THE RATING BILL. T HE Chinese are said to find no
sort of difficulty in believing in two or even three religions at once,— and religions which contain mutually destructive prin- ciples as their doctrines. When confronted with the difficulty they get over it by violently affirming the two contradictory statements to which they pin their faith. The greater the contradiction the more strenuous must be the affirmation. That is to them a perfectly easy and' rational solution of the problem. The debates on the Agricultural Rating Bill show that the Opposition are• able to take up a similar attitude. They assert with. one breath that the landlords are raiding the National' Exchequer, and that a Government of predatory land- owners are pouring millions of public money into the laps of the squires. With the next breath they assert that the help which the Government is giving to agriculture is' purely ridiculous, and that the pitiful dole which is being` offered to the land is perfectly valueless, and will be no sort of help to a depressed industry. It is a curious. example of the nature of Parliamentary debate that. the use of this Chinese form of argument is regarded as quite natural. Hardly any one on the Govern- ment side seems to think it worth while to point out the dilemma of the Opposition or to show that the violence with which these affirmations are made does not tend to- reconcile them. Those, however, who are not Members of the House of Commons, and who have not adopted the Celestial system of reasoning, will probably be a little surprised at the line of argument thus adopted, and we cannot help thinking, therefore, that it would be as well for- Sir Henry Fowler and Sir William Harcourt to tell the country whether they intend to stand by the accusation of impudent plunder or that of a worthless gift.
In truth, the whole discussion has been somewhat un- satisfactory. Neither side seems to have cared to deal with the fundamental points at issue, but has instead occupied• itself with the mere superficies of the question. When the- Opposition case is stripped of its rhetorical and party trappings it appears to be based on the following con- siderations. There are a great many hard cases of rating in the towns, and yet you are not going to lift a finger to help them. We claim that if any one is going to have relief these over-rated towns- people ought to have it as well as the landlords.' The argument that the dole to the land will be useless need not be seriously considered. The best judges of whether relief is worth having are the people to be re- lieved. But it is clear that the agricultural community considers that the proposed relief is well worth having, and this being so we need not trouble about its alleged insignificance. When you say to a man in distress, ' can only give you a shilling, but that sum will help you so little that I hesitate to give it,' and he replies, Thank you ; little as it is I will gladly take it,' the argument in favour of giving the shilling is usually considered final.. Nobody under such circumstances says, Excuse me, my friend, you are hardly so good a judge of the benefits to be procured by a shilling as I am.' In a word, the in- adequacy of the dole is not a genuine argument, but merely one devised for the purpose of Parliamentary debate. The main argument, then, remains, as we have said, the argument of unfairness in singling out a special industry. We cannot say that the Government advocates have as yet met this argument in the best way. They have wrangled over details rather than put forward their true principle of action. It appears to us that what they ought to have said is something of this kind :—' We found ourselves able to devote a certain amount of money to relieve the burdens imposed on the local ratepayers. This money, however, was not sufficient to be spread' over the whole kingdom. It would have been lost by such a process. We had, then, to consider what section of local taxpayers had most claim to relief. Clearly the rural taxpayers, for it is notorious that the wealth and population of the rural districts, where not actually diminishing, has increased very much less than the towns. The rural districts are less well-off than the towns in every sense. But if the rural districts are considered with a view to fiscal alleviation, we are at once confronted with, the old grievance that the profits of the agricultural in- dustry are unfairly and excessively burdened, and this at a time when the profits of agriculture have notoriously reached a very low ebb, and are far more reduced than those of any other industry in the country. In other words, a Government with something to give away in aid of the local ratepayer could not possibly overlook the case- of the farmer and landowner.' These are, in our opinion,. the broad lines on which the proposals should have been defended. The Government speakers should have gone on to point out that the question is not one between town, and country, but between certain industries and persons in the country districts. There may be great fiscal grievances in the towns, and these ought to be righted no doubt, but meantime there is a still worse grievance as re- gards the incidence of local taxation within rural districts, and one which may fairly claim immediate relief at the hands of the Imperial Exchequer pending the rearrange- ment of our whole system of local taxation.
