se is therefore 109 millions. I only wish
that wages had increased in the same proportion. When I was studying
those figures I have mentioned to you I looked at the Board of Trade
returns of wages. Those returns deal with the affairs of upwards of
ten millions of persons, and in the last ten years the increase in the
annual wages of that great body of persons has only been about ten
million pounds: that is to say, that the increase of income assessable
to income-tax is at the very least more than ten times greater than
the increase which has taken place in the same period in the wages of
those trades which come within the Board of Trade returns.

When we come to the question of how burdens are to be distributed, you
must bear these facts and figures in mind, because the choice is
severely limited. You can tax wealth or you can tax wages--that is the
whole choice which is at the disposal of the Chancellor of the
Exchequer. Of course I know there are some people who say you can tax
the foreigner--but I am quite sure that you will not expect me to
waste your time in dealing with that gospel of quacks and creed of
gulls. The choice is between wealth and wages, and we think that, in
view of that great increase in accumulated wealth which has marked
the last ten years, and is the feature of our modern life, it is not
excessive or unreasonable at the present stage in our national
finances to ask for a further contribution from the direct taxpayers
of something under eight millions a year. That is the total of all the
new taxes on wealth which our Budget imposes, and it is about equal to
the cost of four of those _Dreadnoughts_ for which these same classes
were clamouring a few months ago. And it is less than one-thirteenth
of the increased income assessable to income-tax in the last ten
years.

It is because we have done this that we are the object of all this
abuse and indignation which is so loudly expressed in certain quarters
throughout the country at the present time. While the working-classes
have borne the extra taxation upon their tobacco and whisky in
silence, all this rage and fury is outpoured upon the Government by
the owners of this ever-increasing fund of wealth, and we are
denounced as Socialists, as Jacobins, as Anarchists, as Communists,
and all the rest of the half-understood vocabulary of irritated
ignorance, for having dared to go to the wealthy classes for a fair
share of the necessary burdens of the cou