^* : In resuming the discussion of the Resolution just moved by the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I desire, if the Committee will permit me to intervene for a short period, to notice in the first place an observation which has fallen more than once from the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the course of this Debate. The right hon. Gentleman appears to make it a cause of complaint that his benevolent intentions with regard to the agricultural interest in respect of remission of the Income Tax have not received from hon. Members sitting on the Opposition side of the House the recognition which he appears to think they are entitled to. But I am sure of this: that the condition of the agricultural interest is such that those hon. Members who represent it are ready to welcome any and every relief to that interest from whatever quarter of the House it may come, and however small or comparatively small that relief may be. I may, however, point out that the com- plaints of the right hon. Gentleman were somewhat hasty, if not altogether uncalled for. I have certainly heard expressions of appreciation from more than one of my hon. Friends behind me which I, for one, am not altogether ready-to endorse without some qualification, and which were generous in the extreme. The right hon. Gentleman has attempted by a very important, not to say a somewhat ambitious, Budget, to equalise the taxation upon real property on the one hand, and personal property on the other, and at the same time he has endeavoured to redress what is an admitted grievance, a grievance which I am sure the right hon. Gentleman himself would never have disputed for a moment—namely, that hitherto real property has been assessed to the Income Tax upon the gross instead of upon the net value, as is the case with personalty at the present time. I have no complaint to make of that endeavour on the part of the right hon. Gentleman to afford some relief to the agricultural interest. Neither am I disputing for a moment the sympathy which he genuinely feels for the depressed condition of the agricultural interest; but I should like to point out that in equalising the Death Duties between the two classes of property the right hon. Gentleman has been compelled to make a very considerable addition to the burdens on the land, and I venture to say that no Chancellor of the Exchequer having a fair regard to justice would have dared to have proposed a considerable addition to the burdens upon land unless he had accompanied that proposal by an effort to redress that acknowledged injustice to which we have been subjected for so many years. The right hon. Gentleman in the past has recognised that these inequalities must be dealt with, and he would not have proposed this Budget, nor would he have been able to carry it if it had not contained this proposition. I have still great faith in the fairness of the House of Commons at large, and I am convinced that not even the most extreme supporter of the right hon. Gentleman would have been prepared to sanction an addition like this to the duties imposed upon the land unless it had been accompanied by a measure of this kind. Why, in these circumstances, hon. Members who represent the agri- cultural interest are to be expected to express effusive gratitude to the right hon. Gentleman for having done the barest act of justice towards that interest I do not altogether understand. And it seems to me that there is the less reason for such an expression of gratitude when we come to examine the right hon. Gentleman's proposals a little more closely. What is the extent of the relief that is going to be given to the agricultural land as distinguished from personal property in respect to the removal of grievances as regarded the Income Tax. The right hon. Gentleman himself has fixed the amount at £160,000 per annum. What is the nature of the inequality in the past arising out of this tax as regards land and personal property? A much greater authority than the right hon. Gentleman, in 1853, pointed out to this House the difference of its effect upon the two classes of property to be in this proportion—that an Income Tax of 7d. in the £1 on personal property amounted to a tax of 9d. in the £1 on real property. In these circumstances, I wish the Committee to consider whether an allowance of 10 per cent. upon land which has been conceded by the right hon. Gentleman equals the difference between an Income Tax of 7d. in the £1 upon personal property and one of 9d. in the £1 upon real property? I very much doubt whether that can be shown to be the case. I am confirmed in that impression by a Report that was issued some years ago by the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, in which it was calculated that the owner of real property was assessed to the Income Tax on a scale of something like 20 per cent. more than he received.

What Report is that?

I am sorry to say that I have not got the Report before me, but I will get it, and will show the passage to the right hon. Gentleman very soon after I sit down. If the statement in that Report is accurate the allowance conceded by the right hon. Gentleman falls very far short of what it should be. Again, when we have to consider the inequalities of taxation between the two classes of property there is another element which, in common fairness, must be taken into consideration, and which does not appear to have entered into the calculations of the right hon. Gentleman. Of course, I am now speaking upon the supposition that the right hon. Gentleman in his Budget is seeking to bring about a complete equalisation of taxation upon the two classes of property. The Land Tax now produces between £1,200,000 and £1,300,000 per annum, but that is not all, and it should be remembered that at least half of that tax has been redeemed by a payment of its capital value. The burden of interest which has had to be paid on that capital outlay would bring up the Land Tax to over £2,000.000. All this ought to have been taken into account, by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the ambitious and large proposals of this Budget. When the right hon. Gentleman taunts the agricultural Representatives on this side of the House, as he did last night, that the £400,000, or something of the sort, was all that we were called upon to contribute to the defence of our country, and that we had no right to grumble at that, I venture to say that in my opinion such a taunt was wholly unworthy of the right hon. Gentleman. There is no class of persons in the whole country who are more prepared to bear their full and fair share of taxation for the defence of the country or for any other purpose whatever than those interested in land. There are two sides of this question. If the figures which the Chancellor of the Exchequer gave last night were correct— and I do not think I am guilty of any discourtesy if I suggest we may entertain some doubt on the point until we have had an opportunity of verifying them for ourselves—they show how greatly diminished must be the value of land at the present time; and they also make clear the magnitude of the injustice to which the agricultural interests have been subjected for years past, during which realty has been called on to bear the full burden of taxation for objects of national interest, of which personalty has not been called on to bear anything like its fair proportion. The right hon. Gentleman will see that this is a very important branch of the question, and if we are to have a full and fair settlement of this immense subject a great deal will have to be said on it during the progress of the Budget through its different stages. I desire, if I may be permitted to do so. to press upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer and to urge upon the Committee with great earnestness that, even supposing all the inequalities of which I have with justice complained were removed, the condition of the agricultural interest at the present moment is such that the land is not in a position to bear any additional burdens. Yet I complain, and I think we have a right to complain, that this is the time when the right hon. Gentleman chooses to make a grievous addition to the burdens upon land—a time when we are absolutely unable to bear it. That may be a strong statement to make, but I make it in the most unqualified terms, and before I sit down I propose to give ample proof of it. As the Committee is perfectly well aware, the Royal Commission appointed last year to examine into the whole question has taken already a vast amount of evidence of as grave and as serious a character as was ever submitted to a Royal Commission, and with the permission of the Committee I am going to draw the attention of the Committee to some portions of it. That evidence has either been laid upon the Table of the House, and I believe I may refer to it without impropriety, or will be laid on the Table directly. In regard to the County of Hants, Dr. Fream, one of the Sub-Commissioners, comparing the depression at the present time with that which prevailed in 1879, said—

"I made a point of asking all farmers, whose experience had been of sufficient length, how the present crisis compared with that of 1879, The answer invariably was that the existing depression is worse—far worse—than of 13 or 14 years ago."

In regard to unoccupied farms in Hampshire, or farms taken in hand by the owners, the witness stated:—

" The inquiries in this direction reveal a deplorable state of affairs. On several estates, not only are numbers of farms in hand, but much of the land is passing, or has passed, out of cultivation altogether, being merely utilised at times as sheep runs. Old family mansions are let to successful commercial or professional men. … . In some localities the land is looked upon as exhausted. In every direction from Andover uncultivated land may be speedily met with. … Between Whit church and Basingstoke there is an extensive area of land out of cultivation. Much of this land was so burnt up by the summer drought that its appearance forcibly recalled to my mind that of the irreclaimable ' bad lands' south of latitude 49 deg. N. in the Western prairies of the United States. … The effect of the depression, the existence of which is unhappily only too fully attested on all sides, will, it is said, not make itself fully felt until Lady Day or Michaclmas, 1894."

I come next to the County of Essex, and the gentleman appointed by us to inquire into the condition of that county stated to us, especially in regard to four particular districts, that—

"The land is going out of cultivation or running wild; "

and in another part of his evidence he said—

"There has been no ebb; the tide of changes has continued to flow steadily in the same direction ever since the days of Mr. Druce's visit (10 years ago). All this took place in spite of repeated endeavours on the part of landlords to encourage and enable them (the tenants) to stay. Bents were reduced, arrears were permitted to accumulate, in many cases they were written off, improvements were made, drainage done, manure given. Yet all to no purpose; farming in Essex had ceased to pay, and capital was gone. Farmers whose fathers and grandfathers had lived in the same holdings, and who were regarded as personal friends by the proprietors, and accordingly treated with the utmost consideration, were compelled to give up, after having reduced themselves to poverty and the land to sterility."

And the same witness (Mr. Hunter Pringle), in his concluding words, pointed out that fresh capital was the only thing that could possibly produce a better state of things, and he added—

"It is not at all likely that fresh capital will flow into a county where land is taxed and rated out of all proportion to its real value; and, without fresh capital, Essex, so far as its agriculture is concerned, is absolutely lost."

I could read a great deal more about that county, the condition of which, when it is made public to the House, to Parliament, and to the country, will present a deplorable view, and one for which I believe it is impossible to find any precedent in the history of this country for the last two or three centuries. But I will now go to a totally different part of the country—my own county of Lincolnshire—to a small district in which the laud is cultivated under conditions which have often been held to be the beau ideal of agricultural cultivation by gentlemen who are members of the great Party which I now see sitting opposite me. The gentleman we sent to Lincolnshire examined carefully into the condition of the small holders, and small proprietors, and small tenants in the Isle of Axholme, in Lincolnshire, which has been noted for its fertility, and he stated—

"Mr. Druce described the small holders as deeply involved and seriously situated in his day, and from all that I have been told, Mr. Druce was absolutely correct in his opinion. Since the date of his Report, 13 years of continued agricultural depression and falling prices have elapsed. With respect to the present condition of those who, at the period of Mr. Druce's visit, were in a struggling position; I found that many have been ruined.…. The continuation of agricultural depression from about 1877 till the present time has had one unmistakable result in this district. All connected with the industry are poorer, and their credit is gone. Farmers are loaded with debt to merchants, tradesmen, and banks, and their rents are heavily in arrear. Landlords are sorely hit by the great and numerous reductions in rent, and in some cases are almost ruined; indeed, estates burdened in good times do not now bring in sufficient even to pay interest on mortgages."

I could quote reports from other parts to very much the same effect, but I will only trouble the Committee with one more quotation from the evidence given before the Royal Commission by a man of high reputation in the agricultural world, once a Member of this House, who also occupied a position in the Government. Mr. Clare Sewell Read, whose opinion everyone will treat with respect, dealing with districts in the County of of Norfolk, stated—

"I may say that the condition of the farmers of Norfolk is verging on absolute ruin and wholesale bankruptcy."

Speaking of the various classes of landed interests, Mr. Read said—

"We have had a good many yeomen in the County of Norfolk, and I say that they are much the hardest hit of all. They have to bear both the losses of the landlord and the losses of the tenant, and there have been the most disastrous-failures."

And, speaking of the landlords, Mr. Read stated—

"I should think that, taking the County of Norfolk through, three out of four of our country gentlemen do not live in their homes in consequence of their diminished incomes."

I assure the Committee, having access to a great deal of information with regard to the agricultural condition of the country, that I do not believe the extracts I have read offer in the slightest degree any exaggerated description of the general condition of agriculture in many districts at the present time. If that be so, surely this is not a time when any Government, Radical or Conservative, whatever its majority may be, which has at heart the real interests of the country, ought to select as the moment to increase the burden of taxation on land. What is your own cardinal principle? What did the right hon. Gentleman tell us in the able speech we heard the other night. He said—

"Taxation—and that is our principle and the principle of all economics—ought to be proportionate to the ability to bear it of those on whom it is imposed."

Now, I defy you to name a single class in this country at this moment who are less able to bear increased taxation than the unfortunate owners of agricultural land, who have no other source of income or means of livelihood to look to. Does the right hon. Gentleman wish to close the few remaining houses in which our country gentlemen are able to live, and to banish from their homes those who for for many years, under the greatest difficulty, have been doing their utmost to perform their duties in that station? Does he realise what a loss it is to a neighbourhood in many an English county when the chief house in the parish has to be closed, and the residents have to go away, and it is let to some stranger who has no thought or regard or care for the people of the district? Look at the loss of employment and the loss of wages alone. They are in themselves considerable. But putting this on one side, look at the loss of the thousand and one kindly acts of charity and beneficence which in our English country life, for years and years ever since history can tell, have formed one of its most attractive features, and which have done so much to knit more closely together in affection and regard the different classes which dwell together on the soil. Does not the right hon. Gentleman recognise all this? Of course he does. I know he recognises it, because he is so closely connected with the interest of the land himself; and I believe the Chancellor of the Exchequer is perfectly sincere in the expressions of sympathy for that depressed interest he has so often proclaimed in this House. If that is so, what I venture to think and say is that the right hon. Gentleman should have more closely examined and considered the present rural position before selecting the present moment as the time and a fitting opportunity for the introduction of a Budget which, amongst its other incidents, has this unfortunate peculiarity, that it adds to the burden of taxation on land. Let me ask the Com- mittee to consider for a few moments what is likely to be the effect in many cases of this additional tax upon real property in this country. I am speaking now of purely agricultural land. The right hon. Gentleman, upon the first night of this Budget discussion, made this statement. He said—

" As regards real property, there is no reason in the world why it should be charged on a different rate from other property."

I join issue altogether on that point. I say there are a hundred good reasons why it should be charged differently, in addition to the number of reasons which I have already submitted, I am afraid at undue length, to the Committee. I will go to the very fountain-head of information on this subject in support of my assertion, and will quote the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Midlothian himself. In considering this question the Committee must remember that, in some cases, which, under the Budget of the right hon. Gentleman, will probably not be very uncommon, what you are going to do is to impose a duty upon the successors to real property amounting to 18 per cent. on the capital value of the land. Just consider the probable result. What does the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Midlothian say? He gave three main reasons against any proposal of that kind. In the first place, he said he objected to it on the ground of the charges to which real property is subjected—the enormous weight of local taxation falling solely upon real property. That was not all. The right hon. Gentleman based his objections on other grounds. He said—

"I think it is a policy worthy of some consideration, not only to give something that may tend to counteract the special burdens borne by real property, but likewise to take care that you so adjust the payment of the tax in regard to property of that description that you do not allow it to become an engine of great and serious evil by forcing changes in the possession of the land."

Has the right hon. Gentleman taken care to so adjust this duty that it will not become an engine for forcing changes in the possession of the land? I think I shall be able to show that he has done nothing of the kind. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Midlothian himself gave an illustration of what he meant on this point. He said—

"Take a large estate worth some £500,000, with a gross rental of £16,000 or £18,000 a year, and a net rental of £13.000 or £14,000, mortgaged for £300,000; the mortgages would absorb some £12,000 of the rental, and leave but £1,000 or £2,000 a year to the possessor, which will represent the annual value of the life interest, while, at the same time, there would be an excess of capital value over the mortgages reaching to £200,000."

The right hon. Gentleman upon that case said—

"Now, I think, if you charge upon the capital value, there is no way in which you could meet that case so as not to give the tax the effect and character of an engine for displacing the present possessor."

The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer is bound, before this discussion closes, to show to us what provisions he is going to make in the Budget so that this new tax shall not have that effect. The excess value in the case quoted by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Midlothian was £200,000. So it might have been in those days, but you may be sure it would be nothing like that at this time, even if there was any excess in value at all. But whatever it may be, I want to ask the right hon. Gentleman to consider how is this duty to be raised and met? How is the unfortunate successor to pay it? I see one thing very clearly, and that is that your Budget will provide the richest harvest for all the money lenders and lawyers in the Kingdom. But, at the same time, it will have this effect—that in case after case where their margin is small it will absolutely ruin the unfortunate holders of land. This raises the only other question with which I want to deal upon this occasion, for we shall have numerous opportunities later of enforcing the views I have endeavoured to urge upon the Committee— I mean the question of the method and mode of valuation which is to be employed in cases of this kind. Now, the right hon. Gentleman the other night made a statement which I heard with great interest and which caught my attention at once. He said—

"There is no more difficulty in estimating the capital value of real property than the value of pictures or jewels."

[Sir W. HARCOURT: Or of leaseholds.] I grant that he added leaseholds, but I will first take his statement with regard to jewels and pictures. I think in making that statement he was guilty of a funda- mental error. Pictures and jewels are valued upon their market value for sale. They pay no rent, and they always possess some market value for sale. That is not the case with regard to land at the present time. I could quote instance after instance in which, while laud may possibly still continue to pay some rent, however small, it has absolutely no marketable value for sale at all. That is the fact, and if the right hon. Gentleman possessed agricultural land in many parts of England at the present moment he would know that for the sale of agricultural land, which possesses no advantage for residences or attractions of that kind, the market is absolutely closed altogether. If necessary, I could produce him many instances of evidence given before the Royal Commission over and over again. The reason for this is not difficult to discover, and it is very easy to understand. There is no marketable value in those cases to which I refer for the sale of land for two reasons. Would-be purchasers are afraid of two things—first, the fall in values which has proceeded now for a good many years, which is still progressing (and nobody knows how long that fall will continue or how far it will go), and, therefore, for the purpose of investment, no one except a lunatic would in these days invest his money in purely agricultural land; and, secondly, there is another reason, and that is the fear of more radical legislation with regard to the land. These are the two great factors which at the present moment are depressing the marketable value of land. I need not say that jewels and pictures are not affected in the same way. It seems to me that the Government, with regard to the proceeds they expect to obtain from agricultural land under these new duties, will be placed in this dilemma. Either your duty will prove to be a failure altogether, and bring you in comparatively nothing, or else you will be compelled to value agricultural land in a manner which will be most unfair to the owner and the person who succeeds. I do not wish to delay the Committee at greater length on this occasion, but an expedient has occurred to me in connection with this question by which any injustice of the kind I anticipate I think possibly may be avoided. As you are determined to tax agricultural land upon its net value, I believe you might do something of this kind. I am afraid what I am going to say will not commend itself very much to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but, at all events, I submit it for his consideration. When these estates pass upon death you must value the property. You must value it in detail, putting your own valuation upon it, and having done that I think you should give to the owner of the land the option of paying his duty either in cash or in kind. That is to say, he should hand over to you a portion of his land equivalent to the amount of duty he has to pay, on your own valuation. This plan would have two great advantages. In the first place, it would ensure a perfectly fair valuation. The Government, of course, would not put it too high, because they might be compelled to take land at a value greater than its worth. On the other hand, they would not put it too low, because then they would be afraid of defrauding the Revenue; and you may be sure, therefore, that the valuation would be fair to the two parties. It would effect another advantage. I do not know how long it is since I first heard it advocated in Parliament, by gentlemen professing Liberal and Radical principles on that side of the House, that the time had come when one of the greatest advantages that could be conferred on the community of this country as a whole would be a far wider distribution of the land among the people than is the case at the present time. You yourselves were engaged during a large part of last Session in making proposals with that object. If the right hon. Gentleman will consent to consider this suggestion— if it were possible to adopt it, see what an opportunity you would have of carrying out the principles so dear to you. You might let the land which you would acquire all over the country to the new Parish Councils. You might sell them if you please, and create a vast number of small ownerships in land; and in that way you would be doing something to carry into effect the principles you so ardently profess. I have stated to the House, very crudely I am afraid, objections which I entertain to the proposals of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, having confined myself on this particular occasion almost exclusively to the mode in which they will affect the position and ownership of land. I do think I have made some statements to the House which deserve, and ought to receive, the most careful consideration of the Government and of the right hon. Gentleman. For sure am I of this—that there never was a time, certainly within the present generation, when the condition of agriculture as a whole was more deplorable than it is at the present moment, and that if you select this opportunity for piling further taxation upon it, you will do all that lies in the power of the Government of this country to bring it to ruin and complete destruction.

