Page:Hints About Investments (1926).pdf/86

 other forms of "floating" debt, amounted on December 31, 1925, to £7,016 millions.

It is true that beneficiaries under trusts would receive a slightly smaller income than their trustees would otherwise have been able to earn for them; but this is no great hardship to inflict on them, in view of the greater security that would be given to them, the privileged position that they enjoy in having their property taken care of for them under the eye of State regulation and the great advantage to the nation as a whole that would be secured by a reduction of the debt charge. Moreover, it would always be in the power of anyone who was leaving funds in trust and disliked the limitation on trustees' power of investment, to confer greater freedom on them by the terms of the trust deed. At the time when trustee securities were so dear—in the middle nineties—that it was difficult to get a yield of 2½ per cent. on them, a fashion was introduced of drawing trust deeds with wide investment powers, and there is no reason why this tendency should not be extended.

India and the Dominions would have no legitimate cause to feel aggrieved, in view of the much greater burden of war debt and after-war depression that the British tax-payer has had to shoulder; and the fact that the