A QUESTION TO MR. F. E. SMITH. [lb lam Erma
or Tax " sraicriroa."]
Sra,—I notice that Mr. F. E. Smith, M.P., makes it a constant practice of charging Mr. Lloyd George with the utterance of
deliberate falsehoods. I see that in the Daily Mail Year- Book just issued Mr. F. E. Smith writes the following remarkable words :— " We may note in passing the accident which led the unsophisti- cated intellect of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to decide that the super-tax should not be imposed at the point where his own salary ended."
Here Mr. Smith permits himself to circulate, in a book which he knows to have a wide circulation, the charge that Mr. Lloyd George in arranging extra taxation for rich people deliberately arranged that taxation in such a manner that he himself should escape it as being in receipt of £5,000 a year. The facts of the case are, of course, that Mr. Lloyd George's aggregate income must be more than £5,000 a year, since, of course, he has income other than that which he draws as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Therefore he is a payer of the super-tax, and he did not arrange the line to exclude himself.
Mr. F. E. Smith is therefore convicted of one of two things. Either be knew that he was circulating a deliberate falsehood of an exceedingly despicable description, or be did not under- stand the super-tax when he wrote about it. In the latter
case he ought not, of course, either to be writing or speaking about the Budget.---I am, Sir, &e.,
imputation against Mr. Lloyd George. If Mr. F. E. Smith intended it as such, we can only saythat it was very foolish of
him to insinuate a charge which admitted of such immediate and obvious refutation.—En. Spectator.]
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