to
suppose that that security depends upon the House of Lords. If the
security of property in a powerful nation like our own were dependent
upon the action or inaction of 500 or 600 persons, that security would
long ago have been swept away. The security of property depends upon
its wide diffusion among great numbers and all classes of the
population, and it becomes more secure year by year because it is
gradually being more widely distributed. The vital processes of
civilisation require, and the combined interests of millions
guarantee, the security of property. A society in which property was
insecure would speedily degenerate into barbarism; a society in which
property was absolutely secure, irrespective of all conceptions of
justice in regard to the manner of its acquisition, would degenerate,
not to barbarism, but death. No one claims that a Government should
from time to time, according to its conceptions of justice, attempt
fundamentally to recast the bases on which property is erected. The
process must be a gradual one; must be a social and a moral process,
working steadily in the mind and in the body of the community; but we
contend, when new burdens have to be apportioned, when new revenues
have to be procured, when the necessary upkeep of the State requires
further taxes to be imposed--we contend that, in distributing the new
burdens, a Government should have regard first of all to ability to
pay and, secondly, that they should have regard to some extent, and so
far as is practicable, to the means and the process by which different
forms of wealth have been acquired; and that they should make a
sensible difference between wealth which is the fruit of productive
enterprise and industry or of individual skill, and wealth which
represents the capture by individuals of socially created values. We
say that ought to be taken into consideration. We are taking it into
consideration now by the difference we have made in the income-tax
between earned and unearned incomes, by the difference we make between
the taxation which is imposed upon a fortune which a man makes himself
and the fortune which he obtains from a relative or a stranger. We
are taking it into consideration in our tax on mining royalties, in
our licence duties and in our taxes on the unearned increment in land.
The State, we contend, has a special claim upon the monopoly value of
the liquor licence, which the State itself has created, and which the
Stat