A DUKE'S DILEMMA.
WE propose to ask of our readers that they will brace themselves for it vast imaginative flight, picture to themselves a Radical Duke, and allow themselves to consider what his attitude would be in view of the present Budget. Whether Dukes ever indulge in soliloquies, outside Lord Beaconsfield's novels, we do not know, but if they do, our imaginary Duke's thoughts might take somewhat of this form :— "I have been a bit of a Radical all my lifs. I hardly know how it began, but I fancy what brought it a:cout may have been the hope of getting rises out of my aunts and uncles. That did not last very long, because I found it impossible to get them to take me seriously. So I gave up talking Radicalism, and, perhaps for that very reason, thought it the more. Anyhow, it has always seemed to me that there is a great deal of sense in what Radical speakers say about us. I don't see any particular reason why I should be at the top of the tree, and so many fellows at the bottom, or very near it. I have spoken pretty often to workmen employed on the estate, whichever it is, that I happen to be staying at—I have so many that I can hardly be said to live on any one of them—and it is astonishing what sensible things they say about the present order of society,—things, at all events, to which I have no answer ready. If I had been a French Duke in the time of the Revolution, I might have gone along with the Jacobins—till they guillotined me. But being only an English Duke, I had no opportunity of cominga to such a distinguished end. So I have just done the best I could,—lived up to the last penny of my income, because I was told that a Duke ought not to save, and consumed all the wealth I could, because it was all produced by others, and I thought that to consume it was the surest way of preventing unemployment. But now, if I am to listen to the leaders of my choice, I have been wrong all my life. I won't quite say that till now I have thought the consumption of wealth produced by others my sole function, but it is quite true that I have thought it my chief one. What I have hitherto esteemed a virtue now turns out—if the Chancellor of the Exchequer is right— to be very much nearer a vice. A. Duke, it seems, ought. not to spend money. He should let the greater part of his income lie at his bankers, until they have found a proper investment for it. That may be very good advice to a Duke who has just succeeded to the title and has his list of obligations to make out for himself. But it is no better than a conundrum for a Duke who is too old to change his whole mode of life, and is not yet convinced that Mr. Lloyd George is any more infallible than Pius X. So I mean to go on as I have been doing all my life, and only make such changes as the Budget imposes on me.
I sometimes wonder whether a Radical workman's idea of how a Duke ought to manage his income is much nearer the mark than a Duke's idea of how a Radical workman should spend his wages. But supposing that he knows more about me than I know about him, I should very much like to have his opinion on the best means of meeting the new taxes. I began by saying that I live up to my income, and of course I do not deny that my income is a very large one. It is not so large as it was, because for some years past my solicitor has been advising me to prepare for what he calls 'a wave of Radical ascendency by paying off old charges, and in this way doing justice—at least, so he is always telling me—to my successor in the title. But still, when everything has been allowed for, I am a very rich man, and for being very rich I have got to pay what Mr. Chamberlain used to call ransom. That means, I suppose, that I am not only to pay in proportion to my means, like my neighbours, but that I must pay something more than my fair proportion by way of penalty for being rich. I don't complain of this. Indeed, when I have been talking to other Dukes I have sometimes said the very same thing. But now that it has come to doing it I am in a difficulty. The Chancellor of the Exchequer says—at least, so I read him—that I ought not to consume wealth produced by others, and from this it seems to follow that I must consume as little wealth as possible. For that all the wealth I consume must go on being produced by others is inevitable. When I was a young man I had rather a weakness for metalwork, and in an out-of-the-way room in one of my houses I used to make little ornaments and trifles of that kind. When they were made I could think of no way of finding cut whether they were worth anything except by having them offered for sale. But when I suggested this to the man I used to buy the metal from, he begged pardon for reminding me that the market for these things was not a large one, and that if my work were offered in the neighbourhood it would ruin the few workmen who made such things for a livelihood. This destroyed all my hopes of ever having for my function, even my smallest function, the consumption of wealth produced by myself.
