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is a matter of rational difference of opinion. It is possible for one man to hold that the increased death duties will lead a shrinkage of national capital, and for another man quite honestly to hold the contrary. The same holds good of the liquor taxes, which are based on a view of the State's attitude towards its own monopoly, which may possibly be valid. Even in such departments, it is true, we find odd slips in reasoning, such as the Prime Minister's inability to grasp the difference between foreign investments made from this country and capital sent abroad for the purpose of being invested there. When we come to the land and mineral taxes, however, we find a very carnival of unreason. Land, let it be granted at once, is wholly different from personal property. Its ownership involves duties to the public which do not attach to shares in a company. Therefore the State limits the use of land by many statutes, and reserves to itself the right to expropriate the landowner. But the increment of land is not different from the increment of other property, except that as a rule it is smaller. So, while the corpus of land may fairly be treated in a special manner, the income from it is exactly the same as income from stocks and shares. It goes into the pocket of the owner, who contributes according to his means to the national services. Unless we subscribe to the mystical doctrine that it is the thing that pays taxes and not its possessor,

the income from land is precisely in the position of a dividend from a factory. If the owner is holding up land to the public detriment, then let the State deal with the corpus, over the use of which it has undeniable rights. But to attempt to achieve this end by taxation, which in its nature must be general, is to hit every type of owner in the increment, over which the State, which permits the private ownership of land, can have no possible authority save in its universal taxation of income. It is to penalise the holding of one class of property, without any warrant in public policy, since an ad hoc statute dealing with land unduly held up would be infinitely more likely to effect the purpose. The Liberal answer is to repeat that land is unlike other property-which is true, but quite irrelevant to the discussion of increment. Then follows the slightly better answer, that increment in land is due not to the owner's exertions, but to those of the community. But, in the first place, this is not generally true; in the second place, it is a characteristic which land shares with almost every known type of property. A speculator who buys a block of shares and holds for the rise does nothing to earn his profits. The man who buys railway stock and sells at a profit has nothing to do but to sit still. "Ah, says the Liberal, "but his money is going to foster commerce and provide employment." It is obviously doing

nothing of the kind directly, any more than the capital of a landlord, unless he is the promoter of a new enterprise. He is not building a house, but buying a room in one already built. The undeveloped landtax affects the income of a declining security: the tax on increment in most cases hits income also, since such increment is usually to be regarded as deferred interest on capital, and, in the few cases where it does not, it singles out the landowner for unfair treatment as compared with any other class of owner. Yet not a suspicion of a serious argument has been advanced in defence.

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never had a chance from the first. It has been riddled through and through, and the defenders have taken refuge in non-rational rhetoric-nonsense about taxing the rich rather than the poor, as if the ownership of land in these days was a guarantee of wealth. It is precisely because they are not taxing the rich that the trouble arises. A high income-tax may be unwise, but it is intelligible finance; but their land taxes are no kind of finance at all. When driven into a corner, they declare that the money must be raised, and ask to be shown a better way, just as if it were a valid plea for a convicted housebreaker that he was out of work and had to find something to do. There is indeed one wholly relevant and logical defence to the meas

ure.

Take, again, the tax mining royalties. The Government proposed to tax undeveloped minerals, and, finding this purpose impossible to define even in the loose definitions of the Budget, substituted a tax upon royalties. That is to say, finding it difficult to punish the man who did not work his minerals, they resolved to punish the man who did. It would be hard to find such topsy-turvydom outside 'Alice in Wonderland.' owner of royalties pays incometax to the full on them, but, in England at any rate, he does not contribute to local rates in respect of them. This anomaly might have been with reason removed, but the Government chose to increase it. The local exchequer is left unreplenished, but the State will take further levy for itself from the royalties.

can understand the position of those who want a single chamber, but we cannot understand the man who declares that he does not want anything of the kind, and yet pins his faith to a phrase which involves it. There is, of course, the usual cant talked about the "People's House," and the right of the people to make their will prevail. So be it make the House of Lords also a "People's House," make it a House of ascertained talent and incontrovertible prestige. That, at any rate, would be an intelligible policy. But, in the name of reason, you cannot argue that legislation by the Commons alone is unthinkable, and then do your best to make them absolute.

We pass to a graver blunder, graver because the confusion is not accidental but deliberate. Reason did not slip away in the turmoil of taking in new passengers, but was flung lustily overboard. It is common knowledge that the Trade Disputes Bill was not popular with the serious members of the Government. It compelled them to eat their own words, and to stand in the invidious position of suarum legum auctores ac subversores. More especially it compelled the lawyers in the Cabinet to do violence to the first principle of English jurisprudence-that all men are equal in the sight of the law. The Trade Disputes Bill removed the liability of combinations of employers and employees to answer in certain circumstances for certain common-law offences. That is to

say, it created a state within the State, and gave to certain bodies of men the legal sacrosanctity of the Crown. The reason why the Bill was passed was admittedly that various powerful organisations which controlled many Liberal votes were determined to have it. So with rather a wry face the Government consented. There was no serious defence of the measure either in law or public policy. Its advocates were driven again and again to the childlike argument that Trade Unionists were decent folk and would not abuse their liberties. Now this would be a conceivable argument for the grant of political rights, but it is sheer nonsense in the case of a legal preference. A legal system is valuable because of its uniformity. It is weakened if it admits hard cases, but it is wholly stultified if it admits preferences. But the real danger is to be sought for

elsewhere. It is notorious that the rise of the great Trusts in America was due to the fact that for long the State Attorneys could find no form of legal process to deal with a corporation. They grew up under shelter of the impotence of the law, and we know the result to-day. The American nation toils far behind in its efforts to bring the law to bear upon those trade-unions of financial brigandage. By the Trade Disputes Bill we have consciously and voluntarily reduced ourselves to the same position. Combinations of capital equally with combinations of labour stand for certain vital pur