^* said, the right hon. Gentleman who had just spoken had gone to the most Radical of all Radical colonies for the suggestion which he had made to the House, with respect to the procedure in connection with the valuation of land—to the colony of New Zealand, where the owner placed his own valuation upon his land for the purpose of the Death Duties, where the State also placed its value upon the land, and the landowner could force the State to buy, and the State could force the owner to sell. That was the system, but it never came to sale in practice, because an arrangement was always arrived at which gave to both parties their due. In the course of his interesting speech, the right hon. Gentleman had painted his picture of agricultural depression in rather strong colours—for example, when he quoted the unfortunate depressed landowner with a mortgage on his estate, who might be in the wretched position of having to pay 18 per cent. on succession to the land. If there were any mortgage, he would not have 18 per cent. to pay, unless the residue was more than £1,000,000 sterling; and if a man had land of the clear value of £1,000,000 sterling he did not think that payment at that rate would be a very great hardship. That justified him in saying that the colours were laid on a little strong. Then there was a little confusion running through the whole of the right hon. Gentleman's speech. On the last occasion when he addressed the House on the Budget—in 1888—this same question was raised by the right hon. Baronet the Member for Bristol, and the same confusion ran through the Debate on that occasion which seemed likely to run through it on this. That confusion was conveyed in the phrase which the right hon. Gentleman used when he spoke of the burden of taxation resting heavily on the agricultural interest, while in the same breath he talked of the burden bearing heavily on land. He forgot that there was land and land, and that the interest of the owner was not exactly that which was ordinarily understood by the phrase "agricultural interest." That agricultural interest was mainly and before all the interest of the occupier of the land. As the right hon. Gentleman went on to speak of the burden of rates on the occupier he rather mixed up the two different positions of the owner and occupier of land, and the use of the phrase "agricultural interest" was confusing, because it brought two classes together under consideration whose interests were not identical. The occupier and the owner were not the same; and if it was said that the burden of rates was very heavy, it must be remembered that it was mainly a burden upon occupiers of houses rather than upon holders of agricultural land. It has been proved conclusively that the burden lay heavier upon occupiers of house property than of land. The right hon. Gentleman said this was not the moment, considering the depressed condition of agriculture, when fresh burdens should be placed on the land; and he said further that realty bore at the present moment all the burdens of the rates, and many of these Rates were imposed not for local but for national purposes. [Mr. CHAPLIN: I said nearly all.] Yes, many, or nearly all. It must be remembered that upon that plea this House had over and over again allocated money from Imperial funds for the relief of these rates, and the last allocation made was a portion of the Probate Duty which was applied to that purpose because personalty could not be rated; and therefore the Probate Duty was applied to the relief of rates because it fell upon personal estate only. The right hon. Gentleman went on to advocate a full and fair discussion of this rating question and the burden upon realty. He (Sir C. Dilke) should be glad when that full and fair discussion took place. In his own constituency there were interests of various kinds. The larger interest was agriculture, and there was a proportion of collieries. The burden of rates was heavier on the coalowners than upon agricultural occupiers of land, and he thought it would be found, when this system of rates was again examined, that it was one that in the principal degree concerned town interests rather than those of the agricultural classes. The right hon. Gentleman asked for a full and fair discussion, but in the whole of his suggestive remarks, in which he raised the rating of personalty and what the objects were upon which rates were spent, he did not allude to the exemption of ground rents and values, which must be an essential portion of this discussion when it came fully before the House. Therefore, his speech was certainly one-sided when that was borne in view. Over and over again the right hon. Gentleman impressed upon the Committee the depressed condition of the land-owning classes in this country, and supported himself by copious and interesting quotations from well-known men who gave evidence before the Agricultural Commission. There was another side to the question, and although the right hon. Gentleman said any man must be a lunatic to invest in purely agricultural land at the present time, he (Sir C. Dilke) must ask what land in England, looking at the extension of railways and markets and the opportunities for turning it to advantage, could be regarded as purely agricultural land when it was in the hands of any man of ability? All land must be affected by the possibility of fruit and vegetable and flower growing, and there was very little of it that was out of reach of great towns where markets could be found. He would not give his own opinion, but the opinion of a gentleman who was perhaps the highest authority on the subject of investments — Mr. A. J. Wilson, City editor of The Standard and editor of The Industrial Review. He recommended the purchase of derelict estates of the class to which the right hon. Gentleman had alluded as the best field for investment at the present prices that the world could supply. [Mr. CHAPLIN: Why does not he buy them?] Now, the right hon. Gentleman also stated that much land had gone out of cultivation in Essex and Norfolk and other counties. He did not go deeply into the causes which had driven the land out of cultivation, but he (Sir C. Dilke) was bound to say, from what he had seen himself, that in Essex tithe had much to do with it, and in Norfolk game had much to do with it. The question specially before them was one to which he would devote the greater portion of the brief remarks he had to make. Before passing away from this subject, however, he would point out to the House that over and over again a gentleman who used to sit on the Radical Benches, and who was now regarded and properly regarded by hon. Members opposite as a great authority, urged upon the House considerations the very opposite to those which the right hon. Gentleman had urged upon the House to-night. Since he had been dead he had been canonised by the Conservative Party, and with them his words carried great weight. It was the late Mr. Fawcett, who had shown in the clearest way that this question was one which upon a full consideration would turn out, not to the advantage of the agricultural interest so much as to the town interest. The Death Duty specially dealt with in this Resolution did not specially hit occupiers of land, and was not specially directed against the agricultural interest. A small farmer would be better off under this Budget than he would be under such a Budget as the right hon. Gentleman had suggested. In the case of many properties which were divided between personalty and ground values, if personalty escaped the rates the ground rents and ground values also escaped, and if the subject was to be fairly dealt with certainly ground rents and ground values ought to be brought into the Resolution. Although it had been suggested in the country by Lord Salisbury and others that personalty ought to be rated, the proposal had seldom been brought forward in the House of Commons otherwise than in the form in which it had been suggested by the right hon. Gentleman to-night. The difficulty of carrying out such a suggestion would be very great. The law of this country originally was that personalty should be rated, but the system of rating it was abandoned on account of the impossibility of carrying it into practice. The difficulty of deciding on which of several residences a rich man was to have his personal property rated, and in which district he was to pay, and the difficulty of throwing the duties that would arise upon Local Authorities, were insuperable, and he was sure that the rating of personalty was only a Will-o'-the-wisp. None of the arguments that had been used appeared to him to be strong enough to redress that which was an admitted inequality between land and other property as far as taxation was concerned. The Chancellor of the Exchequer on the present occasion was, to some extent, between two fires, or rather, he was in the happy position of having taken a middle course. There was a good deal of democratic opinion outside the House in favour of carrying the principle of graduated taxation a great deal further than was proposed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He (Sir C. Dilke) had, he believed, longer than any other Member of the House advocated graduated Death Duties, and he was happy to see how rapidly that principle had moved within the last few years. Only a few years ago he ventured to advocate as possible in extreme cases a Death Duty of 25 per cent. That was looked upon as a very extreme proposition, but the Chancellor of the Exchequer was now trying a duty of 18·1 per cent., which was undoubtedly the highest Death Duty in the world. There were some who thought that it would have been wise for the right hon. Gentleman to go still further. He was bound to say that, looking to the possibility of fraud and to the certainty of a certain amount of what might be called more legitimate evasion of duty, there were reasons why the Chancellor of the Exchequer should not suddenly go too far in this particular direction. The New Zealand Death Duty was one in extreme cases of 13 per cent. If, however, there was any transference of any property from this country in. consequence of the Budget proposals it would be not to the Colonies but to the neighbouring countries of Europe. In France the extreme Death Duty was 10¼ to 10½ per cent. In Victoria it was 10 per cent., and in New South Wales and South Australia it was much smaller, while there were very few other countries which had graduated Death Duties at all. There were a great many people outside the House who desired to see a graduated Income Tax adopted either in substitution for or in addition to the Death Duties. The Budget scheme afforded great advantages over any such proposal. A graduated Income Tax would produce enormous difficulties of collection. He failed to see how it would be possible at all to collect a graduated tax upon securities. It would be impossible to tell whether all the Stock that was credited to a person with a certain name belonged to the same person, as the similarities of names were so misleading, and he believed the similarities of scarce names were more misleading than those of common names. He himself had been on the Register of Voters in the place of his own great - grandfather. If a graduated Income Tax were not collected upon securities it would be necessary to make a man declare his income, and this would result in fraudulent returns unless the returns wore published. When an attempt had been made to levy a heavy Income Tax in foreign countries it had been accompanied by the publication of the returns, and in the United States the returns were published for years as public documents. Of course, under such a system the State would find itself well off. Some men, no doubt, would return less than their incomes, but there were some who for business purposes would return more than their incomes. There was one man in Now York who would rather have perished than have allowed any man to return a higher income than he did. Unless the returns were published, he was convinced that it would be impossible to graduate the Income Tax. He thought, therefore, the Chancellor of the Exchequer had been right in falling back upon graduated Death Duties alone. He did not believe that the direct transference of property abroad was very probable. It was notorious that rich men valued complete freedom of bequest, and if they were to transfer their property abroad they would lose such freedom. If it was true that there was no privilege which an Englishman valued more than that of being able to cut off his son with a shilling, that fact would undoubtedly prevent the transference of property to foreign countries. As to fraud, there was very much less danger of fraud in the case of the Death Duties than in that of the Income Tax. In the case of the Death Duties it was a man's successors who paid the duty on his estate, and they were under very heavy penalties to make a correct return. There were professional men who were liable to be completely ruined by any fraud on their part, and though testators might possess a fraudulent intent, their executors were very seldom allowed to carry such intent into execution. But fraud might be feared under very heavy Death Duties, and that was a reason why Parliament should shrink from going too fast all at once. Evasions of the Death Duties by means of changes made in the disposition of a property during the owner's lifetime were in his opinion a good thing, and to the advantage of the State. They tended to bring property into the hands of men who were able to use it, and prevented what was virtually a dead hand being extended over property for an indefinite time. It had been suggested, however, that the State ought to be satisfied with any valuation that was put before it. One reason why he (Sir C. Dilke) welcomed the suggestion made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Sleaford (Mr. Chaplin) with regard to the valuation of land was that he thought it desirable to take the first opportunity of objecting to any such lax principle being adopted. It would be damaging to the conscience of the community and a bad thing for the Exchequer should any lax system of valuation be adopted. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was very largely robbed in reference to books, pictures, and things of that kind. Valuers were generally represented by their clerks, who seemed to think that all books should be valued at about 3d. a volume, and all pictures at the value of their frames. He could not but think it would be a wise thing if steps were taken to improve such a state of things. It had been suggested that these Death Duties would force the sale of estates. He could not but think that even in some of those cases where estates might have to be sold an advantage would result to the community. For the reasons he had stated he gave a hearty support to the Resolution.

said, it clearly illustrated the difficulty of the subject when they saw the right hon. Baronet, whose ability they all appreciated, falling into confusion at the commencement of his speech in regard to " testator " and " recipient." The right hon. Baronet had said it was impossible that the case laid before the House by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Sleaford could occur—it would be impossible for anyone taking a burdened estate to pay 18 per cent. The right hon. Baronet had confused the living man with the dead man. It was the dead man's possessions that were aggregated—

They do not pay 18 per cent. They only pay 8 or 9.

said, that a rich man with £1,000,000 died. Amongst his possessions was an encumbered estate. He left his other property to one man and the encumbered estate to another. If the latter was a stranger in blood he would have to pay 18 per cent. He (Mr. Grant-Lawson) was interested in this question of Succession Duties, having been a payer and having had a quarrel with Somerset House in the matter. He could not help regarding this Budget as the sequel to the Registration Bill, the Government proposing in that measure to reduce the representation of holders of real estate, and now proposing in the Budget to saddle that class with extra burdens. Well, he hoped to be able to give one or two figures to show that land was already, whether as regarded local taxation or Imperial and local taxation together, taxed up to the hilt, and that in fairness it should now be dealt with leniently and lightly. He would not speak of agricultural depression, because he desired his remarks to refer to the whole of realty, both land and houses, as affected by this Resolution. When the proper time came he should be happy to say something about the tax falling upon agricultural land—and he must call in aid the assistance of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board, because only as lately as 1888, speaking in this House, he said—

"He thought that agricultural land at this time was entitled to great consideration, and if Succession Duty fell only on agricultural land he would not press for an equalisation of the duties at the present moment."

He hoped when it was proposed that that duty should not fall on agricultural land they would have the benefit of the right hon. Gentleman's assistance. The reason he (Mr. Grant-Lawson) would give why land should be treated leniently was that it was the raw material of all production. That was an argument which found great weight with hon. Gentlemen opposite, if they would study the writings of their own friends in the Land Restoration League and the Land Nationalisation Society. The gentlemen, who wrote for these Leagues and Societies drew as a deduction from the facts that the laud ought not to be in present hands. But the House might draw the deduction that if the land was the raw material of all production it ought not to be heavily taxed, for no raw material in these days was or ought to be taxed if they could help it. Why was that argument ignored in the case of land? It was because it was supposed that land and houses were held in the hands of a few—namely, the rich. That was the reason it did not get justice, and that, obviously, would really be the case in the future, for if the proposals of the Government were carried the collection of estates into fewer hands would rapidly take place. He would define these proposals as au attempt to compel, if not Naboth, Naboth's son or his grandson to sell his vineyard to some Cotton King or other, for only very rich men would be able to keep land at all. This was the very difficulty the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Midlothian foresaw in 1853 if any proposal was made to tax land for Death Duties on its capital value. The right hon. Gentleman below him had read a passage from that speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Midlothian, but there was another passage even stronger. He said—

"It would be obviously highly inconsistent while we leave such property (speaking of real property) subject to its heavy annual burdens, to aggravate these by laying a heavy charge on the capital. For the Government would then force and accelerate by the pressure of fiscal enactments charges on the tenure of this property; and that acceleration would be, in my opinion, not only unjust, but most cruel and mischievous in a social point of view."

Whatever might happen in the future, real property—land and houses— was not now altogether in the hands of rich men. He was glad to say that in the part of the country with which he was connected a vast number of working men owned their own houses, and on these men would fall to a large extent the proposed duty. What had been the policy of the House during the past 10 or 12 years? To encourage both in England and Ireland the creation of small proprietors and ownerships. The small tenant farmer of whom the right hon. Gentleman just now spoke might be a yeoman farmer owning the farm he tilled. On such an one these burdens would fall with great severity. What was the present position of the land as regarded taxation? Its position presented four anomalies or admitted inequalities as the right hon. Gentleman called them — namely, in regard to Income Tax, Death Duties, the exclusive monopoly of the burden of the Land Tax, which was originally levied on all property, and its special position as to local burdens. On the Death Duties anomaly the right hon. Gentleman opposite had spoken at great length, on the Income Tax anomaly he had spoken a little, and the other two anomalies he had said nothing about. Having regard to the Registration Bill of the Government and to their Budget it might be said of them that they

"Compound for sins they are inclined to

By damning those they have no mind to."

He must now confine himself to the anomalies of the Death Duties, which were calculated on life interest and not on capital value. That advantage, he could tell the Committee from experience, was more apparent than real. If they went to Somerset House as successor to real property what happened was this: The gross income was taken and arbitrary deductions were made which were considered sufficient to get at the net income; then the net income was calculated as an annuity, and on that they had to pay. The whole thing rested on the net income being fairly arrived at, and on that nothing was allowed off for management of estate or agency—though 5 per cent. for agency was usual on estate accounts. A man was richer in the opinion of Somerset House than he was at his bankers. The anomaly of which he was speaking was created, explained, and justified by the Member for Midlothian himself. He did not know that anybody had ever undertaken to explain the injustice of the Income Tax, but as regarded the anomaly of the Death Duties the right hon. Gentleman in 1853 mentioned four or five reasons why this apparent anomaly should be allowed to continue. The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the Income Tax, the Land Tax, the expense of transfer, and especially the great weight of local taxation. He had gone closely into the right hon. Gentleman's figures to see whether his arguments had lost any force during the time which had elapsed. He wished to say a few words with reference to the question of local burdens on land, because these burdens were now actually heavier on the total value of realty than they were in 1853. It was impossible to obtain the real amount of the rates in 1853, but it was possible to get them for 1851. From the Report of 1870, presented to this House by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the St. George's Division, he found that the receipts from the rates in 1851 were £8,916,000, they were in 1890–91 £27,818,642. In 1851 they had no absolute Return of the rateable value of realty, but they had his right hon. Friend's Return as to the gross value of realty in that year, and, further, a table showing how much at that period they had to deduct from the gross annual value to arrive at the rateable value. Working that out, it would be found that the rateable value in 1851 was £71,107,000, whereas in 1890–91 the rateable value of realty had grown to £152,116,000. By the process of simple arithmetic anybody could arrive at this fact, that whereas in 1851 the rates falling on realty amounted to 2s. 6d and l-10thd. in the £1, in 1890–91 the rates were 3s. 7¾d. in the £1; so that the pressure of local taxation was heavier now than it was in 1853, when the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Midlothian made it justify this anomaly. He would not make an estimate of the amount that would fall upon real property when the English Local Government Bill came into operation. The Chancellor of the Exchequer kept entirely out of view all this question of local taxation and the burdens on realty. In doing so, he had succeeded in avoiding what would have been a rather nasty rock to stumble upon, because in his Budget speech he quoted against realty the Report of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for St. George's of 1870, as showing that realty in England paid less to Imperial taxation than it did in several other countries which he named. If the right hon. Gentleman had completed the paragraph which he was reading he would have found the diametrically opposite to be the case as regarded Imperial and local taxation coupled together. These words came immediately before the words which the Chancellor of the Exchequer read—

"It is, therefore, apparent that, with the exception of Belgium, real properties pay a larger proportion in the United Kingdom to what it pays elsewhere, though the difference between France and the United Kingdom is little more than 1 per cent. Throwing Imperial and local taxation together, the general result of the taxes upon real property appears to be as follows:"—

and there followed a table showing that realty in the United Kingdom, taking local and Imperial taxation together, after the abolition of the Fire Insurance Duty and the reduction of the Income Tax to 4d., paid more than any other country, Belgium excepted. What was the relief in the matter of Income Tax? The right hon. Gentleman based this Resolution upon the fact that he had given some reduction in the matter of Income Tax, and had accused them of being ungrateful. He assured the right hon. Gentleman that they were grateful for small mercies; they had not been plundered so much as some of the supporters of the right hon. Gentleman had desired they should be. But he appealed to the common sense of the Committee as to whether any landlord in the world received nine-tenths of the gross rent roll of his estate to spend. He took it that what was meant by net income was the income which, at the end of the year, would be available for dividend if a person made himself into a Joint Stock Company. Who could say that one-tenth was a fair deduction to get? As regarded the outgoings, there were the repairs, the management and collection of the rent, arrears, and law charges, of which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Midlothian said—

"Without these it is impossible to conduct business connected with landed property and houses."

