The great modern apostle of economy, Mr. Vernon Harcourt, sent
to Monday's Times an elaborate reply to Sir John Lubbock's speech in favour of keeping the income-tax to pay off Debt. Mr. Harcourt says that if the income-tax were imposed to reduce debt he would utterly "despair not only of public economy but of public justice*, those classes of the community who stand most in need of it," and he expends a good many political tears on the lot of the man who lives on 10s. a week. Sir John Lubbock answers very simply in Thursday's Times, and without any of that impos- ing phraseology which distinguishes Mr. Harcourt's letter, that the income-tax is not paid by the man with 10s. a week, and that, as Mr. Harcourt does not object to paying debt with the surplus, —rather the contrary,—the question is one not of principle, but -of amount. However, Sir John Lubbock is hardly consistent with himself in insisting that we ought to provide for the payment of debt in "a period of prosperity," and yet not limiting the special provision for it to those who are in some sense prosperous. There is no magic in living in a period of prosperity, if you don't share the prosperity. And it can hardly be contended that the struggling classes do share the prosperity. We believe that our own suggestion, that if careful provision is to be made at all for paying off debt, it should be by a tax on the genuinely prosperous classes, the product of which should be definitely appropriated for that one purpose, is the true one. It is not possible to say with Sir John Lubbock that a struggling man struggles became he has not morale enough to be prosperous. That may sometimes happen, but the opposite may happen too, that a man struggles became he has too much morale to get on ; and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, men can't and don't rise above the level on which they were born and educated. Prosperity is more a matter of circum- stance than of character.
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