Party opposite were in in 1905 in regard to the taxation of food excluding bacon, when their political life was endangered and their political fortunes were in jeopardy through the differences of opinion which prevailed amongst them. All he could say was that without any sacrifice of principle he was ready to give his colleagues his full co-operation with a view to setting up a standard although they did not agree with him in the primary principle to which he adhered. He thought, however, that it was right that the public information on this subject should be extended. He knew perfectly well what the views of his colleagues were when he drafted his Report. They never concealed them. This Bill came before the House four times and on each occasion they expressed their views on the principle and safeguarded themselves from extending its application to feu duties. All he was concerned with at the present moment was the fact that he knew their views, and they never swerved from the views they held at any time. He came to the conclusion he did as Chairman of the Committee after very carefully considering the evidence, and in the speeches he made on the subject, commencing in January of the present year, he preserved a strict silence upon this question, and never opened his mouth during the hearing of the evidence or during the time he was preparing his Report. He delivered those speeches as a member of the Committee and refused to take counsel with the members of the Administration or to speak to any member with regard to the evidence which was being given before the Committee. He was appointed Chairman of the Committee by the usual courtesy which gave the Chairmanship to a member of the Government if he was serving as a member of the Committee, and he would never have continued to hold office if this Bill had been contrary to any view he held on the subject. He, however, only rose to point out that if this Bill was to be operative it was impossible to exclude counties in Scotland where the same conditions prevailed and the same use was made of the land as was made of it in great industrial centres, and that if it was to serve a national purpose such counties could not be excluded from its provisions.

said the House had listened to the explanation of the hon. and learned Gentleman with the greatest interest. He had tried to divest himself of the position he held in the Committee as a member of the Government, and he offered neither excuse nor apology. As a member of the Government he was appointed Chairman of the Committee on whose Report this Bill was to some extent based,and on him devolved the responsibility for calling the witnesses. The hon. and learned Gentleman had stated his point of difference with his colleagues, and he congratulated him upon his courage, which might, however, have been greater if he had taken up the challenge of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who had said he would never support the principle of the taxation of feu duties. The hon. and learned Gentle man's colleagues proposed to leave the definition of owner in the Act of 1854 untouched, the hon. and learned Gentleman proposed to include in it the owners of feu duties, which was in diametrical opposition to the statement made by the Prime Minister to the deputation which waited upon him on the subject. The hon. and learned Gentleman held those views knowing that they were opposed to the views of his colleagues, yet he ventured to take the Chairmanship of the Committee which was to lay down the rules—

I had formed no view when I took the Chairmanship.

said the facts were patent to the House. A year ago what was called the Glasgow Bill as introduced dealing with the question of land values, and the Lord Advocate said the Government would only permit the Second Reading on the understanding that the feu duties were not to be taxed. Notwithstanding that fact the hon. and learned Gentleman accepted the Chairmanship of the Committee and directed its deliberations in a sense which he knew was contrary to the policy and opinions of his seniors in the Government. He, however, left the hon. and learned Gentleman to fight his own battle with his colleagues. What was the justification of the hon. and learned Gentleman for his Report? It was that the land owed its value to the expenditure, energy, and enterprise of the surrounding community and not to the owner. That justification was obviously intended to deal with the feu duties. Could anybody say that in the crofting districts the value of the land was due to the enterprise of the surrounding community when they could walk for miles without seeing a soul, or could they say it with regard to the moor and heather land? In regard to agricultural land in Scotland the value of it was due to the capital of the landlord and the labour and capital of the tenant. [An HON. MEMBER: And the market.] It was as much due to the foreign market as the home market. Did the hon. Member say that if there were not a foreign market competing the value of the land might not he still greater than it was at the present moment? Then as to unearned increment. He would take the case of a man who had invested money in land in the city of Glasgow, and it had increased in value owing—to what? Owing to the fact that the trade of the city was improved by the trade of foreign countries; by shipping coming up the Clyde, for example, from Australia, Canada, America, and other parts of the world. Trade had come in and had developed the value of the land. Let them take a converse case in Argyllshire, where the man purchased an estate for £7,000. He built a house upon it worth £20,000, and £4,000 for a farm building, and received only £11,000 when he sold the property. Where was the unearned increment? If they were going to tax the man who had made a profitable speculation in the city of Glasgow, what were they going to allow him for the bad speculation which he had made in Argyllshire? If they bought Consols while they were down, with a Radical Government in power, and they went up four or five points when a Unionist Government came into power, were they, on the same basis, to consider that as unearned increment to be handed over to some other person? The whole question of unearned increment to which they attached so much importance seemed to buzz round in the heads of hon. Members opposite, and they quoted with great freedom Minority Reports when they thought those Minority Reports suited their particular view. They quoted the Minority Report of Lord Balfour of Burleigh whenever it suited their purpose, and when it did not they did not quote it. On an earlier Amendment that afternoon the Lord Advocate had quoted the Report of Lord Balfour of Burleigh, but had entirely forgotten to quote that part of the Report in which Lord Balfour of Burleigh said that—