Taking off all these deductions, and remembering that they came, in the case of real property, charged for mortgages, annuities, dowers, and portions, only out of the margin, who could say that one-tenth was a reasonable deduction? He had the specific figures before him. For the purpose of getting the rateable value of property it was the rule to deduct everything that was required to keep the property in a state of repair sufficient to earn the rent. He would not take anyone County or Rating Authority, because the application of the rule varied with different counties, but he would take the collective wisdom of all the Rating Authorities of England. The Return of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for St. George's, Hanover Square, showed calculations at five different periods as to the gross income returned for Income Tax, and it appeared that to arrive at rateable value the deduction ought to be not 10 per cent. or 16⅔ per cent., which it was now proposed by the Chancellor to deduct, but between 25 and 30 per cent. The Secretary of State for India said in his Report in 1891 that the gross income from land, houses, railways, and rateable property generally was £219,554,086. The rateable value was £152,116,008. The deduction was almost precisely 30 per cent., or rather over. The Chancellor of the Exchequer started with the proposition that it was best to place both taxes, the Death Duties and the Income Tax, on a fair and equitable basis, but the small deduction he had allowed, an instalment of justice long overdue, would not induce owners of land and the agricultural interest generally to give him a receipt in full for all the claims they had, not upon his generosity but upon his sense of justice. They entered that caveat at once. It would be found that land, instead of paying too little to Imperial taxation as compared with personalty, was paying too much, and they could still continue to put that claim before their constituents.

^* : Before I say a few words upon the general question, I should like to make one remark in reply to the hon. Member who has just sat down. He says that no one who has any knowledge of rating would make the deduction which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has suggested, and that it is inconsistent with both the practice and opinion of all Rating Authorities. I think that the Rating Authority of the great County of Lancashire and the Rating Authority of the West. Riding of Yorkshire are two very typical and reliable cases to guide this House. Those authorities may be taken as specimens of men who are singularly competent to decide these questions, and their counties are specimens of counties where every variety of industry flourishes, perhaps to be found nowhere else in the Kingdom. Those Rating Authorities declared in their recommendation to their County Councils, and the County Councils have adopted the recommendation, that l–12th is the proper allowance to make in respect of land, and one-sixth in respect of house property, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, while accepting the higher rate so far as houses were concerned, has increased the l–12th to l–10th in respect of land. But I have risen not to reply to the hon. Member on that question, but rather to reply upon the broader questions which he has raised, and which were also raised by the right hon. Member for the Sleaford Division. That right hon. Gentleman said that the land of this country was taxed and rated out of all proportion to its real value— [ Opposition cheers ]—and those cheers show that hon. Members share in that view. The hon. Member who has just sat down has instanced many anomalies which affect taxation of laud in this country, and has dwelt upon the excessive burden of local taxation, having taken the figures from the Return of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for St. George's, and also from a Return I myself prepared some few months ago. Having had the duty devolved upon me of making that inquiry, I hope the Committee will allow me to say a word or two in reference to this burden of taxation upon land in this country, and especially upon agricultural land. I admit at once that it is a grave question, and a difficult question. I admit that in 1853 my right hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian pointed to the burdens on land in the shape of local taxation. That was the justification of the proposals of the right hon. Gentleman the late Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1888. But although the right hon. Gentleman then stated that the account was closed, and that the State had then rendered full satisfaction to the landed interest, with respect to local taxation, yet now we find the demand is still made, and the complaints are now perhaps greater than they ever were. I think, under these circumstances, it will not be an unpardonable expenditure of time if I point out what the real facts are. These assertions cannot be either proved or disproved by making dogmatic statements. Some Members may be of opinion that land is unjustly taxed so far as local taxation is concerned; others may be of opinion that land is not taxed sufficiently as compared with other interests in the country. All I am going to do to-night—and I shall deal with the matter in no controversial spirit—is to endeavour to put before the Committee the result of my own inquiry, and also the result of the combined inquiries of the right hon. Gentleman and myself on this question, and I will leave the Committee to draw its own conclusions. Now, the first thing we have to deal with is to ascertain what is the total amount of public rates levied at the present time— what is the amount of our local taxation. The hon. Member who has just sat down said with great accuracy that that taxation has been enormously increased in recent years. I exclude from consideration all rates levied for other than public purposes. I do not include gas or water rates, or any rates levied, so to speak, for a reproductive purpose. I am dealing now with what the right hon. Gentleman opposite called direct taxation, and I am taking the figures for the last year for which we have a correct Return, the year 1891. In a few weeks' time the Returns for the next year will be ready, but I know enough of the figures to say that practically the difference will be very slight, and the Committee will be safe in judging this question on the figures of the last year's Return published of local taxation. The amount of local taxation is, in round figures, £28,000,000, it being £27,818,000. I need hardly say that that is a figure which the Committee should not pass by lightly. My right hon. Friend in his Budget has made very great demands—the Government think necessary demands—upon the public in respect to Imperial Expenditure. That Imperial Expenditure has grown, and is growing, to a very enormous sum. When we consider the burdens upon the people of this country we must add to this very heavy Imperial Expenditure the enormous sum of local taxa- tion which is, I am afraid, rapidly approaching £30,000,000 sterling. The next point is how is this £28,000,000 raised, or rather from what localities is it raised, and how is it classified? I will deal with it rather in round figures, and will not trouble the Committee with fractions. Now the Metropolitan and urban districts of this country raise about £17,500,000. London raises about £8,000,000, and the rest of the municipal and other boroughs and urban districts raise £9,500,000. The partly urban and partly rural districts raise £8,200,000, and the purely rural districts raise in round figures a little over £2,000,000 — to be exactly right, £2,108,673. In that mode we raise the £28,000,000. I would like, in the first instance, to contrast this with the rates which were raised when the right hon. Gentleman opposite made his investigation 25 years ago. He then ascertained that the aggregate taxation of this country for local rates was in round figures £16,500,000. The Committee will note the large increase from £16,50(1,000 to practically £30,000,000 in these few years since 1868. I find in the Metropolitan and urban districts the taxation was then £6,750,000. It is now £17,500,000, so that the Committee will note that the enormous increase has not been in the agricultural districts, but that it has been in the urban and Metropolitan districts. In partly urban and partly rural districts—and this is a very singular feature which I shall explain shortly—the amount is now practically the same as it was then, but there is a slight decrease of something like £160,000. But in round figures you may say that the increase has been £10,750,000 in the urban and Metropolitan districts. There has been no increase in the partly rural and partly urban, but in the purely rural there has been an increase of nearly £700,000.

^* : Would the right hon. Gentleman give us figures respecting the rateable values?

I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that I have no wish to put these figures before the Committee in any one-sided way, and I will call attention to the varieties in rateable value presently. That is a very important point, of course, and I may say now that these details that I have given are to a certain extent misleading, because the decrease in the rates raised in the partly urban and partly rural districts is due largely to subventions. Then the area in which the rural rates are raised is constantly diminishing, in consequence of the formation of new urban districts, and the rateable value may have so risen in some urban and fallen in some rural districts that the rates in the £1 may have fallen in the urban and risen in the rural districts. Therefore I do not ask the Committee to take these figures as conclusive. I would rather take as the test of the severity of local burdens, not the amount raised, but the rates in the £1 of the rates levied. What is the average rate in the £1, taking into consideration all the rates levied in England and Wales, and to what extent has that rate been increased? Until we get to the year 1841 I do not think the figures are to be entirely depended on; but in 1803 the average rate was 4s. 5¼d. in the £1; in 1813–15, 3s. l¾d.; in 1817, 3s. l0¾d.; in 1827, 3s. 8d.; in 1841, 2s. 7d.; in 1868, 3s. 4d.; and in 1891, 3s. 8d. Between 1868 and 1891, therefore, there has been an increase of 4d. only. The fluctuation of the rates has been remarkable, and it is due to the subventions that the amount has not exceeded 3s. 8d. Taking this figure of 3s. 8d. as the total rate in the £1 for England and Wales, the next question for consideration is how it is composed. What portion of it is raised by what are called old rates and what portion by rates imposed in recent times? The right hon. Member for Sleaford rather blamed the Government for not taking the Land Tax into consideration as a tax upon land. I cannot agree with the view of the right hon. Gentleman, for the Land Tax is essentially an hereditary burden, subject to which land has been bought and sold at all events for 100 or 150 years. The Land Tax, of course, has nothing to do with my present argument; I am only saying that in passing, because the Land Tax is not a local but Imperial charge. There are two charges which I shall venture to submit to the Committee are emphatically hereditary burdens outside the purview of what might be described as current taxation. The old rates levied during a long series of years from 1841 were divided by my predecessor and by myself into four—the poor rate, the highway rate, the county rate, and the church rate. These are the old rates. The new rates are the sanitary and the whole structure of municipal, urban, and education rates. [An hon. MEMBER: The police rate.] The police rate is included in the county rate, and both have been collected together. But the oldest rate of all, and the principal local rate levied for 300 years, is the poor rate; and by the poor rate rising and falling is to a great extent to be tested the severity or the contrary of local burdens. The poor rate, I maintain, is an hereditary burden on land. ["No, no! "] The poor rate has been imposed on land in this country at all events since 1603; land has been charged with the burden of maintaining the poor of the parish in which that land was situated [" No, no! "]; and every acre of land since 1603 has been bought and sold subject to that burden. It is the unfortunate mischief of our system of local taxation that in the expression "poor rate" we include a great deal that does not relate to the relief of the poor. We have the rates raised for the expenditure of the Guardians and the Poor Law Authorities for purposes connected with the relief of the poor; but then the county rate, often the borough rate, the police rate, contributions to the Overseers, Highway Boards, School Boards, Rural Sanitary Authorities, are all raised in the poor rate. Therefore, to get at the real truth of that impost, we must dismiss everything except Poor Law expenditure. I do not say that the gross poor rate is an hereditary burden on land. I do not say that the poor rate of last year, which was nearer £ 16,000,000 than £ 15,000,000, is a hereditary burden on land, because it includes a vast variety of items which are not hereditary burdens; but out of the amount of the poor rate raised for these purposes, what is expended in relief of the poor? That is the true hereditary burden. Last year there was expended in relief of the poor about £7,250,000, and that was raised out of the sum I mentioned of nearly £16,000,000. What I want to put to the Committee is what has been the pure poor rate—if I may coin an expression—the rate raised for the relief of the poor, and has that been an increasing or a diminishing burden? Is the average now higher than it was, and is there a greater burden imposed upon land for the relief of the poor than there has been in any previous period? We have clear figures about that. In 1803 the rate expended in relief of the poor was 3s. 4½d. in the £1; in 1813, 2s. 4¼d.; in 1827, 2s. 5¾d.; in 1841, 1s. 6¼d.; in 1856, 1s. 8d.; in 1866, 1s. 4½d.; and in 1868 the right hon. Gentleman opposite put the rate at 1s. 6d. Taking 1868 as the starting-point of my calculation with reference to the poor rate, I have to see what was the condition of the poor rate in 1891 as compared with 1868. The testing of this figure will, I think, throw some light on the relief which has been given out of Imperial taxation for local purposes. In 1891 the average poor rate of England and Wales was 1s. l½d.; in London it was 1s. l¼d.; and in the provinces it was under 8 ¼d. If you, therefore, exclude London—and I think for the purposes of an argument of this sort we should, especially in dealing with rural taxation — we find that in 1891 this rate is, in the Provinces, less than half of what it was in 1868. There are, of course, certain items to be added in the shape of expenses which fall on the Poor Law Authorities which are neither wholly connected nor wholly unconnected with the relief of the poor; but taking all these into account, I submit that there has been a fall of more than 4d. in the £1 in London and 7½d. in the Provinces. There is a decrease, therefore, of what I venture to submit to the House is an hereditary burden on land, and that decrease has arisen, not from a decrease in the expenditure of poor relief, which has increased and is still increasing—the relief has arisen partly from an increase in the rateable value and partly from the very large subventions which have been made to the Poor Law Guardians in the relief of the rate for the specific purposes of relieving the poor. The other hereditary burden which land is bound to bear is the highway rate. Land has always been subject in this country— ever, indeed, since this country might be said to have had civilisation — to the burden of repairing the highways. That rate has been virtually the same for, I might say, the greater part of this century. In 1817 it was £1,400,000; in 1862 it stood at the same figure. In 1883 the average rate levied in the £1 for the highway rate was 7·1d.; it varied slightly until 1889, when it again stood at 7·d.; in the two succeeding years it was 6·4d. and 6d., and practically the rate is standing at that figure now. If anything, therefore, there has been a fall in the highway rate during the last few years. I need say nothing about the church rate. That has gone, but while it lasted it was a burden. There is a greater difficulty in dealing with the county rate. The counties had different modes of assessment, and the areas of the counties had varied, especially since the introduction of the Local Government Act of 1888, which, so far as the Metropolis is concerned, has materially altered the position of the counties. The figures I am now quoting are not my own figures, but those of the Statistical and other Departments of the Local Government Board, prepared under the superintendence of one of the ablest men in the Civil Service, and therefore the figures can be relied on. The result shown is that there has been no great variation in the county rate. In 1870 it was 4¾d.; in 1880, 4¼d.; and I place it myself now practically at 5d., but I do not think that it has increased beyond that amount. The result of all this upon these old rates, which have always been for a long series of years a burden on land, and two of which are an hereditary burden on land, is that while those old rates in 1868 were 2s. 7d. in the £ 1, in 1891 they were 1s. 10½d.; and, therefore, there has been a fall in the old rates of 8½d. It is clear, therefore, that so far as these are concerned there has been this reduction. There is another side, of course, to the account. Hon. Members will say, "It is all very well to talk about old rates, but you have already admitted to us apparently that there is a rise of 4d. from 1868 to the present, whilst now you are talking of a diminution of 8½d. How do you account for the discrepancy?" By the great increase in taxation which has taken place during the last 20 years. Local taxation appears to have commenced its rise at the beginning of the '70's. It increased largely in the '80's, and it has not decreased in the '90's. In 1868 the municipal and urban sanitary rates outside London amounted to £3,000,000. In 1880 they were £5,700,000, and in 1891 £8,500,000. Prior to 1880 the rates in the £1 of those rates cannot be ascertained, as the rateable values of the urban districts are not recorded. In 1880 the rate in the £1 of the municipal and urban sanitary rate averaged, in boroughs 2s. 5⅓d., and in other urban districts 1s. 9¾d. In 1891 it had risen in boroughs to 3s. 0½d., and in other urban districts to 2s. 4d. In addition to these rates, there were also the new School Board rates, which had come into existence since 1868, and which, when spread over the whole of the valuations of boroughs and other urban districts, averaged in boroughs a little over 5d., and in other urban districts 3¼d. in the £1. I come to the conclusion that the new rates levied in boroughs have now reached 3s. 5½d. in the£l. There is an average borough rate of 7·2d., an average School Board rate of 5d., and an average borough urban sanitary rate of 2s. 5¼d. The House will see that these are entirely new rates, which were not in existence to a great extent many years ago, and these formed a considerable increase to the local taxation. With reference to the rates in the rural districts, the first difficulty in finding out what has been the position of purely rural districts is with reference to the School Board rate. In some districts there is no such rate, while in others it is very heavy. The rate as a whole must be taken and spread over the whole of the rural districts. The new burdens which have been imposed on land within the last 20 years are three in number— the rural sanitary rate, the School Board rate, and the burial rate. The gross total of the rural sanitary rate is £412,000; the gross total of the School Board rate raised in purely rural districts is £350,000. There is also a proportion of the School Board rate raised in parishes consisting mainly of urban districts, but which include a considerable portion of rural population; and for that I allow £105,000. The gross total of new local taxation on. the rural districts between 1868 and 1891 was, therefore, £867,000. If that were spread equally over the poor rate valuation of these rural districts, it would amount to a rate of 4d. in the £1. Therefore, the rural districts are paying in local taxation under the old rates 8½d. in the £1 less, and under the new rates 4d. in the £1 more, showing a net deduction of 4½d. in the £1. In the valuable tables prepared in 1868 the amount of the poor, county, church, and highway rates levied in the rural districts was put at 2s. 7d. in the £1. The same rates, with the addition of the sanitary and education rates, in 1890–91 were put at 2s. 2½d., which would show a fall of 4½d. Hon. Members have asked me about rateable values, and what are the proportions of property on which these rates fall. I do not quite understand the figures which the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down has given us. He said that in 1851 the rateable value was £71,000,000. Now, Sir, I have it here in the Report of the right hon. Gentleman opposite that the rateable value in 1847 was £67,000,000; in 1856 it was put at £71,840,000; and in 1868 it had reached £100,500,000. The increase in the rateable value between 1868 and to-day is the difference between £100,000,000 and £154,000,000. The rateable value of the rural sanitary districts in 1882 was £55,000,000, and in 1892 was £53,000,000, which shows a very small decrease. Of course, there is an explanation of that. It arose partly on account of the increase of value of one description of property and decrease of value in another description, because I find that the Income Tax valuation of the value of the land has fallen from £50,000,000 in 1873 to £42,000,000 in the present year, which is a decrease of something like £8,000,000; and therefore much of the decrease in the rural sanitary rateable value must arise from the increase of house and other properties in those districts and also, perhaps, from a better mode of assessment so far as that is concerned. At all events, so far as the rural districts are concerned, we have only a decrease of rateable value of something like £2,500,000. The question we have to ask ourselves is, what is the burden on land of local taxation at the present day? That is the point on which the Chancellor of the Exchequer is impeached with reference to the Budget. The argument of the right hon. Member for Sleaford was that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had no right to increase the burden of Imperial taxation on land, because its burdens in respect of local taxation had been so enormously increased, As far as rating was concerned, I have shown the House that the burden has been decreased instead of increased in recent years. We have the difficulty again in reference to these figures which is caused by the difference between our various systems of valuation. I ventured to say when the Local Government Bill was before the House that I knew for no more pressing reform than that there should be an assessment for all purposes. We ought to have one valuation for local and Imperial purposes. The County Councils are now endeavouring to put their rates upon what I may call a rational system, because there is no rational principle in the variety of systems adopted by the various assessment committees. They vary to an enormous extent, and therefore, when aggregated, they present the extraordinary discrepancy which the hon. Member for Thirsk pointed out. As showing how the value of different classes of property has shifted I call the attention of the House to the following figures:— According to the investigations of the right hon. Gentleman, the total annual value of rateable property was thus distributed: In 1814, of a total of £53,500,000, lands represented £37,000,000, houses nearly £15,000,000, and " other property" about £1,500,000. In 1843 the total amount had risen to £85,803,000, and was thus distributed: Lands, £42,128,000; houses, £35,556,000; railways, £2,418,000; and other property, £5,701,000. In 1868 the total value was £143,873,000, distributed as follows: Lands, £47,767,000; houses, £68,013,000; railways, £15,980,000; and other property, £12,113,000. The House will, perhaps, understand these figures better if I give them in the form of percentages. In 1814 lands represented 69·28 per cent.; houses, 27·84 per cent., and other property 2·88 per cent. In 1843 lands had decreased to 49·10 per cent.; houses were 41·44 per cent.; railways were 2·82 per cent., and other property 6·64 per cent. In 1868 the percentage of lands was only 33·20; of houses 47·27; of railways 11·11; and of other property 8·42. Commenting on these figures, the right hon. Gentleman said—

"It appears that a complete revolution has taken place in the relative position of lands and other classes of property as contributors to local taxation. While in 1814 lands, speaking broadly, represented 70 per cent. of the total value of real property, they now represent only 33 per cent., or less than half of the previous percentage; houses which in 1814 contributed only 27·84 per cent., or little more than one quarter of the value of real property, now re- present 47·27, or nearly one-half; while railways and other property which in 1814 contributed only 2·88 to the whole now together contribute 19·53."