Perhaps the best way of realising the unfairness of our present system of local taxation in rural districts is to take a typical rural parish and to consider how it would be taxed if a fair-minded fiscal expert were told that such- and-such a sum had to be raised from it for common needs. Next, let this ideal system be compared with that which exists at present and a balance of equity be struck between them. Queen's Crawley is a rural parish. There is in Queen's Crawley a large village with several good shops, and, besides the squire, parson, farmers, and labourers, a doctor, a miller, a wheelwright, a solicitor, an auctioneer in a large way of business, a baker, a boot manufacturer who does a good business, and a retired china merchant, worth £5,000 a year. Surely our fiscal expert would try to make the various inhabitants contri- bute towards the local needs each in proportion to his wealth. He might not be able to impose a local Income- tax, but, as far as might be, he would try to make the taxa- tion proportionate. The farmer would pay according to his profits, and therefore pecuniary ability, the solicitor according to his, the retired china merchant according to his, and so on and so on. Now look what happens in the actual case. The local authority, instead of saying to each man, Pay all of you in proportion to your incomes,' goes first to the farmer and says, what at first sounds fair enough, You have a farm of 1,000 acres rated at £1 an acre, i.e., you must be presumed to be making £1,000 a year off your farm. Therefore we charge you a rate of 2s. in the pound, and take £100 in taxes from you.' Next he calls on the parson and says, You get, we know, £500 a year income in tithe. That at 2s. is £50. We shall not estimate your income from other sources, but shall con- clude you have only £500 a year '—in the case of the parson not a very risky conclusion. Hitherto the idea of contributing according to ability has been maintained well enough, though to assume that a farmer has an income equal to his rent is, we admit, a very optimistic theory. But now comes the strange part of the romance of rating. When the representative of the local authority calls at the "beautifully appointed villa-residence" of the retired china merchant, he drops all thought of income and con- tribution in proportion to ability. He does not say a word about a gentleman hardly being able to live in a house like this and buy pictures and travel and entertain so much on less than £5,000 a year, and add, So, Sir, I am afraid I must ask you for a cheque for £500 for rates.' Not a bit of it. He mildly says, I must presume, Sir, you could get £100 a year for this house unfurnished by the year, and that at 2s. in the pound is £10. Thank you, Sir, your cheque is quite good enough. I have to be careful about the farmers' drafts in these times, but I expect your signature is worth one hundred times £10.' The next call is on the doctor. His business is a good one and sold for £1,000 at one year's purchase. But the collector does not trouble about this. He merely says again, House worth £50 a year unfurnished, rates £5, thank you.' By the time, however, that the boot manufacturer has been reached, the Local Authority has begun to have a dim reawakening on the subject of contributions in proportion to ability. Accordingly, after the boot manu- facturer, who lives away from the factory, has been reached, the collector, after asking him for a cheque for £5 for his house rated at .250, proceeds to inquire about the factory. The manufacturer, he thinks, ought to pay something on that. One would suppose that this some- thing should be calculated on the annual amount made by the factory,—the income drawn from it. But no, the Local Authority can only rise to these heights of fiscal comprehension in the case of the farmer and parson. Accordingly, he says sagely, This factory ought to be rated at at least £100 a year, because there is a brewery in the next parish rated at more, which c.vers about the same ground,' and accordingly it is rated at that, no one knowing, or apparently caring, whether the profits are £1,000 or £500 a year. So the rating muddle goes on. The yeoman owner of fifty acres of grass-land pays on £100 a year—he is rated at £2 per acre—because it is assumed he is worth that though it is notorious that he only makes £70 or £80 a year, while the retired police-inspector, with a pension of £70 a year, who lives in a neat little cottage, only pays on £10 a year. Can any reasonable human being say that such a system as this is fair ? Furthermore, can any reasonable person look into it and doubt that its unreason hits the agriculturist specially hard ? But if "No" is answered to these questions, two things follow. Our whole system of local taxation must be reformed, and the land must be temporarily relieved as soon as possible. But this last is what the Government are doing, and their action will, we believe, receive the support of the country, especially if in addition they promise to remodel as soon as may be our whole system of local taxation.
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