Of course the moment I read of the Duke of this or Lord that meeting the Budget by turning off labourers I was shocked at their heartlessness. If I have to find money for new taxes, I said to myself, not a penny of it shall come from a lessened wages- bill. But when I came to devise other methods of finding money for this purpose—I calculate I shall have to pay out £3,000 a year more in taxes than I have done hitherto—methods from the use of which I should be the only sufferer, I found myself in a network of difficulties, and there I seem likely to remain. The first thing, I suppose, that one ought to forgo is one's pleasures, so with them I began. I am fond of the sea, and I have a good yacht. I enjoy grouse-shooting, and I have a good moor. Here, then, I thought, are two things to begin with. They are luxuries, no doubt, though I can honestly say that, except these two things, there is hardly anything that gives me real pleasure. But when I sent for my captain and told him that I was thinking of giving up yachting, he drew a very long face. Your Grace,' he said, 'is not alone in wishing to economise in view of increased taxation. There is a regular slump in yachts in consequence of the Budget, and if you send me and my crew adrift I don't see much chance of any of us getting another berth.' The man has been with me for fifteen years, and So have most of the crew, and I fear they have had so easy a time in the yacht that they would find ordinary sea work, even if they could get it, a terrible hardship. After that I sent for my head-keeper and told him that I was thinking of selling one of my moors. He made much the same answer as the captain. We and our families,' he said, have lived very happily under your Grace. You have taken an interest in our sons and daughters, and helped us to put them out in life. You have kept us in constant employment, and you have pensioned us when we grew old. Perhaps the next owner of the moor may work it as you have done, but there are a good many gentlemen who do not look at things in quite the same way, and the day that we see the last of your Grace will be a bad day for all of us.' Here were two ways of meeting the new taxes disposed of. From luxuries that I keenly enjoy I passed to others which give me no real pleasure. What, I said to myself, does a man want with more than at most two houses ? I have five, and I keep up all of them as if I had no other. We have always taken pride in the completeness of our several establish- ments. Whether the owner is there or not makes no difference to the staff. The gardens are as perfect, the stables as well cared for, the house kept in as good order, as though the master were always resident. What can be simpler than selling at least one out of the five, and so making that difference between income and expendi- ture which will be wanted to meet the tax-collector's demand. I may, indeed, find a purchaser who will etnploy as much labour on the estate as I do. But then I began to wonder whether the conditions would really be the same. The traditional feeling will have vanished, the ties that for generations have bound together employer and workman will be broken. A sense of insecurity will have taken the place of the old happy certainty. The new owner may not like his purchase as much as he expected, and the estate may go on changing hands at short intervals. I suppose that this is the sort of change which the Chancellor of the Exchequer wishes to see effected, and I do not deny that I know estates on which a change of ownership will be a blessing. But I have to think of my own case, and, honestly, I think it most unlikely that it will be a blessing in mine.
No doubt I may- distribute my retrenchments over many departments, instead of concentrating them on one. I may keep my yacht, my moor, my houses, and try to get the money I want in other ways. But everywhere I am met by the same difficulty, though not in the same degree. If I use fewer motors, and go on using old ones when but for the Budget I should have bought new ones, I am quite sure that, though I shall not know the workmen whom I have put out of employment, Messrs. So-and-so, the motor builders, will know them. Wherever I turn I see that economy in expenditure is economy in the employment of labour. When the money is wanted for national purposes we must all submit to our share of incon- venience. But these new taxes appear, even in the speedier of their chief authors, to wear a different character. They are taxes with a moral and political object, and in my case it seems to me that the burden is laid on the wrong shoulders. Whatever I do in the way of retrenchment, it is not my. consumption, stately or otherwise, that will be lessened, but the consumption of men to whom I am a source of income. I might, indeed, sell a picture or two, but after Norfolk's experience few Dukes will like to do that again. Pictures are no longer considered private property, and I should be told that I was only robbing Peter to pay Paul. Will Mr. Lloyd George take pity upon such an anomaly as a Radical Duke, and tell me in detail how to meet his demands without injuring any one but myself ? I don't want to avoid paying my fair share of the new taxation, I don't want to, in fact I won't, cut down my charity subscriptions, and I can't bear the idea of dis- missing men in my employ. What I want is to be shown some way of making the necessary saving of £3,000 a year under which only I and the Duchess will feel the difference and have to give up things. Because I haven't found it, it seems rather hard to be told that I am callous and selfish, and that I ought to be ashamed of myself."
Our imaginary Duke's political economy may be some- what hazy, but we should like to associate ourselves with . his request.
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