The same process has continued since 1868. On reference to the amounts and percentages of the assessments to the Income Tax, it will be seen that the percentage of lands has steadily fallen, while those of houses, railways, and other properties have steadily increased. The figures for the Income Tax valuation for 1890–1 show that of a total annual value of £219,000,000 lands were represented by 19·24 per cent., houses by 56·35 per cent., railways by 14·02, and other properties by ' 10·39. The rates raised by Local; Authorities amounted in 1817 to £10,100,000, and in 1868 to £16,500,000. It would appear, therefore, that the rates borne by lands amounted, speaking broadly, in 1817 to £6,733,000, and in 1868 £5,500,000; while those borne by houses and other properties amounted in 1817 to £3,366,000, and in 1868 to £11,000,000. In 1891 the rates borne by lands did not exceed £4,260,000, while those borne by houses and other properties amounted at least to £23,500,000. When I mention land I should tell the House that it not only includes agricultural land, but land for ornamental purposes, parks, gardens attached to houses, farm houses, farm buildings, tithe-rent charge, tithe not arising from land, Easter offerings, and other money payments in respect of Church matters, other royalties, easements, right of way, and so on. If the amount of £4,260,000 had been borne by agricultural land it would have amounted last year to an average of 3s. 0·7d. on the 27,800,000 acres which are under all kinds of crops. That is a singular confirmation of the statement made to me four or five years ago by the late Mr. James Howard, who was a sound authority on all agricultural matters. Mr. Howard was talking of the great distress in agriculture which was then very much depressed—though it is more depressed now, and he said that of all delusions which agriculturists entertained none was greater than the idea that they could be relieved by any shifting or changing of local taxation. He added that if the land were to be relieved from all rates whatever, the relief would only amount to something between 2s. and 3s. an acre, I have shown that the actual figure is about 3s. 0¾d. per acre. Can that mean the prosperity or depression of the agricultural interest? I do not wish to minimise the depression in agriculture. It is the greatest industry in the country; it has the largest amount of capital invested in it; and it is more depressed than any other. At the same time, if we are to look at the matter from a statesmanlike point of view, we must be sure of the facts and figures, and I submit to the House with a considerable amount of confidence that the real burden on agricultural land at this moment is not much over 3s. 0½d. per acre, and that from whatever source agriculturists are to look for relief—and I hope they will be able to find some reliable source—I do not believe they will find it in tampering with or shifting about the burdens of local taxation. May I say one word before I sit down about subventions? Why have these rates diminished in spite of a large increase of expenditure on the poor and on sanitary purposes? The answer to that is, first, that it is due to the great increase in the rateable value of property; and, secondly, to the large amount which is contributed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer out of the Imperial funds to the relief of the local rates. I am not going to enter into a discussion upon arguable points such as those which relate to contribution from the Treasury to the prisons, for the police, and a variety of similar purposes. But my general contention is that the relief which has been given out of Imperial Revenue to local taxation during the last few years has amounted to something like £6,500,000 per annum, with the result that in 1891 in London, where the average rate in the £1 of the rates raised, calculated on the poor rate valuation, was 5s., the relief given was 8·6d. in the £1; in the county boroughs, where the average rate in the £1 of the rates was 4s. 6½d., the relief given was 10·2d. in the £1; and in the administrative counties, where the average rate in the £1 of the rates was 2s. 10½d., the relief given was 9·6d. In the following year the relief given was, in London, 8·8d.: in the county boroughs, 10·5d.; and in the administrative counties10·1d. The inquiries instituted by the Local Government Board show that in 1868, of the total £16,504,000 rates raised, £3,703,000 were raised in London; £3,027,000 in other purely urban districts; £8,358,000 in extra-Metropolitan districts, partly urban and partly rural; and £1,416,000 in purely rural districts. In 1890–91, of the total £27,818,000 rates raised, £7,930,000 were raised in London; £9,583,000 in other purely urban districts; £8,196,000 in extra-Metropolitan districts, partly urban and partly rural; and £2,109,000 in purely rural districts. In 1868 the rateable value of England and Wales, according to the poor rate valuation, was £100,612,000, of which £16,946,000 was the rateable value of London. The rateable values of extra-Metropolitan urban districts for that year cannot be separated from those of rural districts. In 1890-91 the total rateable value was £152,116,000, distributed as follows:— London, £31,597,000; boroughs, £43,545,000; other urban districts, £23,696,000; rural districts, £53,278,000. In 1868 the average rate in the £1 of all rates for the whole of England and Wales, calculated on the poor rate valuation, was 3s. 4d.; in 1890–91 it was 3s. 8d.; in 1868 the average rate in the £1 of all rates for London, calculated on the same principle, was 4s. 4½d.; in 1890–91 it was 5s. In 1868 the average rate in the £1 of all rates for extra-Metropolitan urban districts cannot be ascertained. In 1890-91 it was—In county boroughs, 4s. 6½d.; in non-county boroughs, 4s. 4½d.; other urban districts, 3s. 11d. In each of these classes of districts the average rate in the £1 had risen very considerably since 1868. In rural districts the average rate in the£l of all rates in 1868 (excluding certain rates raised by Commissioners of Sewers and Drainage and Embankment Boards, which are levied in a limited number of counties), was 2s. 7½d.; in 1890–91 it was 2s. 3d. The fall in the rate in the £1 of rural rates was mainly due to the fall in the poor rate levied to meet the expenses of Poor Law Authorities. It was also attributable to the disappearance of the church rate and to a fall in many counties in the highway rate and the county rate. As against these falls, the new rural sanitary rates and rural School Board rates had come into existence since 1868. But the decreases in the rate in the £1 of the old rural rates, i.e., the poor rate, the highway rate, and the county rate, were considerably greater than the average rates in the £1 of the new rural rates. The urban ratepayers participated in the benefits arising from the fall in the rate in the £1 of the poor rate and the disappearance of the church rate, and in some counties from the fall in the county rate; but these benefits were more than counterbalanced by the rise in the rates in the £1 of the modern urban rates, especially the urban sanitary rates and the urban School Board rate. The modern sanitary rates press with severity on the ratepayers in towns where the aggregation of large populations in comparatively small areas necessitates the provision of costly schemes of sewerage, scavenging, water - supply, and other works of primary sanitary importance which cannot be neglected without serious danger to the public health. As the final result, I submit to the Committee that at no time during the present century for which statistics are available has the average rate in the£l of the rural rates been so low and, I must add, that of the London rates so high as during the years 1890 and 1891.

^* : I will venture, in the first place, to supplement the last sentence of the right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down by adding that never has agricultural depression been so great or the wealth and rateable valuation of London so high as at the present moment. The right hon. Gentleman has given the Committee a most interesting and able exposition of a very-voluminous Return which has been made by his Department. Of course, I cannot profess to be able at a minute's notice to follow the figures which the right hon. Gentleman has quoted to the Committee; but I venture to say that no amount of averages taken from all parts of the country will convince anyone that the rates at the present time are not higher than they were in the early part of the present century, or will make the agricultural ratepayer believe that real property is not burdened as regards local rates most unfairly as compared with personal property, or that there ever was a time when the agricultural ratepayers was less able to bear the burden of those rates than at the present time. The right hon. Gentleman has followed many previous speakers by calmly excluding from his calculation some of the taxes and rates as forming hereditary burdens upon the land. For example, the right hon. Gentleman has asserted that the Land Tax and the poor rate are hereditary rates, and therefore cannot be regarded as burdens upon the land. As regards the Land Tax and poor rate, however, it is clear that they were originally a tax upon all persons according to their ability to bear it, and were in no sense a tax laid upon real property alone. Again, the right hon. Gentleman has classed the highway rate as an hereditary burden upon land. That rate, however, stood at very much less than its present amount before the old turnpike road system of taxing those who used the roads was abolished; and certainly the addition since made to it cannot be regarded as being an hereditary burden upon land. Again, the abolition of the church rate has not relieved those who live in the country from the obligation of keeping their churches in repair. The right hon. Gentleman has admitted that the school rate is a new burden upon real property; but he appears to have forgotten that, in the greater number of the parishes in England, there is no school rate, and that in those parishes the landowners tax themselves voluntarily in order to keep up the schools. The right hon. Gentleman has alluded to the sanitary rates, which he said were equally borne by the towns and the rural districts, but he appeared to have overlooked the fact that in the rural districts most of the sanitary works which, in towns, would be done at the expense of the ratepayers, are carried out at the expense of the landowners without the imposition of a single penny on the rates. And when the right hon. Gentleman talks of the Land Tax, the poor rate, and the highway rate, as being hereditary burdens upon the land, it occurs to me that, in no very remote future, some Chancellor of the Exchequer might with equal fairness come down to this House and, pointing to the Death Duties now proposed to be imposed by the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, might describe them as hereditary burdens upon real property, and therefore urge that they formed no argument against additional taxation upon that class of property. I think the right hon. Gentleman rather confused the real issue before the House when he attempted to deal with the relative burden of the rates upon agricultural land as compared with that upon the towns. I have never contended, and I do not believe that anyone has ever contended, that the vast increase in the rates which has undoubtedly taken place in this country during recent years has not been in the towns rather than in the rural districts; but what I have always contended is that the enormous growth in the value of property in towns has made the rates a comparatively easy burden to bear, whilst in the rural districts the depression in the value of agricultural land has made stationary and even reduced rates in reality a far heavier burden. It must be remembered that this is not a question of the rural districts against the towns; it is not a question of property against labour, but it is a question of the taxation of one class of property against another class of property. That, I think,, will be admitted by the right hon. Gentleman. I am glad, I confess, that the right hon. Gentleman has not followed the Chancellor of the Exchequer in some of the fallacies that we have heard from the right hon. Gentleman. I have heard with satisfaction the admission from the Government Bench that the enormous increase in the rates has not fallen upon the great bulk of personalty. The Committee are now asked by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to equalise taxation between realty and personalty. The Committee must remember the total amount of taxation borne by both classes of property. I deny that the subject can be considered as a question of Death Duties only, apart from the whole question of taxation upon realty and upon per- sonalty. The Chancellor of the Exchequer gave last night a statement in explanation of his calculation of the present burden of the Death Duties, first upon personalty and then upon realty. The right hon. Gentleman put the total amount of the Death Duties at present at £8,910,000 paid by personalty, and £1,150,000 paid by realty, making together rather more than £10,000,000. But in that calculation the right hon. Gentleman, I think, took credit for the whole of the Probate Duty paid by personalty—namely, that part of it which goes to the relief of local taxation as well as the part which goes to the Imperial Exchequer. That is, in my view, an absolutely unfair contention, and I think that the part devoted to the relief of local taxation ought not to be taken into consideration at all when we are considering the relative amount of Death Duties borne by realty and personalty. In common fairness, instead of saying that personalty bears £4,800,000, the Chancellor of the Exchequer ought to have said that it only bears £2,400,000.

I spoke of what was levied under the head of Death Duties on other species of property.

Then I venture to repeat that the right hon. Gentleman should have taken into calculation the total tax borne by realty. I think that for purposes of this argument the right hon. Gentleman could only take the duty borne by personalty at £2,400,000, instead of £4,800,000. He was also wrong in saying that realty pays no Legacy Duty. It pays a sum which in 1888 was estimated at £200,000 a year on legacies charged upon or taking effect out of the real estate and on the proceeds of real estate directed to be sold. This sum should be transferred from the personalty to the realty side of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's account. Making the two alterations which I have now suggested as absolutely necessary, instead of the totals of £8,910,000 and £1,150,000 which the right hon. Gentleman put before the Committee for personalty and realty respectively, the figures should be £6,390,000 for personalty and £1,350,000 for realty. That is, of course, on the face of it, I admit, a much larger contribution from personalty than from realty, but why did not the Chancellor of the Exchequer go on to compare the relative amounts of personalty and realty upon which the duties were charged? Everyone must be aware that the amount of personal property in this country is much larger than the amount of real property. The only fair basis of comparison of the relative burdens of the Death Duties is the amount of either class of property paying duty. The Return of 1885, which has been frequently quoted in this House, contains so much that is purely conjectural that I, for one, should be sorry to base any estimate upon it. In the year 1889, taking the average for the seven years ending in 1888, the annual value of personalty upon which Probate Duty was paid was £140,000,000, and of personal property paying Succession Duty £8,000,000. The annual value of real property on an average of seven years, taken in the same way, was £31,000,000 paying Succession Duty. Of course, that was only upon the life interest as taken by the Revenue Authorities. Taking into account that a large portion of realty consists of house property, it cannot be capitalised at more than 25 years' purchase.

Will the right hon. Gentleman allow me to interpose for a moment? I can point out something to clear up the argument. It is immaterial what the relations are of the various classes of property, because I charge only on the principal value, and therefore it is unnecessary to go into calculations of the kind which the right hon. Gentleman has been suggesting. If one class of property is larger the charge upon it will be larger, and if another class is less the charge upon it will be less. The question of the relations of the different classes is wholly immaterial, and that is why I did not enter, and did not desire to enter, into those calculations. I only desired to consider the various incomes derived from each class of property.

^* : My complaint of the right hon. Gentleman's statement is that he has only commenced his calculation, and did not finish it. The right hon. Gentleman's figures were evidently accepted by hon. Members behind him as showing that the present system imposed an infinitely greater burden upon personalty than upon realty. Now, I want to show, if I can, what the real cause of the larger payment by personalty is, and I contend one great reason is the greater value of personalty than of realty. The net annual value of realty paying tax on an average of seven years ending 1888 was £57,000,000. To that must be added £8,000,000 of realty paying Legacy Duty, and £3,000,000 passing from husband to wife, not paying duty at all. Taking those figures, and taking the amounts of Death Duties paid at the date I have mentioned, there was a proportionate difference of £1,200,000 in favour of realty as against personalty; and if that amount of taxation had been added annually to realty the two classes of property would have been put quâ Death Duties upon precisely the same footing. On the other hand must fairly be taken into account the Land Tax, which in its inception was levied not merely upon realty, but upon personalty as well, and from which personalty was only exempted in comparatively recent years. The Land Tax, including, of course, that part of it which has been redeemed, comes to practically something like £2,000,000 a year. I do not wish to elaborate this argument. I have merely desired to call the attention of the Committee to it, as I deem it to be a figure of great importance in the present discussion. The Chancellor of the Exchequer now proposes what he considered to be an increase upon personalty of £2,130,000, and upon realty of £1,320,000. What I should like to know is whether the right hon. Gentleman includes in the former figure that proportion of the new Estate Duty arising from his graduated scale which would be devoted to local taxation? Because, if so, I venture to say that his estimate ought to be corrected in exactly the same way as I have shown is necessary in his account of the existing burden. It is not fair to compare the payments by personalty to Imperial taxation with the payments made by realty, and to credit personalty in the comparison with that portion of the Death Duties which goes to the local taxation fund. The right hon. Gentleman, taking the figures which I have quoted, arrived at the conclusion that after allowing for the relief to realty on Schedule A of the Income Tax, of the additional taxation that he proposed about £720,000 would fall on realty, and then he said he was asto- nished at his own moderation. I confess I was never more astonished than at the estimate of the right hon. Gentleman as to what the new tax would in his opinion produce. I hope during the course of the Debate the right hon. Gentleman will make some statement as to the data on which he founded that conclusion. The graduated increase in the rates ought, I think, to produce a much larger amount. I will venture to quote to the Committee a case which has been sent to me. It does not relate to agricultural property at all. It relates to ground-rents, which are very lightly taxed at present, because the Succession Duty has no regard to what the right hon. Gentleman called, in his Budget speech, the capital value of the property. This is the case that was put to me. Supposing a person of the age of 50 succeeds for life to 100 houses let on leases for 30 years at 1s. a year each or £5 a year in all. It is perfectly obvious that under the present system the Death Duty on that would be very small indeed, But if the right hon. Gentleman's proposal becomes law the man would have to pay an Estate Duty on the value of the houses, which in this case I have put, subject to the leases, might be estimated at £300 each, or £30,000 in all. This at 4½ per cent. would amount to a Death Duty of £1,350 on a property producing to the successor only £5 a year. That may be a perfectly fair increase. I do not want to argue that matter; but it seems to me that it is the taxation of an interest before that interest has come into possession.

It is quite saleable.

That is precisely the point to which I was coming. It would be absolutely impossible for a person to pay such a duty by instalments from the rents of his property. He would have to sell it, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer suggests, instead of leaving it to his family. Does the right hon. Gentleman really think that that would be an advisable result, seeing the enormous number of cases where ground-rents are at the present time held by the poorer classes? My right hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford has put the case as to agricultural land. We have had no answer whatever on that matter. As my right hon. Friend pointed out, the Member for Midlothian denounced any attempt to tax such estates as he then described at their capital value as unwise and unjust, and he described it by epithets as strong as ever were used by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his unregenerate days with regard to local option or Home Rule. The right hon. Gentleman says you can borrow on mortgage and pay the Estate Duty. How is that money to be raised? It cannot be raised on a second mortgage. Nobody will lend on that, and therefore the money cannot be raised at all. The annual income from the property is not equal to paying the annual instalments for eight years.

The duty is only made on the actual value of the property.

But how much percentage on the capital value of an agricultural estate does the right hon. Gentleman suppose the owner of the property puts into his pocket as the net annual income? That is the real difficulty. Supposing the capital value of an estate is taken at £30,000. Does the right hon. Gentleman think that the owner will receive £1,000 a year, and, if so, can he devote, as he would have to devote, £170 for the annual instalment of the duty upon that amount? No; there must be a forced sale, precisely as in the other case to which I have alluded, but with this difference—in the case of ground rents there are plenty of buyers, but in the case of agricultural estates in the South of England and Ireland, and in parts of Scotland, there are no buyers at all. Is not this a reason for giving consideration to the suggestions of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford, which has been supported by the right hon. Baronet the Member for the Forest of Dean? It is clear that it is practically impossible for the owner with a property such as that to which I am alluding either to pay the annual instalments of the Estate Duty for eight years, or to borrow money on a mortgage to pay the amount. The Treasury could only get the tax by seizing the property. Why, then, should not the Treasury be called upon, after a fair valuation on both sides, to take a certain part of the property, in the way my right hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford suggested, instead of the tax? Parliament has not recently shown any reluctance to take land either by purchase or by hiring from owners whenever it was desirable in the public interest that land should be so taken. It is, therefore, only fair to the owners of property that this suggestion should be fully considered by the Treasury. I do not want to detain the Committee by going into details. It is impossible fully to consider them before we have the Bill before us. But this, at any rate, is clear—that the new Estate Duty at the rates proposed to be charged is so much in excess of the Death Duty at present chargeable that it must increase considerably the burdens upon real property. Add to this the substitution in the Succession Duty of the capital value in place of the annual value. In speaking on this subject in 1888, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Midlothian said that in his opinion to charge realty with Succession Duty on the life interest instead of on the capital value was practically to diminish by half the tax on realty. If that be so, will not the substitution of the capital value for the life interest as the basis of the charge practically double the Succession Duty? Without entering at any length on the question, I should like to touch on the principle of graduation. Of course, the Committee knows very well that the principle of graduation has been accepted in several parts of our existing finance. The House Duty and other duties are to some extent graduated duties. But this, as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Forest of Dean admitted, is graduation to an extent which no other country has attempted. My belief is that it will be largely evaded in the case of personalty. It is so easy in the case of certain securities to hand over personalty as a bonâ fide gift, an innocent gift, as the right hon. Baronet expressed it, during the lifetime of the person who owns the property to the heir in whom he places confidence so that it shall not come under the Death Duties; and the temptation— nay, to many consciences the justification— for such action will be the high graduation scale proposed by the right hon. Gentleman. The right hon. Gentleman may have been wise, for this reason, in estimating his receipts from this increased tax at a low figure, but is that a very moral position for a Chancellor of the Exchequer? Is it a wise or defensible policy to introduce a graduated tax of this kind, with the knowledge that it is likely to be largely evaded? I do not want to pursue the subject further now; but for these and other reasons we ought to have some fuller statement as to the data on which the right hon. Gentleman estimates the proceeds from this increased taxation, with examples of the manner in which that increased taxation will work in the case of different classes of estates. So far as the distinction between the burdens on realty and personalty are concerned, the right hon. Gentleman is guilty of the unfairness of imposing additional burdens on realty, without any consideration of the other kinds of taxation to which realty is subject, and these burdens will be specially felt in the agricultural districts, which are so much distresed that they are, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford has said, absolutely unable to bear any increased burden at all. The result of imposing this increased burden will be not merely ruinous to some owners of property, but will in many other cases prevent landlords from spending on their estates money which is essential, not merely for the improvement of the estates, but for the retention of the farmers who are now their tenants, and for the employment of the agricultural labourers who every day, from want of such employment, are flocking to the towns from the rural districts. It will be some time—it may be some years—before the full effect of these proposals, if they should become law, will be really felt and understood. But, in my belief, the right hon. Gentleman has taken a step which is not justified by the existing pressure of taxation upon realty and personalty, and a step which will be deeply injurious to those parts of the country in which I am specially interested.

