nd such a tax might be wholly or partially
substituted for the present Land Tax and Income-Tax Schedule A, which
are assessed on the wrong basis.

These proposals would, of course, involve the revival and revision of
the National Land Valuation established by the Finance Act, 1909-10,
which should be made the basis of all taxation and rating relating to
real property. This would be both a reform and an economy, because there
are at present several overlapping systems of valuation by Central and
Local Authorities, none of which are really satisfactory even on the
present unsatisfactory basis of assessment. The existence of such a
valuation frequently revised and kept up to date, and independent of
local influences, would be invaluable not only for purposes of rating
and taxation, but also in arriving at a fair price for the acquisition
of land for public purposes, and for the levying of special charges upon
the increased value due to particular public improvements, such as
railway extensions, with which I have already dealt.

I am not one of those who claim for these reforms that they would cure
all the evils from which the community is at present suffering, but I do
believe that there is no other and no better way of removing the
unfairness and the restrictions of our present methods of rating and
taxation or of setting free and stimulating the energies of our people
in the development of the resources of our country.

AGRICULTURAL QUESTIONS

BY RT. HON. F.D. ACLAND

P.C.; M.P. (L.) North-West Cornwall; Financial Secretary, War Office,
1908-10; Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 1911-15;
Financial Secretary to Treasury, Feb.-June, 1915; Secretary to the Board
of Agriculture, 1915-16; a Forestry Commissioner. Chairman of the
Agricultural Organisation Society.

Mr. Acland said:--I begin by laying down in a didactic form five points
which one would like to see firmly established in our rural life: (i)
intensive production; (ii) plenty of employment at good wages; (iii)
easy access to land, and a good chance of rising upon the land; (iv)
real independence in rural life; (v) co-operative association for many
purposes.

Intensive production is most important. It is so easy to say the farmer
_can_ get more out of the land, and the farmer _should_ get more out of
the land, that we are tempted to continue and say that the farmer _must
be made_ to get more out of the land. But it isn't so easy. It has b