The reception of the Budget has, on the whole, been
favour. able, and the debate which followed was not of a very critical kind. Mr. Austen Chamberlain, however, made a very interesting and, as we think, sound point when be asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer to give a closer definition of earned income. How was he going to treat income derived from land ? Suppose a farmer was also the owner of the land. Was a portion of his return to be treated as rent and as unearned ? Or suppose the landowner derived £1,500 from an estate which he did not farm, but which he managed him- self, devoting his time to estate management, which thus became his business, was his income to be treated as earned or unearned ? Similar instances, we may add, might also no doubt be found in the case of small private companies managed by the owner of the shares. Here the dividend, or at any rate by far the greater part of it, in really earned income.