What is the object of the speeches to which we have been treated to-night? The claim is now made that landowners are not to bear an equal burden of taxation with other people. [ Cries of " No! "] I will show that it is so; that it is not a new claim on the part of the landed interest of this country. To-day it is put on the ground of agricultural distress, but it is put by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bristol on the ground that the value of personalty is largely in excess of the value of realty in this country. That was the claim put forward 100 years ago, when land was the predominant wealth of the country, and when the most powerful Minister whoever ruled in this country was defeated by the landed interest on the ground that they were not to be taxed upon the same footing as other people. When Mr. Pitt proposed the Succession Duty, which is the equivalent of the present proposal, it was defeated, but ultimately he had in his favour the casting vote of the Speaker. The claim was then set up that land was not to be taxed, though it was by far the wealthiest and strongest interest in the country at the time. Ever since there has been a traditional belief on the part of the landed interest that they had a right to some special exemption. [ Cries of " No, no! "] You say "No, no," but it is not an hour ago since the hon. Member for the Thirsk Division put the claim upon a very plain ground. He said—

"Land is raw material, and, according to all economists, raw material ought not to be taxed."

I quoted the Land Restoration League as holding that land is raw material.

Yes; but, in addition to the quotation, the hon. Member laid it down as his own proposition. Hon. Gentlemen opposite think there is a special quality about land which ought to exempt it from being treated like other property. What is bred in the bone comes out in the flesh, and that belief is just as strong to-day as it was in the time of Mr. Pitt. I have much more sympathy with the ground put forward by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Sleaford, when he spoke of the distressed condition of the agricultural interest; but the right hon. Gentleman is mistaken in the belief that the present times are worse, or so bad, as several other times which have been known during the present century. Anyone who reads the Reports made in the years preceding or following 1835 will find expressions quite as strong as any to which the right hon. Gentleman has referred in more recent Reports as showing the condition of the agricultural interest, with the price of wheat not much higher than it is at present.

Land was not then out of cultivation to the same extent as now.

I remember Mr. Henley—who was an old Member of this House—telling me that the whole country lying round the district where I live was out of cultivation. That state of things does not exist in the same district now. Agricultural distress has been felt before quite as severely as today, and from that fact I draw the hope that as it passed away before so it will pass away again. But it does not follow that because an industry was distressed that its fair share of taxation is to be borne by other classes of the community. The same claim might with equal justice be made by the cotton, the iron, and other industries, that when any of these industries suffer depression it should be indemnified at the expense of the community. But I do not find that such a claim is put forward by any interest except the landed interest. It is said that the land has been subjected to a greater increase of rates than any other interest. But that is not so. The burden of rates is now heavier on the urban house population. The right hon. Gentleman said he appealed in favour of the small men — the yeomen; but the proposals in our scheme will be a relief to these men, because the Death Duty on estates under £1,000 will be lower than it is at present. Will any hon. Gentleman opposite tell me how many acres do £1,000 represent? It depends upon the value of land per acre now. Is its value per acre £10, £20, £50, or £100?

An hon. MEMBER: No; £5 an acre.

Well, how many£5's are there in £1,000? At £5, £1,000 would represent 200 acres of land; and every man with 200 acres would benefit by the change. I thought I should catch hon. Members opposite by inviting them to put their own valuation on land. The right hon. Member for Sleaford is familiar, from experience gained elsewhere, with "selling stakes," in which an owner is obliged to put a value on a horse, and, if it wins, to sell it at the price he has named.

said, that in the case of selling stakes the horse was put up to auction and, if the set price were ex- ceeded, the owner got the benefit of half the excess.

I confess I am not familiar with the details; but the right hon. Gentleman seemed to desire in some form to put laud on the footing of " selling stakes," and to sell it to the Government upon the price put upon it. There has been a great deal said about the burdens put upon land. In my opinion, from the point of view from which this Bill is framed, that question does not enter into the subject at all. That is why I did not enter into it in my Budget speech. When the value of land is settled, all the charges upon it are discounted, whether tithe, land tax, or rates. When you buy the land you buy it for more or less in consequence of these burdens being placed upon it; therefore, the question does not arise whether these burdens are more or less. Consols are bought subject to no charge at all, and therefore at a large price; less is given for other securities that are subject to charges. When you buy land as a commodity subject to certain charges you give less for it than when it is not subject to them. Therefore, the working of a plan founded upon ascertained value is, to use the language of the Money Market, like buying "ex charges." It is the case with everything. You buy an estate for less in consequence of there being charges upon it. Everybody in his senses who is buying a house or any other property, in the first place ascertains what the charges are upon it. When he has ascertained them he deducts them from the full value. Therefore, this charge excludes all these considerations; and I do not enter upon the question whether the rates are increased or decreased. If they have increased the value will be less; if they have decreased the principal value will be more. Therefore, all these matters are beside the question. The right hon. Member for Bristol said that when land becomes un-saleable the State must buy it. Why should the State buy it? The right hon. Member for Midlothian was quoted as having referred to taxation from the social point of view; but it does not follow from that that we have any right in governing ourselves to determine these questions by social considerations. I do not agree with hon. Members opposite as to the prospect of the alarming results they have predicted. Such predictions have been made before. When the Succession Duty was first imposed, it was said that country gentlemen would be driven away by it. There was the same outcry when the right hon. Member for Midlothian proposed an increase estimated to produce £2,000,000. Earl Cairns and Mr. Malins and others—the lawyers on the opposite side — said the exaction would be £20,000,000; in the result the increase was £800,000. That only shows how people may delude themselves upon these subjects. Similar predictions were made and falsified in connection with the repeal of the Corn Laws and the taking off of the Timber Duties. Whenever you touch land in any way it is always said that country gentlemen will disappear; but. fortunately, they do not. For 40 years they have paid the Succession Duty in spite of all predictions to the contrary, and I venture to say that, long after this proposal has passed, they will remain respected and honoured as they are today. Therefore, these arguments and considerations, I confess, do not affect me much in proposing fair and equal taxation. The right hon. Gentleman has asked me for the particulars on which the valuation is based; but that is not a reasonable demand. When I am proposing a new tax the authorities of the Inland Revenue give the best assistance they can from the materials at their disposal. These involve a number of complicated considerations on a review of which the Chancellor of the Exchequer makes proposals on his own responsibility. It was on the conclusions arrived at by these authorities with the materials at their disposal that I based my estimate as to what the Income Tax would produce. It is not usual to give those estimates to the House. Hon. Gentlemen may have reasons for differing from my estimate; then let them state what their view is and what are the grounds on which they proceed. In connection with the question of mortgages, I would point out that when an estate is charged with a mortgage, and an allowance of 10 per cent. is made on the interest, if the mortgage is very large—say, one-half—the allowance becomes very much larger than it is on a free estate. The tax is paid in the first instance by the owner, who recovers one-half from the mortgagee without de- duction, and so pays only 10 per cent. on a moiety.

said, it amounted to 20 per cent., because the owner had to bear all expenses of maintenance.

The right hon. Gentleman has not had time to consider the matter. If he will take a night to consider it he will find he is wrong.

No; I will not take time.

It will be found there is maintenance in both cases. The right hon. Member for Bristol has repeated what I have always thought an extraordinary fallacy, which was ridiculed by the right hon. Member for St. George's when he divided the Probate Duty. The right hon. Baronet said that, because the right hon. Gentleman gave away half the Probate Dute, therefore personal property did not bear the same burden as before. This is the most extraordinary idea I ever heard. It reminds me of the old couplet—

"My wound is great because it is so small;

If it were greater it were none at all."

Apparently, if the right hon. Gentleman had given away the whole of the Probate Duty it would have been no burden at all. I have never been able to comprehend from what confusion of ideas that fallacy has proceeded. I have nothing whatever to do with the question of local taxation; that is discarded altogether. To talk of the Death Duty being reduced by the amount of that which is given away is a fallacy which I cannot accept for a moment. I am not alarmed at the warnings with which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bristol concluded his speech on the subject of graduation. I shall be extremely surprised if the right hon. Gentleman takes issue on that point. At any rate, the Government are perfectly prepared to meet such an issue when it is taken; for it is my deep conviction that there is in the minds of those people in the country —not the ignorant people, but those who have had the most opportunity of considering the matter—a belief that the principle of graduation is a just principle, and that whenever an issue is taken on the subject it will be confirmed by the great majority of the people.

said, he had not intended to enter into this question in a controversial spirit; but the Chancellor of the Exchequer, when they asked for information which they had a right to have, turned round on them and maligned the landlords of the country. He (Mr. Heneage) was sure the agriculturists did not wish to escape from their just burdens, though they had had hard times. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he thought, might have given them a great deal more information than he had done. In the whole history of Parliament never had so great a change been made in the taxation of the country and so scanty an amount of information given to the House. The right hon. Gentleman told them he could not give them any data. But if he could not, what reliance could they place upon the estimate he had put before them? Either the Treasury Authorities had based their calculations on some data or they had chanced them, and if they had chanced them those calculations were not worth the paper they were written on. If, however, the calculations were based on data, why could not the Government give such data to the House, and allow the House to judge of the fairness or unfairness of the proposition? The right hon. Gentleman just now dealt with what he called the 10 per cent. reduction he was going to allow. He (Mr. Heneage) would not discuss the point, but the right hon. Gentleman said he was practically giving the landowner twice the amount he was entitled to where the laud was mortgaged for one-half that value. Could anything be more absurd? The landowner had to keep up and maintain the whole estate and pay the whole expenses of it whether it was mortgaged by half or three-quarters, and he was as much entitled to his return on that, scanty as it was, as if the whole property were his own. Now, he wished to deal with the proposal to assimilate personalty and realty from a practical point of view. In his opinion, the whole question of the fairness of the tax depended largely on its mode of application. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer laid down two premises about the Death Duties when bringing in his Budget. The first was, that the State had a right to a share of the corpus of the whole property. They had heard it called the corpus; they had heard it called the capital value, and they had heard it called by another name to-night, but they had never been told what it was, in relation to realty. The second proposition of the right hon. Gentleman was that the State had an inferior title to those who shared the property. If that was the case, the demand made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Sleaford was a legitimate one, because, if the State had an inferior title to take its share in the corpus, he (Mr. Heneage) did not see how it could call in those who had to share it afterwards to mortgage it, and they had a right to say, " If you do require the corpus take a piece of the land." What he (Mr. Heneage) wanted to know was what was the corpus of the land taken? It did not include land mortgaged or on which both mortgages and charges might have to be deducted, and which, therefore, had no reference to the new Estate Duty; but when they came to consider what was the value of the property he imagined there was a great difference between the value of personalty and of realty. He would point out that there were two kinds of personalty, the first consisting of Consols, and railway shares, and investments which could be easily realised, and which there was no difficulty in taxing; and the second, personalty invested in trade, which was paying perhaps 8 or 10 per cent. In neither case would there be any difficulty in paying the tax. There were, again, two classes of realty: first, that which was entirely separate from agricultural land, such as leasehold house property—and however hard the duty might fall on that it was to a certain extent personalty, and could be valued and sold or mortgaged. The other class of realty was agricultural land. With regard to this, he wanted to know, first of all, what was the corpus they were going to tax; and, secondly, how were they going to tax it? In Lincolnshire, although farms were let at 30 and 40 per cent less than formerly, and though the cost of the maintenance of property had risen from 12 to 20, 25, and 30 per cent., land was unsaleable piecemeal, and unless the whole estate was disposed of at once. They were told that under the Bill the existing Probate, Account, and additional Succession Duty would cease to exist, and that there would be one Estate Duty levied on the principal value of all property that passed on death, whether real or personal, settled or unsettled. They were told that the principal value having been taken, the duty would be graduated according to the scale set forth in the Resolution. Then the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer told them that the whole of a property would be taxed in the same way. Take an estate of the capital value of £100,000. The State under the new Estate Duty would claim £6,000. In the case of personalty that would be about one and a-half year's interest, and in the case of trade investments about one year's interest. In the case of realty— leasehold property—it would probably be about the same as personalty. But what would it be in the case of an estate of 4,000 acres which produced, say, £1 an acre or £4,000 a year? How many years' purchase did they propose to put on that? If they took it the same as they took realty, in land and houses—or town property—and put it at 20 or 25 years' purchase, it would bring in £100,000. But were they going to tax the whole of that? That would be extremely unfair. In the first three classes of property he had mentioned—the two cases of personalty and the case of leasehold property— there were no outgoings except the Income Tax; but in the case of agricultural property, they must deduct 25 per cent. first of all for maintenance. Why did he say that? Because the expenses were not only the same, but in most cases more than they were before the rentals were reduced 40 per cent., and therefore the maintenance, which was formerly 12 per cent., was now actually 20 per cent. on the reduced rentals, and they must add at least 5 per cent. for the extra cost thrown on the landowner for what was properly tenants' work, but which the tenants could not afford to do. It was usual to put into agreements that tenants were to do certain painting, and work in connection with fence renewals, gates, cleaning out water-courses, and so forth. The tenants, however, had not the money to do these things. Anyone who had anything to do with the management of an estate — and he had managed one without agents for 25 years, and was familiar with every detail of such management — could appreciate the force of the old adage, "A stitch in time saves nine." A landlord would rather do repairs at a small cost than wait until a tenant went and then pay ten times as much to make good the property. Therefore, he maintained it was under the mark to say that the maintenance of an estate cost 25 per cent. The Chancellor of the Exchequer asked him (Mr. Heneage) to take a night to think over this. Well, he had spent a good many hours in his office yesterday trying to find out the real truth of statements made to him by landowners as to the probable result of this tax. He had taken out very carefully all the maintenance of a purely agricultural estate, and he found that for the last three years it had been an average of 26 per cent., and he had not charged in that one sixpence for office, or clerks, or schools for which he paid. He thought he might give that as a concrete case. If the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer doubted it he should be glad to give him an abstract case, having the figures in his pocket. In addition to these outlays, there were the rates and taxes, which came now to 9 per cent.; therefore it was not too much to say that the outgoings of an estate were 35 per cent. before the landlord touched anything. Let them look at that in a concrete case. Take the case of a nominal rental of £4,000 per annum. For outgoings and maintenance deduct £1,000, for rates and taxes £360, and a quarter of the £6,000 Probate Duty and interest, which was £1,640, amounting to £3,000 altogether, leaving the owner of the land only £1,000 a year for the first four years—probably for the first five years, because he would have to pay, under the new scheme, interest on the money due, whereas under the Land Tax an abatement was received. That was a serious thing, but what would be the ultimate results? Radical stamp orators, following the lead of the right hon. Gentleman, would go about the country saying— " Oh! don't bother about this tax, because it was only the landlords who would be hurt." He denied it. The persons who would be hurt more than anybody else during the first five years after the death of the owner would be the tenants and the labourers. It would be absolutely necessary for the successor to cut down the expenses to the smallest possible amount. It would be impossible to give abatements to his tenants, or allow them to get into arrears, and he would be compelled to keep them up to their agreements, otherwise dilapidations would accumulate. What, then, would become of the labourers? And would not all this affect the trade of the district? They in Lincolnshire knew what it was to have very few resident landlords, and they knew what effect that had both upon the employment of labour and upon trade interests in agricultural towns. He therefore submitted that this was not only a landowner's question, because many estates would be forced into the market, and heaven knows who would be the new landlords! It was necessary to know what was the basis of valuation. Was it to be the rental after the charge for the maintenance and the taxes had been deducted, or was it to be the whole rental? How many years' purchase were to be taken? He was told that in Wales, where there were many small holdings, the land was sold at 24 years' purchase. An hon. Member opposite had told them that laud was not worth more than £5 an acre. He did not know what number of years' purchase they would call that; but he was certain of one thing —that in Lincolnshire at the present moment they could not sell a farm apart from a large property at 15 years' purchase; indeed, he did not believe that farms were saleable at all. If the charge the right hon. Gentleman proposed was a fair one, he (Mr. Heneage) was not going to object, but he did think he had a right to ask for information and to know whether it was a fair tax; and those upon whose calculations it was based knew what they were doing. The right hon. Gentleman appealed to the land-lords as to whether he had not done something for them by granting a 10 per cent. abatement on the Income Tax in respect of maintenance. It was something, and it would have been gratefully received 20 years ago; but, as he had shown, the real cost of maintenance was now 25 per cent., and not 10 per cent. But even supposing there had been reason for some gratitude the right hon. Gentleman had taken it away by his Beer Duty, which would reduce the price of barley by at least 2s. a quarter. The gratitude which the landowners might feel for the abatement in question was very much watered down by what the Chancellor of the Exchequer had done in other ways. He (Mr. Heneage) had only risen with the object of trying, if possible, to get some information. He regretted that the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Secretary of State for India had been in such a hurry to speak before anyone, but one or two gentlemen on the Front Bench opposite had taken part in the discussion and had not allowed independent Members to ask questions. He hoped, however, that before the evening was out some other Member of the Government would give the Committee more information than it had had up to the present time.

