MR. GOSCHEN AND THE LANDLORDS.
"V‘THAT is all the pother about ? Mr. Goschen has proposed to divide the rates now paid by the occupier between the occupier and owner, and to judge from the language of some of their advocates, the landowners consider his measure one of spoliation. The Saturday Review, seldom violent, though often scornful, is so beside itself with rage that it declares in one column that the innovation is equivalent to a new income tax of half-a-crown upon the poorer landlords, and in another that " as Mr. Goschen's Bill makes no addition to the taxes on real property, the Budget will almost certainly include some fresh demand on the unhappy owner of land." If there is no addition to the taxes on real property, why are landholders about to be ruined by the new tax ? Because, says the Review, the small landowner is mortgaged ; and if the mortgagee is not taxed—which he will not be—the small landowner's small margin of income will all be taken up in paying the rates, and he will be rained. Well, why should he not be mined ? Setting aside for a moment the economical part of the question, just see what the preten- sion advanced by the Saturday Review amounts to. It is nothing less than a demand that the insolvent landowner, alone among insolvents, shall be exempted from payment of taxes John Smith, farmer, owes so much to his banker that after payment of interest he has barely enough profit left to pay his rates, but still he mast pay them. Only if he owns land, and the interest on his borrowings, being secured upon land, is low, then, if his margin is insufficient, he need not pay his taxes. Somebody else, in fact, is always to pay the in- terest on a landlord's debts I Since the fall of the ancient regime in France, we do not think such an argument has been put forward in Europe, and the Saturday Review, when it has recovered its temper, will, we doubt not, be first to repudiate its own proposition, but still the fact that it could have been made may afford Mr. Goschen a hint as to the kind of oppo- sition he may expect from the distinctive "friends of the land."
The truth is that Mr. Goschen's proposal will be in most places a mere administrative change, defensible rather on political than on economical grounds. It will not relieve the farmer and it will not distress the landlord. The Bill is not retrospective and does not interfere with leases, and the landlord therefore, on the next avoidance of lease, may add the half-rate to his rent. The tenant may not be able or willing to pay it ? Clearly he is both able and willing, for he does it now, only instead of paying half to the collector and half to the landlord in the shape of increased rent, he pays it all to the collector. He gets no relief under the Bill, except perhaps a little time, which his landlord will grant and the collector cannot, while the landlord loses nothing except when his tenant bolts with the rent. He will then lose his rent and his half-rate, whereas now he only loses his rent, but that small additional liability will only make him a little more careful to choose solvent men for his farms. A very small landlord who racks very hard may perhaps be compelled to bear the tax rather than see a farm thrown up, but a tenant in that position and aware of his advantage would be pretty sure to obtain an equivalent concession from his landlord in some other way. So slight will be the change, that we suspect Mr. Goschen, but for political reasons, would have made the owner pay all, and so reduced the cost of collection and in- creased the regularity of receipt. It would, however, be most inexpedient to remove the rate bills entirely from the observa- tion of the farmers who send up the county members and the citizens who elect the spending Boards, a Bill -which is never seen being very often forgotten, and consequently the rates are divided, and for the future both landlords and occupiers will have a direct interest in making them as low as they can. At present, the landlords, who alone sit in the House of Commons, do not pay the rates on their farms, and unless they rackrent have very little direct interest in reducing them. The tenants pay them, and though if they were reduced rent might be raised, the landlords are not anxious to be perpetually readjusting the scale of their demands.
Lord Malmesbury takes the lead in the attack on another point of the Bill. Instead of contending for the right of the parish to get something from personal property, which might be maintained by argument—the owner of Consols being distinctly protected by the poor-rate and police rate, in some sort of proportion to the wealth thereby saved from attack, or at least as much so as he is by the taxes for Army and Navy—his lordship selects the assessment on game as his point of assault. How, he says, is game to be assessed, when game is not property. Those who sport do not sell game, and how is game to be valued when it is not sold. There is a simplicity in these questions which would be delightful, were not the writer a Peer and an ex-Secretary of State. Lord Malmesbury does not sell his game, we dare say, or let his shootings ; but then there are people who do, and though the Chairmen of Parishes may be stupid folk, they will be bright enough, let us hope, to strike a customary average of value. That they may strike it too high we think possible—the Saturday Review hit a blot there—particularly if the parish contains a preserve which demoralizes half its. youth ; but even then Lord Malmesbury and his friends have the remedy in their own hands. Let them keep down the head of game, to the immense benefit of their tenantry. If they prefer, on the contrary, to keep it up, then they have, it is clear, a beneficial interest in something which, whether property or not for certain purposes, is certainly maintained for the purpose of supplying them with amusement. If game is not a luxury, why keep it up, as Lord Malmesbury rightly says, at great expense I—and if it is a luxury, what better subject can there be for taxation than a luxury which every one who maintains it can at discretion abandon ? Game has every attribute required in a sub- ject for taxation. The tax will fall only on the rich, it will be self-adjusting. and it will diminish a thing which, on the whole, is rather more injurious than beneficial. We do not suppose the proposal will get through Parliament, because if the occupier pays half the rates on game he will want to have half the game too, and the game question will be compli- cated to a degree neither landlords nor tenants will like ; but the attack on it from Lord Malmeabnry's point of view is almost comic at once in its energy and its absurdity. Why does he not propose to exempt his pictures from the succes- sion-duty ? He neither lets nor sells them, and the benefit. they afford him, if any, is rather more of an educating character than the benefit afforded by game. Yet they are taxed, and taxed by collectors who, of their own knowledge, know as little about the value of pictures as the value of pheasants. Whether game ought to be counted as realty is another matter ; but, as we imagine, Mr. Goschen has not pro- posed to make that concession to the landlords' great prayer. A pheasant may not be real property any more than a hen, but land used for breeding pheasants may have its value very greatly enhanced by their presence, and land is realty.
Previous page
