AMERICAN VISITORS TO ENGLAND. [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—Your issue of January 20th describes transatlantic tourists as desirable revenue-producers in Great Britain, and suggests the attraction of such visitors by greater enterprise of hotel-keepers and railways, and by advertising. My own experience leads me to say that the existing laws of Great Britain -affecting tourists act as a deterrent. Every foreigner is compelled to register at the nearest police office after he has been thirty (or is it sixty ?) days in the United Kingdom. Upon rfilling in and signing a long questionnaire, and offering residents as his sponsors, he receives from the inspector an identifying certificate, which on leaving that district he must present again to the inspector, who stamps upon it his official permission to go to some other designated district, where the process is repeated by the new inspector checking him in and checking him out. If the visitor were a ticket-of-leave convict he could hardly be supervised more closely, or be subject to greater penalties for negligence.
If in spite of this surveillance the visitor shall have per-
sisted in remaining six months in the United Kingdom during any tax-year, I am advised that he becomes ipso facto liable to the Treasury for the full amount of British Income-tax upon all income received by him from any source during the preceding twelve months. Very few persons will knowingly incur that liability in addition to the tax they pay in their own country. The result is that many tourists who would like to spend their money in England are compelled to take it to France or Italy or some other Continental country which does not penalize them in that fashion. Are these restrictions ',necessary ?—I am, Sir, &c.,
CHARLES P. EEL'S.
g,415 Pierce Street, San Francisco.
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