Mr. Balfour summed up the case for the Opposition. His
most effective points were made against the equalisation of the Death-duties on land and personalty, and the graduation pro- posals of the Government. If we are to have graduation, he said, let it be applied to the living rather than to the dead. Under the present proposal, a man dies and leaves £10,000 to his son. "He is taxed at the rate of 3 per cent. A man dies worth a million, and leaves precisely the same sum of 210,000 to his son or his daughter. The son or the daughter has to pay not 3 per cent., but 8 per cent. The thing is unarguable." Mr. Balfour's attack on "Government by valuers" was also effective. Sir William Harcourt, in reply, made a good point by asking why nothing had been said about the great ground- landowners. "It is upon them, as they know perfectly well, that the chief burden of this taxation will fall, and therefore they have put forward the ease of every other class first,—the yeoman farmer, the licensed victualler, or the rained brewer." On the whole, we think that the Unionists are to be congratu- lated on the fact that the Government escaped defeat.
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