said that, although of course he listened with great respect and attention to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he could not say, like the hon. Member who preceded him, that he rose in a conciliatory mood or merely for the purpose of asking information. No doubt they would receive all the information they desired in the course of the lengthened Debates which must take place on the Budget; but his present object in rising was to express the deep disappointment with which those interested in laud regarded the Budget, a feeling which was not sensibly mitigated by the very slender concession made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in relation to the Income Tax. For that concession they of course thanked him, but, after all, it was the very smallest of small mercies, and would have no countervailing effect upon the grievous injury about to be inflicted on the landed interest by the provision of the Budget as to the Death Duties. It was not fair to level up the landed interest in respect to direct taxation with the other propertied classes when at the same time it had to bear such a heavy burden of local taxation. He was one to join in the chorus of " No, no " which greeted the remark of the right hon. Gentleman, that those concerned in laud wished to exempt themselves from the burdens of taxation. They had no such desire; but when they were burdened so heavily and so unjustly in respect of local taxation, they ought not to be treated upon the equalisation principle in respect of direct taxation. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer would relieve them from the burdens of local taxation they would take the chance of the principal valuation theory in estimating the Succession Duty, and he was sure they would mightily gain by the change. The Secretary of State for India, in an elaborate statistical analysis, had sought to show that the burden of local taxation was less upon the rural classes at the present time than it had been in two past generations, but in order to come to that conclusion the right hon. Gentleman excluded half the burdens upon land. They had always argued that; there was no reason why real property and agricultural land should bear the entire burden of the Poor Law. That was not necessarily a burden incidental to the land alone. In the same way, why had the right hon. Gentleman excluded the highway rate from his calculation? The abolition of turnpikes was a silly and unjust proceeding, the result of the Act being to place upon landowners the burden of keeping up the roads for the benefit of classes who contributed nothing to the land. He was aware he might be reminded that his own Party took this step, but that did not make it a right thing, and that unfortunate act had resulted in throwing upon the land the burden of maintaining roads for bicyclists, for the general merchant, for travellers, and for other classes who represented traffic that brought no benefit to the land. With the exception of tithe and Land Tax they did not admit that any of the burdens now thrown upon land were necessarily incidental to land or inherent in landed property. They were burdens which ought not to be borne exclusively by owners of land. He demurred, therefore, most absolutely to the calculations of the right hon. Gentleman who represented the Local Government Board in the House with so much ability last Session. But whether it were true or not that the burden of local taxation was less now than it had been at any time in the last 50 or 60 years, they asserted that it was more than they were able to bear. Landed property in this country was fast approaching the condition of prairie value. When they considered all that the landowner had to do and the burdens he had to bear, what had he to spend upon himself' or for himself? When he had paid his tithes, his rates and taxes, his agency charges, and when he had paid for the up-keep of his property, and paid his various local subscriptions to schools and the like—when he had done everything that a gentleman ought to do for his farms—what had he left? He had almost nothing. They were in a descending scale, and eventually the landlord would get little more for his farm than he got for his park or garden. It was no doubt a very interesting thing to own a farm and for a man to think himself a little "monarch of all he surveyed," but there was little more to be got from it than from any other ornamental piece of land. It had not quite come to that yet, but they were on a descending scale which would reach to that, and under such circumstances it was a most unfortunate time to throw additional burdens on the land. Everything depended upon valuation, and he hoped the House would take note of the explanation given on that point by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Great Grimsby. The right hon. Gentleman had shown that when the up-keep and all these other things were accounted for a fair valuation of the laud would bring out almost nothing, on the theory, at least, of the Chancellor of the Exchequer that all that was to be touched was the margin. If the margin meant that which a man would have to spend or which he could send to his bankers the sum would be so small, if fairly calculated, as to be almost valueless. There might be a valuation made by the taxing officer, or the Inland Revenue Department, or the Treasury, but it would not agree with the valuation of those who had to bear the cost. Those who had to bear the cost said that if this margin the Chancellor of the Exchequer spoke of were fairly calculated, it would be so small as to leave scarcely anything to the landlord. As for the former misfortunes which befel the land which had been adverted to by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the right hon. Gentleman had spoken of all that had happened in Oxfordshire in the year 1835 or thereabouts. No doubt land in those days was so burdened as to be worth less than nothing. As the Americans said when the value of land was depreciated, "It is so had that you cannot give it away." No doubt land in Oxfordshire in those days was in such a state as that, still the misfortune wag not to be compared with the misfortune that now hung over the land. What was the cause of the former misfortunes? It was bad legislation in an utterly inefficient and unworkable Poor Law. But that was a remediable matter, and the evil was remedied by legislation. But what legislation could remedy the evils that now threatened landowners? Those evils were such that neither legislation nor Kings could cure. Everyone who understood the condition of the British Empire and of the world must be aware of that. These evils were of a permanent character, and would become aggravated year by year, and that was one among hundreds of other reasons why no fresh burden could be imposed. It was a suitable suggestion that the State should take this Succession Duty in the shape of its pound of flesh—that was to say, should take a piece of the land. Let the Treasury take the land. It would learn a useful lesson. It would find out what was the real and true value of the land. They would see what a small fringe or margin there was; they would be like Sindbad with a mountain on their back. Politically and financially they would have a millstone round their neck, and would recognise at last what the burdens on the land were. They would be made to feel the evils they inflicted on the landowners. He did not know that without quoting statistics he could enter further upon his denunciation—for that was what it came to—of the measure now being forced upon the House. This measure knocked a nail into the coffin of the dying land interest—for he believed that as a paying financial concern the land interest was dying. No doubt it would exist for social and political purposes, but when one thought of all the misfortunes that fell on the great landed interest one could only say, " God help the man who succeeds with this heavy Succession Duty hung round his neck." When one thought of all the landowner's mortgages and burdens and liabilities, and, on the other hand, of all the honourable responsibilities which he could not evade, it was clear that he could have nothing left for himself to spend and no balance at his bankers, so far as his landed property was concerned. Could the Government wonder if they said that this Succession Duty was only another means devised for robbing the poor? [ Laughter. ] Hon. Members might treat the matter lightly, but he believed that the poorest class of persons in this land were those unfortunate gentlemen who had to look to their landed property alone as their one source of income. No doubt many landowners held property of other kinds, but those who had nothing but real estate to depend on were in a miserable condition indeed. They were poor in the true, economic, moral, and social sense of the term. It was on this class of men and on this class of property that this new burden was to be imposed. This was admittedly a time of agricultural depression. Could the Government wonder if agriculturists regarded the imposition of this new burden as oppressive? The Government could not be surprised if they saw the landed interest throughout the country offering the most strenuous opposition to every stage of the measure.

^* said, that most extravagant ideas had been formed with regard to the great revenue and enormous financial advantages to be derived from a readjustment of the Death Duties. He believed, however, that as a matter of fact it would be found that the Government would derive at the end of the whole operation only a very moderate addition to the Exchequer by the re-adjustment of the Death Duties. He felt also that the time was not very appropriate for any increased taxation to be levied on the landed interest of this country. That interest, which just now was sorely depressed, was not confined to the landlord class alone, but intimately connected with it was the whole agricultural population and the inhabitants of the villages. The Government were, no doubt, imposing an increased burden upon the whole agricultural industry, and it was idle to suppose that it would fall upon the landlords alone. If the burden of altered taxation fell solely upon the landed interest, no doubt there would be a strong case for resisting it, but the increased taxation would fall also upon townland and houses and upon property in the neighbourhood of towns—building and other land which had not been in this depressed condition. He was bound to say that, with reference to the re-adjustment of the Death Duties in regard to town properties, the Government had a very strong case. He hoped that in the practical dealing with this matter the Government would endeavour, as far as possible, to adjust the burden that it might fall as lightly as possible upon the agricultural interest, and might fall with due weight upon real estate and property in towns which had increased largely in value, and was well able to bear increased taxation. No doubt the proposal before the Committee was the result of a good deal of agitation for the reform of the Death Duties, and he did not think, now that it was made by the responsible Government, it would be possible to resist it in principle. It was difficult to say that one class of property ought to have exceptional treatment. The two things being equal, real property and personal property ought to be subject to equal taxation. In the past, land, and especially agricultural laud, had borne special burdens, and it had consequently been relieved of a certain amount of Imperial taxation. This had been, to a certain extent, re-adjusted, and he was not prepared to say that the time had not arrived when it was necessary to reconsider the principles of taxation as applied to the Death Duties. It was, of course, an advantage to the owners of real estate to be charged upon the life interest instead of upon the capital value, but it was not in some cases so great an advantage as some people imagined. It was not such an enormous advantage where the life was a young life, because the capitalised value of the life interest was in that case very great; but where the life was an average life, or an old life, there was a considerable advantage to the successor. He knew of a case where, under special circumstances, the Succession Duty at the present time would exceed the new Estate Duty proposed to be charged on the capital value of the property. It was the case of a freehold let on lease, and bringing in £120 a year. It was in Deptford, a part of London where property was not very high in value, and a Municipal Authority, which wished to purchase the property, offered £1,381, a little over 11 years' purchase. Now, according to the Succession Tables if the owner were to die and were to be succeeded by a man of 44, the amount on which the Government would be able to claim duty would be £1,684. He knew of another case where rents, from freehold property leased, amounting to £43 a year produced at an auction £1,325, or about 31 years' purchase. He cited these cases to show the enormous differences there were in the capital value of town property. He should like to say a. word or two with reference to settled property. He would first take the case of an estate producing a clear £5,000 a year. He assumed that the property was in strict settlement, a father who was first tenant-for-life, and a son who was second tenant-for-life, with remainder to his issue for an estate tail. There would be two successions—the first when the tenant-for-life died, and the second when the second tenant-for-life died and the tenant - in - tail came into possession, and he assumed for the purpose of the argument that the second tenant-for-life and the tenant-in-tail succeeded at the age of 44. Under the present system the Government would get out of this settlement £3,500, but under the system now proposed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer they would get £8,750, or more than double the receipt under the existing system. In the case of an estate of £2,000 a year settled, under similar circumstances the Government would get £1,400 under the existing system, and £2,750 under the new system. In the case of an estate settled in the same way, and bringing in £200 a year, the Government would, under present circumstances, get £84, and under the new duty they would get £200. In the case of a settled estate, there would be a practical difficulty in raising money to provide for the duty. The Chancellor of the Exchequer suggested that provision should be made in the Bill giving the tenant - for - life power to charge the estate with an amount sufficient to pay the duty—in fact, to make a mortgage on the estate for the purpose. That mortgage would have to come behind any existing mortgages. In the case of an estate that was mortgaged to its full value there would be a very considerable difficulty in raising the duty by mortgage. Imagine a large estate, mortgaged perhaps to the extent of £100,000, and the tenant-for-life having to raise from £2,000 to £5,000. He would have no more chance of borrowing that sum behind the £100,000 mortgage than he would have of flying. The Chancellor of the Exchequer would have to deal with this practical difficulty. He would suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that under such circumstances the tenant-for-life might be allowed to pay on the capitalised value of his life interest, and that the claim to the full duty on the whole estate might be postponed. The authorities at Somerset House did postpone payments now by arrangement. Something certainly would have to be done in reference to a great many estates which were heavily mortgaged, or there would be great difficulty on the part of the Government in getting the money. The main question was, how the Government were to arrive at the capital value? He supposed that when the Chancellor of the Exchequer talked about "principal value" he meant capital value. Was the capital value to be the saleable value? If so, it could not be arrived at except by putting the property into the market for sale. If it was to be the estimated value, how was it to be estimated? The Chancellor of the Exchequer said it was to be fixed by the authorities at Somerset House, subject to appeal in a Court of Law. The Chancellor of the Exchequer must have greater confidence in the knowledge of the authorities at Somerset House than most Members had. The valuing of property in London alone was a most difficult thing. He had given the Committee instances of two London properties, one of which was valued at about 10 years' and the other at 31 years' purchase, and when one considered the complicated interests that arose under the leasehold system, one saw at once how difficult the valuation of London was. Properties all over the country would have to be valued. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Forest of Dean (Sir C. Dilke) had said that the authorities had been too lax, inasmuch as they had accepted valuations far below the proper amount. The right hon. Gentleman proposed that the value should in future be increased. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said the successor to an estate would get the most eminent valuer and take his valuation to Somerset House, where it would be accepted. But eminent valuers differed materially in their opinion, and if the views of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Forest of Dean (Sir C. Dilke) were to prevail, the Government would be very exact in this matter, and if the duty did not produce quite so much as the Chancellor of the Exchequer expected, the authorities of Somerset House would have an intimation that they were to see that the full value was paid. That would lead to Government valuers, who would be employed to act for the Government, to survey and value the properties throughout the country. He need hardly say that when they came to deal with the question of capital value of properties in London, and the varied interests connected with it, they would have the keenest discussions as to the value to be put on property for Estate Duty; then there would be appeals and a contest of surveyors, who were not in the habit of charging light fees. Lawyers charged fairly well, but his experience was that they were not in it with surveyors for charging. But they would not only have a contest of surveyors, but they would have a lawsuit as well, and a case like a compensation case would be fought out in the Law Courts. Was that desirable? Was it desirable that the valuation should rest upon estimated value to be debated and discussed on the reports of surveyors and fought out in Courts of Law upon the expert evidence of surveyors? He must say he saw great practical difficulties and great expense inflicted upon people in connection with the levying of these duties. If they paid anything the Government chose to ask, well and good, but he doubted whether they would be in that submissive frame of mind, therefore he thought this would be attended with great difficulties and enormous expense. But what other course was there? Why not, to a certain extent, adopt the course that at present prevailed; why not do what was done at Somerset House at the present time. Why not divide the property into classes; put on the classes of property a scale. Why not take the annual value, deducting from it all outgoings, showing the clear net value, capitalise that net value, and deduct from that all the charges upon the estate? That was well understood at the present time at Somerset House, as it was the course that prevailed in reference to the existing Estate Duty. He produced one of the forms on which the payment of the present Estate Duty was paid, and on that form the particulars were — description of property, gross rack rental or annual value, landlords' outgoings, such as repairs, insurance, &c, net annual value, estimated number of years' purchase, and the gross capital value. Then the amounts were brought out, and from the amount of capitalised value of the net income the amount of incumbrances and charges was deducted, showing the clear net value of the property. On this amount the present Estate Duty was charged. That was the system that at present prevailed. They could lay down a scale of valuations applicable to particular kinds of property, say 25 years' purchase for London ground rents, from 15 to 20 years' purchase for freehold houses, and so many years' purchase, according to the length of lease, for certain leasehold houses. If they did that, they could work out the duty without introducing the uncertainty, and the complications, and the expense which lie behind and would be introduced by the proposals of the right hon. Gentleman. Why the system that at present prevailed should not be adapted to this new duty he could not for the life of him understand. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said that was all very well on a rising market, but when property was decreasing in value it would work against the interest of the owners of property. It was odd that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should make use of that argument. If it worked against the Government in one case, it might possibly work for the Government in the other. He did not believe it would be beyond the ability of surveyors to form a scale applicable to particular properties, and charging the duty on the capital value according to the net income derived from the particular property in each scale. He made a present of the suggestion to the Secretary to the Treasury. He did not put the suggestion forward with absolute confidence, but he suggested it for consideration as to whether it was not a more certain and more satisfactory mode of arriving at the real value of property than the mode which the right hon. Gentleman suggested, which was most uncertain and calculated to be most expensive, and was one of the great difficulties in the way of carrying out what the right hon. Gentleman proposed. There was no difficulty in calculating the capital value of a large portion of the personal property of the country, but when they came to the property known as real estate they were met with difficulties. He believed these proposals of the Chancellor of the Exchequer were proposals it was difficult in principle to resist. He thought special provision should be made with regard to that class of property that was most depressed and which, at the present time, was practically unsaleable, but upon the broad proposition of equalising the Death Duties the feeling of the general public was in favour of it. He hoped the Government, however, would extend all the consideration they were capable of to the owners of agricultural land, in which he believed the country would support them. The people in the towns had no desire to see the agricultural interest unduly burdened or treated with any want of consideration. On the contrary, they hoped the Government would as far as they could adapt the charge to the special difficulties of the agricultural situation and of those men who unfortunately had agricultural property.

said, that at the commencement of his remarks he would like to state that he did not speak as one who had any expectations; his expectations he had realised, and he need hardly say that as they were all in land they did not come up quite to what might have been expected. When they were asked to consent to these proposals which the Chancellor of the Exchequer had made, though they might not perhaps be in the position of having expectations, they had to consider those who came after them, and not only those who came after them, but those who lived on their estates, those whom, he maintained, would not be in any way benefited, but rather injured, by the proposals—namely, the labourers and tenant-farmers on the estate. He understood the Chancellor of the Exchequer to assert that they who were interested in land, who knew something about the management of land, were making a claim for land to be treated in an exceptional way. Now, he did not think that was the case at all. When he stated that land in other countries was only taxed to the extent of 5 per cent., while the land in this country was taxed to the extent of 13 per cent., he did not think that in resisting these proposals, as some of them were going to do, and as, speaking for himself personally, he intended to do, that they were making any claim for land to be treated in an exceptional manner. He need hardly remind the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who knew it as well as he did, that the rates were only levied on real property—that was to say, on laud and houses. He asked the Committee to compare the contributions to the Public Purse of two men who invested £1,000 each—one in land and houses and the other in some British or foreign security. Supposing both men lived for 20 years, and paid an average Income Tax of 6d. in the £1 and rates at 2s. 6d. in the £1, and received interest at the rate of 5 per cent. on their investment. "A," who invested in securities, would pay Income Tax at the rate of 25s. a year, or £25 in 20 years. He would pay Death Duty at 3 per cent., or £30 in all, and his total contribution to the Public Purse in 20 years would be £55. On the other hand, "B," who had invested his £1,000 in real estate, would have to pay, including all charges for the 20 years, £157 10s., or three times the amount he would have had to pay had he invested his money in British or foreign securities. From these figures it was perfectly obvious that land was unfairly treated as compared with personal property. He understood the Chancellor of the Exchequer to state that the rates, &c, were charged on the land, and when people bought it they did so minus those charges, and, therefore, ought not to say anything about this proposal of the new Estate Duty. That would be all very well in the case of intending purchasers of land, but how did it affect the owners of land at the present time? He did not think it would be much consolation to them to think this proposal of the Chancellor of the Exchequer would, according to the right hon. Gentleman, be an extra charge on land, and take so much off the value for selling purposes.

The taxing value of the land would be its selling value.

said, he perfectly understood the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but what he wished to express was the selling value would be put down to the extent of that charge that would be placed on the land, and therefore it would not be much consolation to the owners of land to be told by the Chancellor of the Exchequer that the rates, &c, were a charge on the land. He should like to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer a question on one particular point, and that was with reference to the case of a jointure. In the case of a jointure where the Succession Duty had been paid by the jointure holder on the old tables, when that jointure fell in to the owner or tenant for life, would he have to pay on the capital value or only on his life interests? Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman would presently kindly inform the Committee. It was obvious a person might have been in possession of the property, but might not succeed to the jointure until he became an old man and until within a few years of his death, and he thought the Committee and the country would like to know whether he would have to pay on the capital value or only on his life interest? From a Parliamentary Paper issued by the Chancellor of the Exchequer he found that the value of property was to be determined by the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, subject to an appeal to the High Court. Though he was not a lawyer he would submit it was a well-known axiom that a man might not be a judge in his own cause. It was obvious it would be to the interest of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue to obtain as much as they could, and that would be the case of a man being a judge in his own cause. As to the competency of some of the gentlemen at Somerset House he would like to mention to the Committee a case that came to his notice the other day. A case was sent up for Probate and Succession Duty, and in the deductions there was a claim for the tithe averages. The gentleman from Somerset House sent back to ask what tithe averages were, and a considerable amount of time and correspondence was wasted in explaining to this person what tithe averages were; therefore, he asked if these gentlemen were competent to value a very large agricultural estate? But, after all, as this was a matter that concerned them, what did this proposed tax mean? He ventured to submit it meant a total ignoring of the agricultural depression and the agricultural interest, which was, perhaps, the greatest separate interest in the country. He knew they were told that the deduction on the Income Tax of the working expenses was some set-off, and in mentioning that he would like to say that that deduction was the admission of a very great principle, because up to now he believed he was right in stating the agricultural industry was the only industry that had had to pay Income Tax on its gross income and not on its profits. He did not believe that any other industry in the country was called upon to pay on its gross proceeds. He thought, however, the admission of this principle was important, even though only 10 per cent. was taken as the cost of working the estate. And here he would like to corroborate the statement of the Member for the London University (Sir J. Lubbock), when he said that 10 per cent. did not represent the expense of the working of an estate. He thought the proposals of the Chancellor of the Exchequer would affect most injuriously the owners of small freeholds, and on large estates they would operate to throw the labourers out of employment, with the result that those thus thrown out of employment would flock even more than was the case now to the large towns, and still further aggravate the great question of the unemployed.

