The text of Mr. Harold Cox's admirable speech on Tuesday
was the growth of national extravagance. The Liberal Party in 1901 denounced 2135,000,000 as an extravagant expendi- ture. They were now spending 2166,800,000, or an increase of 231,800,000 in eight years. Again, in ten years our aggregate liabilities had been increased by 2119,000,000. Turning to the Budget, Mr. Cox observed that the Land Values Tax was not finance ; it was political warfare. The Lord Advocate's arguments justified not merely a tax on increment, but the forcible appropriation of the whole of the present value of land. Mr. Ure, he further pointed out, though he had signed the Report of the Select Committee on Land Values in favour of taxing feu-duties, now supported the special exemp- tion of feu-duties from taxation. The Government proposals rested on the two unsound "Henry Georgeisms " that land always increased in value and that landed property increased in value more rapidly than other forms ot wealth. As a matter of fact, the value of land in this country was declining relatively to other property, and it was not the only thing to which unearned increment attached,—e.g., physicians' fees, copyright in books. Unearned decrement was a fax more important subject for the attention of the State, but it could not be conceived in prattle°, and logically, therefore, they were bound to leave a man to take the benefit of unearned increment,
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