ps worth L40,000, so
he would have borne the correct duty of 20 per cent. The second would
have L50,000, bringing in, say, L5000 annually, and would be attempting
to pay L8000 out of it, while the third would be paying L2000 a year out
of his income and still be faced with an 80 per cent. charge on his
fortune! His assessment is computed at one point of time, and liquidated
at another, when its incidence is totally different.

If one cannot have a levy complete at the time of imposition, it clearly
ought not to be launched at a time of rapidly changing prices. But that
is, perhaps, when the economic case for it is strongest.

A DESPERATE REMEDY

I do not rule the Capital Levy out as impracticable by any means, but as
a taxation expedient I cannot be enthusiastic about it. It is a
desperate remedy. But if our present temper for "annual" tax relief at
all costs continues, we may _need_ a desperate remedy. Without a levy
what kind of position can you look forward to? Make some assumptions,
not with any virtue in their details, but just in order to determine the
possible prospect. If in fifteen to twenty years reparation payments
have wiped out 1000 millions, debt repayments another 1000, and ordinary
reductions by sinking funds another 1000 millions, you will have the
debt down to 5000 millions, and possibly the lower interest then
effective may bring the annual charge down to some 200 or 225 million
pounds. If the population has reached sixty millions the nominal annual
charge will be reduced from L7 16s. by one-half, but if prices have
dropped further, say half-way, to the pre-war level, the comparable
burden will still be L4 10s. per head.

It is no good talking about "holidays from taxation" and imagining you
can get rid of this thing easily; you won't. We are still in the war
financially. There is the same need of the true national spirit and
heroism as there was then. Thus hard facts may ultimately force us to
some such expedient as the levy, but we should not accept it
light-heartedly, or regard it as an obvious panacea. Perhaps in two or
three years we may tell whether economic conditions are stable enough to
rob it of its worst evils. The question whether the burden of rapidly
relieving debt by this means in an instalment levy over a decade is
actually lighter than the sinking fund method, depends on the relation
of the drop in prices over the short period to the drop over the ensuing
period, with a proper a