Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/398

382 classes which a wise statesmanship would protect, and leaving the minimum burden on those who are most capable of bearing its maximum.

A new feature of the British fiscal system, which in a certain sense may be regarded as an increase of the exemption under the existing income tax, has recently been sanctioned by Parliament under the name of the "Farm Rating Act," which proposes to mitigate existing agricultural depression by relieving farm lands of a large part of their share of local taxation—i. e., as pointed out in debate in the House of Commons, by Sir William Harcourt, "by taking £2,000,000 ($10,000,000) out of the general taxation of the country," inasmuch as, if certain existing sources of revenue supply less, other taxes must supply more. "This will bring up the total governmental contribution for like purposes to £6,000,000 in 1868, and £11,000,000 in 1892." In a debate on this subject before the Royal Statistical Society, it was maintained that an assessment of the English poor rate, to which nearly all other English rates were now mere additions, was originally founded on the principle of ability to pay, and that principle had never been expressly repudiated. But the making of this expenditure a local charge was in itself a negation of the principle of taxation according to ability, and the only question now was whether an attempt to establish in each locality a principle which had been established as regards the nation as a whole. The answer was in the negative.

"Speaking very broadly," wrote Mr. Goschen a quarter of a century ago, "in England fifty years ago land bore two thirds of the taxation on real property, and houses and other property one third; the latter now bears two thirds, while lands bear one third. In Erance lands bore over two thirds more than fifty years ago, and bear more than two thirds still. Land, in short, is not as a rule highly rated in England, and where it is highly rated what is wanted is a revised assessment."

—An exemption is freedom from a burden or service to which others are liable; but an exemption for a public purpose, or a valid consideration, is not an exemption except in name, for the valid and full consideration, or the public purpose promoted, is received in lieu of the tax. Xor is an exemption from taxation a discriminating burden on those who pay an income tax, provided the person or institution benefited by the exemption is a pauper, or a public charitable institution; for then there is consideration for the exemption, and it is justified as a matter of economy, and to prevent an expensive circuity of action in levying the tax with the sole purpose of giving it back to the intended beneficiary of the Government. The avoidance of this unnecessary