"It might be well to apply a scheme of option and limit the introduction of it to urban places with a population in excess of a given number."

"In fact, it omits every one of the conditions to which we attach the greatest importance, and on the faith of which we signed our Report."

said he rose to express his decided satisfaction with the Government for standing by the clause including counties in the scope of the Bill. Speaking as a county Member and as one who was interested in the Report to which reference had been made, he ventured to think that perhaps the best answer which could be made to the strictures which had been offered by the hon. Gentleman opposite was to read the words of the learned Solicitor-General for Scotland#x2014;

"There can be no doubt that when the Bill received the Second Reading it was expressly stated by a member of the Government that existing contracts would be untouched, and that Clause 7 would be struck out in Committee. It is impossible for your Committee to say to what extent votes were affected by this declaration. As your Committee have come to the conclusion that the Bill ought not to be further proceeded with#x2014;"

pointed out that while it was true that the Solicitor-General had referred to his own record on feu duties by way of personal explanation, and the hon. Member for North Ayrshire was allowed to comment on the matter in reply, the question did not seem relevant to the Amendment now under discussion, and should not be further dealt with.

said in that case he would confine his remarks to the question in its relation to the Scottish counties where there were precisely the same difficulties in many ways as in the towns. In many of their country districts the housing of the people was notoriously bad, and this was largely due to the evils of the present system of land tenure and of rating. They found that if they wanted to get additional ground to build upon they had to pay prices far above the value at which it was rated; and that was one of the fundamental circumstances which stopped building; in fact it was one of the things which had caused the development of those high buildings which they saw in many parts of Scotland, because as it was impossible to extend outwards there was a tendency to extend upwards. They desired that the people in country districts should be able to get the land at a fair price to build upon. In Scotland they also laboured under this disadvantage that, whatever building they put up, except it were a crofter's in a crofting county, the better the building the higher it was rated and the heavier it was taxed. [An HON. MEMBER: Why not?] He was one of those who thought that that principle was fundamentally unsound. They desired that the people should be well housed; they wished that every opportunity should be given to the people to invest their money in houses, and that all steps should be encouraged which would prevent overcrowding. He would remind hon. Members that, notwithstanding the sparse population of Scotland in the country districts, overcrowding in that country was far worse than in England. They had that problem to deal with in the Scottish counties. He would give the House a few instances which had occurred in his own county. It so happened that in one place overlooking the Clyde there were fifty-two acres of land which were required for the defence of the Clyde. The rateable value of the fifty-two acres was £60 a year. The War Office had bought that land for £14,500, or something like 240 years purchase; and yet they were told that land in the counties had no value at all. In another district of the same county there was a thriving industrial community which was steadily expanding. They required two acres of land for a school, and they acquired two acres out of a five-acre field. The rateable value of the land was £12 a year or about £2 an acre. The school authorities paid £1,200 an acre for those two acres of land, or 600 years purchase. He gave that as an illustration showing the absolute necessity of applying the principles of this Bill to Scottish counties. They had to consider not only the question of obtaining land for housing, but also for small holdings. It was said that although the land might be rated at a low value it had a great feuing value. If the feuing value was to be a factor in the valuation for purchase, it should also, on the same principle, be a factor in the valuation for rating purposes. They wanted not only to exempt houses from the penalising effect of rating, but also to do the same thing for agricultural improvements. Although Scottish agriculture had made great progress the soil was not so rich or the climate so favourable as in England, and therefore they wanted the best possible rating system they could get. In his own county a considerable amount of agricultural produce was raised under glass, and he had heard these people complain that as soon as they had laid the brick foundations of their greenhouses and put the glass on up went their assessments, and their efforts were penalised in that way. They wished to relieve those things from taxation, and then they would be able to do a great deal for the Scottish farmers in the counties. There was no difficulty about applying this principle to agricultural land outside as well as inside burghs, and he declined to divide Scotland into watertight compartments. They recognised that the depopulation of the country had led to overcrowding in the towns, and nothing would relieve the pressure but the development of the country districts. If they wished to apply this system properly they must apply it throughout Scotland to the counties and burghs alike. He was glad that the Government were holding to this clause, and he hoped in the long run it would be the foundation for rating not only in the burghs but also in the counties.