^* said, that the last speaker had informed the Committee that he had no expectations whatever. He (Lord Willoughby de Eresby) had expectations, and he could safely say that when the Chancellor of the Exchequer introduced his proposals it was easy for anyone who had any expectations to make a sum and ascertain what was the amount of Succession Duty he would have to pay. He must congratulate the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the very clear way he had placed his proposals before the Committee, by which a man who was about to receive an income from personalty could readily calculate the amount of Succession Duty he would have to pay. That was to say, if he were heir to some £500,000 or £1,000,000 a year he would take the graduated duties, and would be perfectly able to tell what he would have to pay as Succession Duty for two or three years, and up to that time he would be a pauper. But in regard to real property, the computation was rather more difficult, since it entirely depended on what the Chancellor of the Exchequer had chosen to call the marketable value of land. He entirely dissented from the mode of collecting money by Death Duties, considering, as he did, that every person and every generation ought to pay yearly the debt of the country. If a certain sum of money was to be raised in the country, that sum should be paid by everybody, but chiefly, no doubt, by the rich. He had no doubt that it was an axiom by hon. Gentlemen opposite that accumulated capital should pay a greater share of the taxation of the country, and he entirely shared that view. As to how far representation and taxation should go together was a question on which he should differ with certain hon. Gentlemen opposite. With regard to accumulated capital, it seemed to him that a man should pay on the income he had derived from it during his lifetime. He knew he should be met with the argument that the Income Tax once raised to a certain height was easy of evasion; but, on the other hand, he considered the Succession Duty was also easy of evasion. He considered that by the tax of Succession Duty the heir was left to pay a debt which the person from whom he inherited the property ought to have paid in his lifetime. If they wished to tax the millionaire or the rich man, they should tax him during his lifetime and not wait until he was dead, and then tax the heir on the ground that the man he succeeded should have paid the amount of such duty to the country. He believed the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself in introducing his Budget said he proposed that every year should pay its own bill. On the very same principle the people who enjoyed the good things of this world during their lifetime should be made to pay, and this payment should not be left to their heirs. The accumulated capital and money of the country did not entirely consist of cash. Accumulated capital was invested in many ways, in pictures and statues, or perhaps a millionaire might take the whim of spending his money in bricks and mortar. When the unfortunate heir succeeded to the pictures, although he might know a water-colour from an oil-painting, by the proposal of the Government—and also be was sorry to say of Conservative Governments as well—he was called upon to pay Succession Duty on things he knew and cared nothing about. In the same way, if a millionaire had invested his money in building a magnificent country house, when his heir succeeded to the property the State immediately came down upon him for the Succession Duty on the value of the house, which would practically force him to sell at any price, and it would be a fortunate thing if the County Council of the county required a lunatic asylum and would, for that purpose, pay a good price for the house, which would enable him to pay off some part of the Succession Duty. There was another point in the proposals of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to which he strongly objected, and that was the proposal to place real property on the same footing as personal property. It was perfectly certain that if they taxed any industry the burden would be felt by all the classes in that industry, and he held that by increasing the taxation on real property it was absolutely felt by all classes connected with it. There was no doubt that at the present moment agriculture was one of the most depressed industries, and those who represented agricultural constituencies had come to the Government and asked for bread, but had received a stone. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in moving his Resolutions, said no doubt hon. Members on the Opposition side of the House would, in their ingenuity, invent plenty of cases in which hardship would occur over the Succession Duties. He had such a case to bring before the right hon. Gentleman. A gentleman had allowed him to look to the actual state of his property, and in quoting his case he should be able to show the Committee that the present tax which the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed to impose in the form of Death Duties would be a most unfair tax, not only on the gentleman who succeeded to the estate, but also on every other person who was living or working upon the estate. He would take for his example an estate which was a purely agricultural one, and he should particularly like to call the attention of the right hon. Baronet the Member for the Forest of Dean to the illustration. That right hon. Gentleman had said that it would be almost impossible to find an estate which had not some dealing with a town or town property, or which, owing to its proximity to a town, could not find an easy market for its goods. He could assure the right hon. Gentleman that the case he was going to quote was a case which he seemed to consider so difficult to be found. There was a great quantity of laud in this country which was not in the least increased in value on account of its proximity to town. The estate of which he was speaking was situated in the Eastern Counties, and so far from finding an easy market for their goods, it cost considerably more to take a quarter of wheat from that part of the country to the manufacturing districts of Liverpool and Manchester than it did to convey a quarter of wheat from abroad to those places. The property was purely agricultural, and if they examined into the books they might, no doubt, find that the rent-roll of the property amounted to £60,000 a year—a handsome rent-roll, no doubt. On that there was a mortgage of £300,000. Taking these figures, it would be found that the Succession Duty would be £96,000. The actual receipts from that estate, after paying all outgoings, were £15,000, but from that they would have to deduct £9,000, the interest on mortgage, leaving the owner with the more modest income of £6,000. What did the Chancellor of the Exchequer propose to do in that case? He proposed to come down on the owner for £96,000 Succession Duty. It would take 16 years for the gentleman who succeeded to that estate before the Succession Duty could be paid off, and during that period the heir to this princely estate would be an absolute pauper. This was not the worst of the Government proposals. They seemed to impose terms on the agricultural interest even worse than the terms proposed by Shylock, for Shylock demanded his pound of flesh, but was not allowed to draw the blood. The proposals of the Government were that they were to have the pound of flesh and draw the blood as well. They were to draw the money and the Succession Duty, and then after that, though it was an absolute impossibility to pay off the Succession Duty, they would draw blood in the shape of interest out of the wretched proprietor by charging on the amount that could not be paid in the proper time. It might be urged that this income of £6,000 might be increased. So it might, but how? By stopping all buildings and all improvements, and by increasing the rent for labourers' cottages. The end would be that the landlord would be placed in the position of a tax-collector for the Government. It would be his duty to see how much he could screw out of the tenants and the labourers, and then, if he had done his duty well, if he had given satisfaction, when he reached tottering old age he would be able to screw something out of them for himself. He considered that these were most infamous proposals. It might be argued that it was unnecessary for landlords to put this amount of capital in the land. On the estate to which he had referred during the last 20 years nearly £500,000 had been spent on what was called permanent improvements. In the case of permanent improvements the landlord naturally expected that he would be gradually increasing the value of his property. But what did they find? In these 20 years the net receipts had fallen exactly one-half, and he should like to ask hon. Gentlemen opposite in what condition the land on that estate would be at the present moment if there had been no money put into it? It was impossible to cultivate clay land and produce corn crops unless an enormous amount of capital had been spent on such land. It would take three horses to plough it, and it was no use to go and scratch at it with a donkey and harrow. He was prepared to be met with the argument that it was perfectly easy to pay off the Succession Duty by mortgaging the property and borrowing money for this purpose. He was entirely against that course. Considering how hard it was on agricultural land to make any profits at all, it would be one of the worst things that could possibly be done to create a fresh mortgage in the land. The moment they created fresh mortgages so far would that estate be in a much worse position. He asked hon. Gentlemen who had experience of the county to go round and look for themselves. They would find that on the estate which was placed in the hands of the mortgagees every man, woman, and child was a great deal worse off than where the property was managed by a landlord. He was prepared to face the whole question of these Death Duties, and if the Chancellor of the Exchequer would accept some really just principle of taxation he should not say a word against the principle of graduated Death Duties. He thought that one principle of graduated Death Duties was that the accumulated capital of the country should be more widely spread and large estates broken up. But from what he could make out from the Chancellor of the Exchequer's proposals he did not intend to bring I hat about, because if a man died worth £1,000,000 and left it divided among six or seven children they would have to pay 8 per cent. as Succession Duty on the share of money received, so from that point of view he did not quite see that it was the object of the Government to create a wider diffusion of money. What he should like to have some definite information upon was as to how the question of the marketable value of land and real property was to be determined. There was no doubt that when a man inherited a property he would be quite willing to pay Succession Duty on his house, and the amenities he would receive from having a country residence and enjoying the amenities of country life. He was unfortunately heir-apparent to a ghost, which was among the heirlooms, and he did not know whether that would be included in the Succession Duty. Take the case of the estate he had mentioned where £6,000 was the amount which practically went into the pockets of the owner. He raised no objection to that £6,000 being capitalised and taxed for Succession Duty, which at 4 percent, would amount to £150,000, but the moment they began to tax the gross or the net rental of the land they would be taxing not the rich man, but the tenant and the labourer on the estate. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had tried to quiet their fears on this subject by saying the market value of the estate would be taken. He had no objection to the amount a landlord placed in his pocket being capitalised, and his being charged Succession Duty on that amount, but what had been the treatment the agricultural interest had received for years and years? Take the estate he had mentioned. Instead of paying Income Tax on £6,000 the landlord had actually paid on £40,000 a year, and they had no assurance that the Government would not come down on the heirs to landed estates and charge them at the same rate that they had charged for the Income Tax? The moment they began taxing beyond what the landlord himself put in his pocket, then most assuredly that taxation must fall upon the tenant-farmer and every labourer on the estate, and they ought to have some assurance that the labourers and tenant-farmers should not have to pay the penalty of this tax.

^* would like to say a few words on the Resolution from a business point of view. The re-modelling of the Death Duties was, to his mind, the most important and praiseworthy feature in this very satisfactory Budget, especially because these proposals embodied a marked principle of graduated taxation. The past week had afforded him opportunities for consideration and inquiry outside this House, and the result of his inquiry in his constituency and the City of London had been to find that the prevailing opinion was greatly in favour of this Budget, and he had been astonished to hear in the City of London, even from gentlemen who were opposed to him in politics, very favourable expressions with regard to the Death Duties. The question had been raised as to the valuation of landed property. He presumed there would be no difficulty respecting freehold house property. That would be valued as easily, or perhaps easier, than leaseholds. For he knew leaseholds that would puzzle a valuer, because when they approached the expiration of the term of the ground lease their value would depend mainly upon the chances and advantages of renewal. A question had been asked the previous day in reference to estates mortgaged up to, or very near to, their full value in the market. But when property was mortgaged up to its full value the new proposals would not apply at all, and, in fact, the owner would derive a benefit from the reduction of taxation. Valuations for Probate were, in his experience, generally far beneath marketable value, and the case of estates heavily mortgaged would, no doubt, be favourably considered by the Government, in the same way as now Government accepted valuations, leaving a considerable margin. Suppose the estate to be valued, say, at £50,000, and there were mortgages to that extent on the property, naturally the Death Duties would not apply at all in such a case. If mortgaged to the extent of £40,000, the Estate Duty would only be on £10,000, amounting to £400 payable in eight years by instalments. Where, then, was the grievance? By the proposed changes taxation would not be materially increased, but would be much more justly spread. The equalisation of taxes on realty and personalty had been demanded for many years. If we were starting afresh in the putting on of Death Duties no one would seriously advocate the imposing of higher taxation on leaseholds which were terminable than on freeholds. We might as well tax Terminable Annuities more than Permanent Annuities. The Estate Duty was analogous to a progressive Income Tax, but it was in a much better form. If a man came into an estate of £500,000, producing £15,000 a year, that income would be reduced by Estate and Legacy Duties to £13,500, which was equal to a special Income Tax of 2s. in the £1, but collected in a much wiser form. As an ordinary Income Tax it would perpetuate the injustice of taxing professional income in the same way as income derived from realised property. In the case of a professional man with a large income his accumulations would be taxed with Estate Duty payable by his descendants. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was right in considering that the estimate of the yield of these duties was difficult to fix, and in regarding the change as experimental. From what he gathered from the remarks of the right hon. Gentleman this Estate Duty could not be evaded by investing money in personal property abroad. He was glad that such a system of evasion would be stopped, for he knew of cases in which the present Death Duties had been thus largely avoided. But he understood from his right hon. Friend that this alteration would not affect investments abroad in real estate. That puzzled him—as he was not a lawyer. No doubt the Estate Duty would be to some extent evaded by gifts during lifetime, especially by gifts instead of legacies to charities, and that would be a saving to the charities; while distribution by private gifts would in itself be a beneficial diffusion of wealth. But it would be only for a year or so that the idea of evading the duty would prevail, for, after all, people were disinclined to give away property in their lifetime. He did not see why the property deposited here by foreigners should not be taxed. There were large amounts sent to this country for safe custody by Foreign Potentates, and it ought to be taxed for our naval defence, which contributed to the security of this property. If the change clashed to some extent with entail and settlement, those were systems that ought to be modified or abolished. Large accumulations of property in a few hands contributed less than the diffusion of wealth to the solidity of the State. He hoped that next year the Chancellor of the Exchequer would undertake the simplification and equalisation of other taxes, such as stamps, to the inequality of which he had previously called attention. In any case the right hon. Gentleman had taken a great and progressive step towards placing the burdens of taxation where they would cause the least suffering.

said, the Debate had got into matters of mere detail, and rather far a field from the questions of more general interest with which it had dealt at an earlier stage. Before, however, he entered on these questions he wished to pay a tribute to the racy and interesting speech of the hon. Member for the Horn castle Division. He thought there was a great deal of cogency and common sense in the argument his hon. Friend had urged that every generation should bear its own burdens; but it was, perhaps, rather late for them to speak of carrying out that principle in the matter of the Succession Duties. He supposed the Chancellor of the Exchequer would say that since the time of Lazarus and Dives there had been a certain amount of authority for deferred payment. The Chancellor of the Exchequer asked for the alteration of the Succession Duties in the name of equality and justice; and the last speaker repeated the long-extant cry for the equalisation of taxes upon real and per- sonal property. The question was: Did these proposals of the Chancellor of the Exchequer really involve equality of taxation? The argument from the Opposition side of the House sought to show that land was taxed for truly Imperial purposes under many names, and that the present Death Duty was putting an additional burden on a particular form of capital which was ill able to bear it, and putting it so heavily that it would be impossible in many instances to bear it. The Secretary for India, arguing against it, gave them some interesting figures, in which he sought to prove, first, that, as a matter of fact, the total burdens per £1 on land at the present day were not so heavy as they were in a bygone time; and, in the second place, the right hon. Gentleman sought to show that many of these burdens were hereditary burdens, which had existed for a long time, and had been taken into consideration upon the land changing hands. He thought that the question of merely pointing to the amount of rates per £1 at the present moment as compared with former years had absolutely nothing to do with the question they were arguing, which was, he took it, that it being necessary for the exigencies of the country to provide additional money, should that money be borne exclusively by land or should personal property take its share? For simplicity's sake, let him suppose the only burden on land was the poor rate. They might be able to point to a time when that rate was exceptionally high, and was greater than it was now. What had that to do with the question? Take it another way. Supposing this deficit were proposed to be met by the Income Tax alone, and the Income Taxpayer said that was not fair, but that indirect taxation should bear its share, would it be a fair argument to say that at the time of Pitt the Income Tax was 10s. in the £1, while now it was only 8d., and that, therefore, additional taxation must be raised exclusively by increasing the Income Tax until it was raised to the old amount? The second point of the right hon. Gentleman was that these burdens were, so to speak, hereditary. This being an Imperial measure, it was not out of place for him to introduce Scottish procedure. The right hon. Gentleman's statement, so far as Scotland was concerned, could not be substantiated. The greatest burden falling on land in Scotland was the poor rate. Historically speaking, it was a rate which was not imposed on land, but according to means and substance. But landlords were principally caught. The present system by which the poor rate was principally put on land dated only from 1845. The great burden of modern education rates dated from the Act of 1872, and the next great burden was the Roads and Bridges Act of 1878. But even these were comparatively modern. Then there were Registration, Free Libraries, Contagious Diseases Acts, and Vaccination—all perfectly modern rates, which did not come under hereditary burdens at all, upon which the argument of the Secretary for India was based. While he admired the ingenuity of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, there was a fallacy in his argument. He said it was not necessary to talk about all these various burdens, to which he admitted that land was subjected, because the Death Duty he was putting on was calculated on the capital value, and he did not estimate the capital value until he deducted the various taxes which were imposed upon the land. That position, however, was unsound, because the right hon. Gentleman treated the two things as if they were mutually exclusive, whereas they were not so. Suppose the case of a lauded estate which brought in £1,000 a year, and was estimated as worth £30,000. and that the rates which pressed upon land alone were 2s. in the £1. That would give an assessment of £100 a year. That reduced the rental to £900 a year, which, calculated on 30 years' purchase, was £27,000—the capital value on which the right hon. Gentleman's Succession Duty would be calculated. The right hon. Gentleman said they had discounted the whole of the burdens which the laud paid; but he forgot that they were not paid on the £3,000 that were taken off", but on the whole £27,000. The right hon. Gentleman confused the assessment put upon yearly value and the calculated capitalised value. The right hon. Gentleman said the owners of real property could never complain of anything they had to bear in the way of exclusive burden if the particular tax that he put upon them was calculated upon the yearly value after that exclusive burden was deducted.

Not on the yearly value.

said, the only way capital value could be calculated was by taking so many years' purchase of the annual value. The right hon. Gentleman had given them one sporting allusion this evening, and he would offer another. He would offer a "swop," and say that if his argument was good as respected the land, let him put the Succession Duty on personalty after deducting the yearly value in the same way as he proposed for land. He would leave it to the Committee to judge whether the argument would be a sound one.

I accept it.

said, that the right hon. Gentleman accepted it. Well, let him put it another way. Suppose a foreign admirer of English statesmen left £20,000 to the Chancellor of the Exchequer—it was £20,000 that had never been in this country before, and he invested it half in land and half in personal property—did the right hon. Gentleman mean to say that he would get as much return from the £10,000 he invested in land as from the £10,000 he invested in personal property, and, if not, why? It would be largely because the burdens on real property under his scheme would be greater than the burdens on personal property. Yet the right hon. Gentleman told the Committee that there would be no greater stress on the one than on the other, because they were only to calculate it on the capital value of these properties. The right hon. Gentleman had given the whole subject the go-by by that argument, and no one supporting his proposals had dealt with the question of the pressure of taxation, for what were Imperial purposes, upon the landed interest, and had contended that it was just and equitable to put this great extra burden upon it. But the objections to the proposal did not end there. There were objections to the peculiar incidence of the tax. There was a great and inherent difference between personalty and real property. Personal property could always be sold in bits, and therefore there was no difficulty in realisation. But real property could not be treated in that way; in many cases its value would be destroyed if it was broken up. The Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed that these new taxes should be met by the landed proprietors by mortgages; and it was curious to observe that this was the first Government which had proposed mortgages as a means of meeting taxation. Money could not be raised on second mortgage on land except at ruinous interest, and the result would be that the State must either go without the duty or force a sale. Many Members thought it would be a good thing to break up estates in this country. He wondered if they ever thought how greatly the landlords in this country had been a buffer between the poor people and absolute want. In view of the great fall in prices, it would have been perfectly impossible to maintain the wages paid to the labourers but for the buffer of the landlord, and if the present landlord system was broken up the real deadliness of the blow would strike the people whom hon. Gentlemen opposite professed to befriend. He now wished to refer to one or two small matters. He understood from what the Chancellor of the Exchequer had said that there was to be no particular method or tribunal for valuing. He, with considerable experience, thought that a great misfortune. He believed that it would be a premium on dishonesty. It was all very well to say the State was easy in this matter. He had no objection to that attitude if there were always one valuer. But practically it was found that one subject was treated very differently as compared with another subject, these things being valued in different parts of the country on a completely different scale. In the case of the valuation of the bulk of personal property there was a practical protection in the Stock Exchange list; but if the Government did not set up some proper tribunal when they had to deal with the valuation of real property, it would be really a premium upon dishonesty. As it was, it was a difficult thing to value real property. There was really almost no limit to the divergence of honest opinion. What was the valuation of Devonshire House, supposing they chose to break it up?

said, that leaseholds were valued every day in London, and all over the country, for Probate Duty.

