"ECONOMY INCOMPATIBLE WITH RATES."
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTAT011.1
Sin,—I agree with Mr. H. E. Malden in your last issue that a direct vote of the ratepayers on all expenditure necessitating a loan is needed to check the extravagance of public bodies. But I doubt if it would be of much effect unless the voting power were proportioned to the amount of rates paid. If any Socialistic measure is proposed by which twenty men will get much more than they pay for, and the twenty-first will pay for much more than he gets, I fear there will generally be twenty votes for the scheme, however extravagant, both in the popular Chamber and in the Referendum. The man who pays the piper should call the tune. It has always seemed to me that the old Liberal principle that representation and taxation should go together involved the corollary that these two things should be proportioned to each other. That would obviously be impossible in voting for Members of Parliament, or even of a Town Council; but in such a reference to taxpayers as Mr. Malden proposes it would be both practicable and just.—I am,
Sir, &c., J. S. ORES. frontgomerie Quadrant, Kelvinside, Glasgow.
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