THE ALLEGED RUIN OF AGRICULTURE.
[To THE EDITOR Or THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—In your excellent article on the Tariff Committee's Agricultural Report in the Spectator of December 1st you profess yourself sceptical as to the ruin of agriculture. Your scepticism would be fortified perhaps if you had observed how remission of rent, which a decade ago stared you in the face in every rural newspaper, has for some years been conspicuous by its absence. I suspect that the truth about farming is this. Pleasure farming does not pay. Farming partly as business, partly for pleasure, pays only moderately or poorly. Business farming pays, and pays well. And farming in general has for two seasons been profitable. As to the burdens on land, do you take into sufficient account that farmers take farms with their eyes open, that farms seldom go begging long, that land carries with it social amenities for which men are willing to pay, and that the rural roads, the upkeep of which is so large an item in the rates, are, or before motor- cars were, worn most by the farmers' carts and flocks P Any one familiar with roads on which sheep are constantly driven must know what I mean. Such things must surely be considered in any readjustment of rates. May I add a word on another matter ? With a graduated Income-tax bad times are coming for the poor rentier. He is just the man who now pays his tax to the uttermost farthing. It is, in fact, deducted from his income for him without his having ever received it. Very different are the results of the returns of " earned " incomes, if we may judge from London revelations not long ago when compensation for deterioration of houses was being discussed. A fixed Income-tax should be paid on the actual sum earned in the preceding year,—in April, 19013, on the year 1905, and so on. The present arrangement is a positive invitation to
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