Oh, but what about freeholds? They knew what a leasehold was bringing in, but in a great many of the other cases they had no knowledge of what the property was bringing in. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would think about this as a practical matter, because if he did not he would certainly open the door to a great deal of cheating. In Scotland leaseholds were real property, and the result of the right hon. Gentleman's proposal would be that for the first time the agricultural tenant in Scotland would be taxed upon the succession of his lease. That, of course, was a direct burden on the agricultural industry. It "was a direct burden on the tenant-farmer, say, of a 19 years' lease, with 17 years to run. He had never bad to bear that burden before. He (Mr. Graham Murray) wanted to know how the right hon. Gentleman was facing a fact like that? It had also to be borne in mind that the proposals as to the payment of 1 per cent. upon settlement were utterly inapplicable to the system of Scottish law. In Scotland they had no system of remainders. The estate went down from one person to another by a sort of conduit pipe which was called, a destination. He hoped that the right hon. Gentleman would give some assurance that there should be clauses in the Bill by which a proprietor in Scotland in the settlement of his estate would not be put in any inferior position to his brother in England.

said, he desired to say a word or two, not as au advocate of the landlords, but rather us au a Invocate of the agricultural industry. It was a curious fact with regard to this taxation, which everybody had overlooked, that only £1,033,033 out of the total annual sum of nearly £4,000,000 would be received in the first year. Therefore, only one-third of the increased taxation would be felt by the landlords in the first year.

None at all.

said, that some of it might come in after the first six months. Anyhow it was not due until the expiration of the first six months after death. None of the money need be paid during the first year, but if the taxpayers did not want to pay interest the duty might be paid after the first six months. Only a portion, therefore, would come out of the land during the first year, and yet the whole of the relief given by the Budget would be got during the first year. Instead of being £300,000 to the bad, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer had made out, the landed interest would be something to the good; and though it was only for the first year, he hoped that in his next Budget the Chancellor of the Exchequer would be able to extend some further consideration to the landed interest, especially as he would then have the prospect of a larger sum from the Death Duties. Still, he was more concerned with the agricultural interest than with the landed interest, and under the Chancellor of the Exchequer's proposals the farmer would get relief in a way that no one had noticed. The vast majority of farmers of this country were men who paid Income Tax on incomes of between £150 and £500 a year, and every one of these would derive benefit from the new scale of Income Tax. The man who had between £150 and £160 a year would pay no Income Tax, and the man with less than £400 would be let off £160 of the amount, while the man who had between £400 and £500 would have his advantage. Nearly every farmer would benefit, and, indirectly, even the landlords would get some relief in finding their tenants less pressed by taxation than they had been in the past. The statement of the right hon. Baronet the Member for Bristol as to ground-rents was most extraordinary. The right hon. Gentleman had said that in some cases a ground-rent of 1s. a year was paid on houses worth £300 apiece. Well, he (Mr. Warner) had built many houses of the value of £300, and the ground-rent on those had been between £3 and £5. He could not understand a shilling ground-rent except in the same way that there were such things as peppercorn rents on agricultural land. And a more extraordinary statement still which had fallen from the right hon. Baronet was that working men invested in these ground-rents. He himself had sold ground-rents to working men's Societies, but no working man invested in houses costing £300 apiece to bring in 1s. a year—

Nobody said he did.

said, the right bon. Baronet the Member for Bristol had implied that.

said, he had mentioned a particular case, and had then gone on to refer to ground-rents generally in which working men had an interest.

said, he had understood the right hon. Baronet to imply that working men would invest in such ground-rents as these. A large number of persons objected to the present incidence of the Income Tax in that the man who earned £500 a year had to pay at the same rate as a man who was taxed on a capital of £12,000 a year. But the Death Duties remedied this apparent injustice, because they fell entirely on capital, and the man who earned his income was exempted. He hoped that when another Budget had to be drawn something would be done to put the English and the Scotch farmer on more equal terms. At any rate, something should be done to lighten the incidence of taxation on the agricultural interest, though he was bound to admit that, so far as they had gone, that interest was treated better in this Budget than it had been for many years past.

said, the hon. Member opposite said he was glad the farmers had received an abatement on the Income Tax on account of small incomes. He might have gone farther, and have said that last year and this year their incomes were reduced to nothing, and that, therefore, they had no Income Tax at all to pay. His (Mr. Jeffreys') objection to the increased Death Duties was because it laid another burden upon land, and because land, as had been shown by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Sleaford and others, was now suffering under such great depression that it could not bear any extra pressure of taxation. His objection to the graduated duties was the same as was put by the right hon. Member for St. George's, Hanover Square—that there did not appear to be any fixed limit to the scale, and he feared that in future years when any needy Chancellor of the Exchequer wanted money he would be tempted to raise the scale and limit. He should like to put a case to the Chancellor of the Exchequer in reference to those duties, which he thought very hard. He would suppose the case of a man who left property valued at £101,000, and that that property was divided among his six children, the eldest son getting £51,000 and each of the other children £10,000. On account of the property being over £100,000 in value the Death Duties would be 6 per cent., and, according to the new scale, each of the children who received £ 10,000 would have to pay that 6 per cent. on his small share. Let them contrast that with the case of the only son of a man who died worth £10,000; in this case the son would have to pay only 3 per cent. on the £10,000, or £300 instead of £600 in the other case. That was a gross inequality. He would put it to the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer that this tax should only fall upon the man who succeeded to a large property. If there was to be a graduated tax at all it should fall on the man who inherited the £101,000 altogether. When the property was divided into small estates those who received them surely ought to pay a lower rate of duty. Then in the case of real estate, a mortgage would have to be effected in order that the duty might be paid, and this would entail costly expenditure in surveyors' fees, solicitors' costs, and stamps. In preparing a mortgage on the estate of £101,000 there would be a charge of £260 for the surveyor's fee and Stamp Duty, and other charges would amount to £240, so that preparing the mortgage would cost £500, or a half per cent. The possessor of the real estate would, first of all, have great difficulty in raising the money, and then would have 6½ per cent. to pay in the shape of Death Duty. On the other hand, if a man had to realise £6,000 of personal property in Consols he would only have to pay £7 10. He thought this a very hard case, and he trusted the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer would do something even now to reduce the graduated scale of taxation in respect of real property as compared with personal property. Another matter he wished to refer to was the subject of votes upon real property. He had listened very attentively to what had fallen from the right hon. Gentleman the late President of the Local Government Board, and he quite agreed with the right hon. Gentleman that in some instances the rates were lower than they were in former days. But he should like to remind the right hon. Gentleman of this—that although in some counties the rateable value had increased, the value of the agricultural land had diminished, the increase of rateable value being due to the new houses built in the whole rateable area. It was not so much to the actual rate in the £1 that people occupying land in agricultural districts objected as to the way in which the rate was levied. A farmer with 500 acres of land had to pay in respect of every acre, in short upon his whole stock in trade. It was as if a shopkeeper were asked to pay rates not only on his house but on his goods in the shop, or as if a banker were made to pay not only in respect of the bank premises, but in respect of all the bullion in his cellars. The farmer who had to pay rates not only on his house; but also on his land was put to a disadvantage as compared with the professional man in the next village who paid only on his house. In assessing the Death Duties all these circumstances ought to be taken into consideration. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer would consider this matter, because he had already stated that he had considered the position of the farmers, and would do what he could to equalise the taxes imposed upon English farmers and those imposed upon Scotch and Irish farmers. Seeing that the right hon. Gentleman had this feeling for the occupiers of land, he hoped he would extend it to the owners. If he must increase their burdens let him do it with a light hand—if it were necessary to have this graduated scale at all, let him graduate it a little more.

^* said, the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer told them that in considering this question of the Death Duties it was immaterial to consider what charges there were now upon the land. That was his position, and his reason was that the purchaser would take these local rates into account in the price paid for the land. If it was immaterial to consider what were the local rates already charged on the land, might he ask why the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton compared these rates with the rates as they existed in previous times? If that was irrelevant, he could not understand why the Chancellor of the Exchequer allowed the right hon. Gentleman to proceed with his speech upon that point. The Chancellor of the Exchequer in introducing the Budget referred to the Resolution proposed in 1888 by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Midlothian. The terms of that Resolution, for which he presumed the Chancellor of the Exchequer voted, were in effect that the Death Duties were not to be equalised until Parliament had made arrangements for the equalisation of local rates. Therefore, this question of local rates was of the very essence of the question, and Parliament had to consider whether equitable provision had been made for the adjustment of the local rates before proceeding to deal with the equalisation of the Death Duties. That was clear both from the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton and from the Resolution of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Midlothian. The reason that was given by the Chancellor of the Exchequer for his proposition was a remarkable one. He said, "You need not consider the justice of these rates, because they have been already considered by the purchaser in arriving at a conclusion as to how much money he should pay for the land." That argument was adopted by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton also, but he ventured to say it was a fallacious test as to whether a particular rate was or was not a fair charge upon the land. These rates were fair, it was said, because you had considered them in fixing the purchase money of the land. He did not say that argument was correct, but if it was correct he said the new duty was unfair,' because the purchaser could not possibly have taken it into consideration when fixing the purchase money for the land. There was another feature in the speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer which had occurred to him. It was the question of how these new duties would press upon small holders of land. His hon. Friend the Member for the Thirsk Division had called attention to the fact that these small properties under the new duties would have to pay more than before, and he added that this was a strange proceeding on the part of those who professed a desire to increase the small ownership of land. He knew that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had said that in the case of small properties there would be a decrease, but his own contention was that the duties would be larger. Although it was true that the new rate on these small properties was less than it was before, yet, owing to the mode of assessment, the amount would actually be larger than before. That would be the case in respect of properties between £100 and £500, and it was more the case in respect of properties between £500 and £1,000. Between £100 and £500 the increase would be half as much again as at present in the case of lineal successions. In other words, the proportion of the old duty to the new would be as 66 is to 100. As regarded properties between £500 and £1,000, the new duty would be about three times as much—in the proportion of 100 to 33. The mode he adopted was to take 3 per cent. upon the capital value of the land as representing the fair net rental of the land, to take the successor's age at 40, to capitalise that rental, then to find the amount of the duties payable at present and the amount payable under the new proposals of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. But supposing it was said that was not a fair method, and that he ought to take 4 per cent., still he said that these duties would be greater under the new than the old scale—12 per cent. and 50 per cent. more respectively. He asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer to believe that this was a very serious matter for a great number of small holders of land in this country. In the West Riding of Yorkshire, in 1874, there were no less than 54,000 holders of land under an acre, and if he was right everyone of these proprietors would have to pay more under the proposals of the right hon. Gentleman. In Gloucestershire also there was a vast number of small holdings, and he asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer to say that these taxes should not press so heavily upon this large and deserving class of small holders of land. He would now turn to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton. He gave the Committee a large number of figures which showed that on the whole the local burdens had decreased. But he (Mr. Butcher) asked the Committee to note that the comparison he made was between the rates as they stood and the rates as they existed in 1868. That comparison was of no use whatever. What they wanted to know was how matters stood in 1853, because the proposal at present was that they should repeal the settlement of 1853. What was the position then? The circumstances were considered by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Midlothian in that year, and when they were asked to alter the settlement come to in 1853, and to impose additional burdens on land which the right hon. Gentleman thought were unreasonable in 1853, he thought they might fairly ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what had happened since that year that made it equitable to impose burdens on laud now that were held not to be reasonable then. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton had told them that the rates had gone down on land since 1868, but what he would like to know was if the rates had gone up or down since 1853. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Thirsk gave figures which were not impugned by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton. He said that in 1851 the local rates upon land were 2s. 6d., and at the present time the local rates were 3s. 7d. in the £1, and he very fairly asked the Committee to say if the rates had gone up since 1853, why should they propose an additional duty upon land now? That was a very important matter for consideration, and perhaps the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton would clear it up himself, and show how these local rates stood in the year when the last settlement was arrived at, which they were now asked to undo. There was one matter in regard to which he thought personalty was unduly favoured. As he understood it, in all cases of settlement, whether of personalty or realty, the new Estate Duty covered the Succession Duty payable by lineals. That being so, it was very material to consider how often the new Estate Duty would be payable—in other words, what was the average duration of life of a settlement? Taking the case of an ordinary marriage settlement of personalty, he thought he was right in saying that such a settlement lasted very much longer than a settlement of realty. As a rule, it would last from 40 to 50 years. But how did it stand with regard to realty? Taking the custom and the practice he thought that with regard to realty he was right in saying that there was a re-settlement upon each tenant-in-tail coming of age; in other words, the period of duration of realty settlements would be from 25 to 30 years. If he was right in these figures this result followed—that in the case of a settlement of personalty the duration was from 40 to 50 years, and the Estate Duty on personalty was payable once in 40 or 50 years, whereas in the case of realty the duration was about 30 years, and the duty became payable about every 30 years. How would this new duty affect small settlements both in reference to personalty and realty? The large properties would take care of themselves, and he did not believe that they would be unfairly taxed; but it was with regard to small properties which were affected by these duties, and which were held by the professional and middle classes, that he was now addressing the Committee — he meant settlements of from £1,000 to £10,000. Taking the ordinary form of settlement, he found, under the old system as compared with the new, that the new system absolutely doubled the duty on the small settlements of the amounts he had named. Had the Chancellor of the Exchequer considered whether it would be for the advantage of the community to tax these small settlements with this large duty? He knew some hon. Members would like to upset the principle of settlement altogether. His opinion was that so far as these small owners were concerned the principle of settlement was a most excellent one, and ought to be encouraged by every means in their power, because it was the outcome of economy and prudence. When the Chancellor of the Exchequer came here and placed this large duty on small settlements he struck a blow at the economy and prudence of these small holders who formed a class which he ought to be the first to encourage.

appealed to the Committee to allow the Resolution now to pass in order that the Bill might be introduced. The measure was being looked forward to with great interest, and he reminded hon. Members who wished to speak that there would be opportunities for further discussion on the Second Reading stage as well as on the details in Committee.

said, he thought that there was a certain degree of force in the appeal which had been made by the right hon. Gentleman. It would be convenient that hon. Members should see the Bill in print. He was disposed to think that the suggestion of the right hon. Gentleman might be wisely accepted, since the right hon. Gentleman had promised to give full opportunity on the Second Reading of the Bill to deal with the whole matter. He hoped that a reasonable time would be allowed to elapse between this preliminary discussion and the later stages.

Resolution agreed to.

Resolution to be reported To-morrow; Committee to sit again To-morrow.

Ordered, That it be an Instruction to the Gentlemen appointed to prepare and bring in a Bill upon the Resolutions reported from the Committee of Ways and Means on the 17th instant, and then agreed to by the House, that they do make provision therein pursuant to the said Resolutions.—( Sir J. T, Hibbert. )

said, he must appeal to the House to allow this Bill to be read a second time. He thought there was general agreement with regard to its principle.

said, he was surprised that the hon. Gentleman should wish the House to read a Bill of this importance a second time without affording a proper opportunity for a Second Reading discussion. Because the Bill issued from a Government Department, and was to be sent to a Grand Committee, it seemed to be supposed that it could be entirely taken out of the hands of the House. He failed to see within the four corners of the Bill how it was to advance the settlement of labour disputes. By the first clause the Board of Trade was enabled to inquire into differences between employers and employed, and the second clause empowered the Board of Trade to appoint conciliators or a Board of Conciliation. He could not for the life of him understand why these things could not be done by the Board of Trade without the necessity of bringing in this Bill at all. Then, again, the Board of Trade could appoint a person to whom disputes could be referred without a Bill of this sort. What was the Board of Trade for if it could not do simple work of this kind?

It being Midnight, the Debate stood adjourned.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Debate be resumed upon Thursday."

^* said, he was anxious to address the House upon this Bill, both as having been President of the Board of Trade and as a Member of the Labour Commission. His right hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge University (Sir J. Gorst) also took an interest in the measure. It was absolutely impossible to go into the subject if the Bill was brought forward at such an hour as this. He wanted to know whether, if the Government intended to go on with the Bill, they would give the House an opportunity of discussing it at a reasonable time?

Motion agreed to.

Debate to be resumed upon Thursday.

asked if the Solicitor General, or he should more properly say the Attorney General, between this stage and going into Committee on the Bill, would consider the point whether the dates of holding Quarter Sessions should not be fixed by Quarter Sessions instead of by the Committee? He had looked at the Assizes Relief Act, and he was not sure whether it would be wise to leave the fixing of the dates to the Committee.

said, he would consider the matter.

said, that as this Bill had been introduced in the Lords he should like to have some information about it. Although the two Front Benches might be in agreement that was no reason why the Bill should be allowed to pass without an explanation being given. Any Bill coming from the Lords ought to be explained here.

said, that under existing circumstances two Justices appointed at the Epiphany Sessions could vary the time of the holding of Quarter Sessions. It had been found, however, that that permission was not enough for all practical purposes, and it was proposed to extend the limit so as to allow a change of 14 days, in order that the Quarter Sessions might be held without interference with the Assizes.

said, he should read the Bill carefully, and if necessary object upon another occasion.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time, and committed for Thursday.

said, the measure was the outcome of the unanimous Report of the Committee, and he hoped the House would allow it to be read a second time.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."—( Mr. H. Gladstone. )

said, he understood there was some opposition to this Bill coming from some of the best of the Societies.

said, there was no doubt some opposition to this Bill, but he thought if the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Conybeare) had heard the evidence upstairs he would change his mind as to such opposition coming from the best Societies.

said, he had received a communication from some Building Societies objecting to some changes in the Bill which were important to them. He thought that a Bill was going to be prepared and introduced which would raise the question, and if such a Bill were introduced he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would see that it went to the Committee along with the present measure.

^* said, a Bill introduced last Session by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for London University (Sir J. Lubbock) really represented the views of the Building Societies, and had been fully considered by the Select Committee. But the Government had no objection to the Bill referred to by the hon. Gentleman going to the Standing Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time, and committed to the Standing Committee on Law, and Courts of Justice, and Legal Procedure.

^* objected. This Bill, so industriously championed by the hon. Member for North Leitrim, opened up for him the way to the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland.

Second Reading deferred till Tomorrow.