The Land Values (Scotland) Bill was rejected by the House
of Lords on Monday, on the Motion of Lord Robert- son, by a majority of 87 (118-31). Lord Robertson, who, it will be remembered, is as strong a Free-trader as he is a Conservative, made a speech both witty and trenchant. The Bill suggested a procedure by which you were not to tax the land as it existed, but to conjure up an idea of the land with no improvements upon it and make that the basis of rateable value. Lord Robertson called up the picture of a matter-of-fact shopkeeper in Glasgow asked by an assessor to assist him in his exercise of the imaginative faculty. He would be asked the value of the site of his shop, divested of all buildings. If this inquiry came to him in business hours, he might be apt to give a reply similar to that given to the missionary by the wounded American on the battlefield,— " Stranger, this is no time for conundrums." Lord Balfour, in a speech marked by his customary soundness of statesman- ship, and by the instinct of a practical administrator, declared that Parliament had no right to put on an unwilling autho- rity the expense of getting this information for them. He would not, however, have objected to a voluntary Bill, as he was confident that practical experience would show the proposals of the Bill to be impossible. Lord Saltoun, it may be added, estimated that the cost of the valuation in Edin- burgh, Glasgow, Dundee, and Aberdeen alone would amount to one million pounds.
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