said the hon. Member for Dumbartonshire had complained that the War Office were unable to buy land in the instance he had quoted at the bare site value. That gave them the key to what was really intended by this Bill. They could not consider this Bill alone, and until they knew the wild schemes of the wild men behind it they could not support it. In land reform they were all interested, but they could not have anything to do with spoliation. It had been argued in favour of the Bill that the burgh boundary was an entirely artificial line, and he agreed with that contention. It was rather odd that in the Scottish Land Bill it was treated as a fixed line, although it was now admitted that agricultural land was often to be found inside the burgh area. They were casting very great burdens upon the assessor, who would have to be a man of the highest skill. It had been argued that all the evidence given before the Select Com mittee supported the inclusion of rural land. Of course it did. All the witnesses were summoned by the hon. Gentleman himself, and if the Government formed the Court themselves and called the evidence they could get any sort of conclusion they liked. He did not attach very great weight to that argument. They had to rate or tax not things but persons. When it was said that they were going to rate a certain class of land what they meant was that they were going to measure the owner's capacity to pay according to the value of the land he owned. If he owned a large amount of land he would pay more and if he owned a small amount he would pay less, and they were proposing to have a system of land valuation for the purpose of forming a basis whereby they could arrive at the capacity of the owner to pay. If rural land had no value, then it was no use as such basis, and the carrying out of this principle meant that the man who owned rural land would pay no rates at all. It was common knowledge that over a large part of these islands the value had gone out of agricultural land entirely, and all that was paid was a low rate of interest on the money sunk in the land in buildings and improvements. All the rental value had gone, and how could they form a scheme of taxation on the basis of taxing a man according to the value of something which had no value at all? That surely was areductio ad absurdum. He should vote for the Amendment if it was pressed to a division.

said nothing had delighted him so much as the frank speech of the Solicitor-General on this queston. He happened to be the only Liberal member of the Committee who opposed the taxation of which he spoke, and he was the only member who supported the Lord-Advocate in the decision he gave to the House on the introduction of the Bill of last year. All the rest forsook him. and he had been looked askance at because he took up that line which had turned out to be the right line. The House would now see the class of argument which was at the back of all this agitation. Exceptional instances should not be taken as the foundation for a general policy. He was going to vote against the Amendment because he wished to see counties included, and for the reason that when the county returns were brought before the House of Commons it would be seen that they were putting the counties to an expense—large or small it did not matter—which would prove there was absolutely nothing to rate. If they struck out buildings and improvements in counties, drainage and fencing which had been done within the last twenty years, and so forth, they would have very little land value left, and all the trouble and expense so far as counties were concerned would result in nothing. There was one thing certain—all wanted the Government to pay. When they considered that in Aberdeenshire there were 43,000 entries on the roll it was manifest that there must be considerable expense occasioned not to the assessors alone but to every one of the landholders. That was an expense which ought to be considered. They all hoped to get it from the Government, and there he left them. He opposed the Amendment because he wished to see this return made from the counties. It would show how foolish it was so far as the counties were concerned. Question put. The House divided:—Ayes, 241; Noes, 54. (Division List No. 440.)