LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
ESTATE-DUTY ON PRINCIPAL VALUES. [To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Poor country gentlemen like myself, and they are many, fail to understand that portion of the Budget which proposes to tax children, not according to what they receive, but -according to what their fathers had to leave, no matter for how short a time they May have had it at all. Take my own -ease, for example. My children, after my death, may have three or four hundred a year each, and the Estate-duty, as I -understand it, should it be passed in its present form, will take away three or four thousand from the total amount to 413e divided amongst them. "Oh, but you must insure your life," says the Spectator. First of all, there might be physical difficulties in the way. In the next place, the premium on the -necessary insurance would at my age be more than I could pay without giving up my hearth and home. In the name of -equality of sacrifice all round, Sir W. Harcourt has pronounced .a sentence of exile against the smaller landed gentry, while he -failsto-carry out his principle of the additional taxation of wealth, in regard to excessive wealth. The millionaire will not -be compelled to part with anything he really prizes. I shall have to part with my library, when I leave my house, and my wife with her flower garden—our sole luxuries—and our neighbours and workpeople will lose those whom they have long known, and, I hope I may add, have long loved.—I am, [IS not our friend exaggerating a little ? The difference in kis ease cannot be 2 per cent—En. Spectator.] I
Previous page
