During the debate on the Committee, stage of the Finance
Act in the House of Commons on Friday, May 12th, Mr. Bartley, though he himself proposal a most unworkable scheme for preventing Government busy ing Consols above par, elicited an interesting declaration fr em the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He was trying, said Sir Michael Hicks- Beach, to see if the Local Loans stock torrid not be made more attractive to the local authorities. we hope he may succeed, for if this could be done certain of tbe inconveniences caused by the paying off of the National Debt would be got rid of. Investors cannot use municipal stalk as they use Consols, because there is not a large enou gh or a certain enough market ; but if there were enough of the municipal loans grouped in a single Government stack, the shrinkage of the amount of Consols open to investment would not matter. Another interesting point in the dehate was the demand made by Mr. Hubbard that people should be allowed to insure their lives for a sum of money to be used in paying Death-duties, and that this sum should not itself brsliable to the Death-duties or be aggregated with the rest of the dead man's property. The Chancellor of the Exchequer expressed great sympathy with the idea, but pronounced it impracticable. You could not ear-mark the insurance money. Possibly there are objections which we do not p erceive, but would not a survivorship policy made in favour of a man's heir meet the difficulty A man, that is, would create a survivorship policy in favour of his son and assign it to him irrevocably. The son, if he survived the father, would receive the insurance money, and use it to pay the Death-duties.
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