THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE ON THE BUDGET.
OUR readers should study the little speech of the Duke of Devonshire at Buxton, for it will bring before them a side of the ultimate question raised by the new Budget which often escapes attention. That Budget is levelled at the rich, and especially the very rich, and the question to be decided is whether a reduction in the for- tunes of the very rich for the benefit of the Treasury is, on the whole, beneficial to the country. It is usually decided that it is, and in London especially this feeling is almost universal. Our millionaires, whether industrial or landlords, seem to do so little for their wealth. The in- dustrials may be benefiting whole districts, finding occu- pation for thousands, or swelling the volume of the commerce upon which we all depend ; but here in the capital they are immersed in a luxury of living which often seems to onlookers not Medicean but either foolish or disgusting. The landlords of the great cities, again, though they have a clear right to their wealth, do little or nothing for it, except permit other men to build it up, evade taxation in the most injudicious way, and sometimes act with a want of consideration for those affected, which makes even great improvements seem great wrpngs. The great improvement of Gower Street,. for instance, some ten years ago, drove out scores of families to cheaper neighbourho3ds, thereby nearly ruining the tradesmen who had established with those families con- nections of two generations. It is clever of Sir William Harcourt to quote the great urban landlords as the chief victims of his Budget, for it is hardly in human nature to sympathise with them,—they take the cream so openly off the milk. They have an entire right to the cream, be it understood, for it is theirs by contract ; but there are some jealousies which, like some vices, have their roots deep down in human nature, and which legislators must perforce consider in their laws. All the laws in the world could not preserve a. revenue derived from a monopoly of air. There is, however, another position occu- pied by great landlords and great industrials, and the Duke of Devonshire calls attention to it in a speech studiously divested of exaggeration. He quite acknowledges that he has vast estates, but he points out) how their very vastness benefits the public. On every estate in his hands he spends, in improvements, in educa- tion, in subscriptions, and in keeping up places like Chats- worth, which are in fact magnificent shows for the public, from 30 to 70 per cent. of all they yield. In one case even, he spends more than he receives. This money is all spent in wages, in employment on repairs, and in direct subscrip- tions to institutions of public utility, that is, it goes directly to increase the comfort of the majority. It is only the remainder which the Duke enjoys for his personal expenditure, this remainder, moreover, being burdened with rent-charges to secure dowers, provisions for younger sons, pensions, and the like. That is all very well, while he lives, but how is the successor to keep up that tradition of stately liberality ? He is not a son, and must pay the legacy-duty of a nephew, and under the Budget a Probate-duty charged as if the estates were Consols, and also under the Budget the higher duty to be enforced against millionaires. The result will be, says the Duke, who never exaggerates, and states his facts as facts without bitterness, allowing indeed, with a rather grim smile, that men like him may not be necessities, that the total duty will be equal to the revenue of the estate, the revenue, that is, available for spending, for a period varying from six to twelve years, according to the interpretation placed by lawyers on a most obscurely drafted Act. What is the next Duke therefore to do ? He must live, he will be most unwilling, or perhaps unable, to diminish the mass of the estates in which he has only a life-interest, and he must therefore, at least for the six or twelve years, retrench and get something out of the share of the income hitherto given away. He must stop the improvements, diminish the great charities, shut up palaces like Chatsworth as too expensive to keep up, and thus make the public pay at least a portion of the amount drawn from him by the Treasury claims. That will not ruin the district, but it will ruin a good many of its most valuable institutions, and take away from it much of the amenity which, more than bread and mutton, makes all lives pleasant. The rush of money from a great house means not only great wages to picked classes of the poor, and profit for tradesmen who without it could hardly pay their way, but great relief to the hardly well-off, upon whom, wanting the great house, the burden of maintaining all institutions must fall. It is all very well to say the next Duke will be a mean man if he stops these expendi- tures, but how, if the Duke of Devonshire's figures are correct, is he to avoid it when his whole income out- side these payments is for six or twelve years taken away ? The process is inevitable, and will extend to men far below the Duke's pecuniary rank. If taxed by the State, they will protect themselves by retrenchments, and the retrenchments which will first be made are in those outlays which contribute only to the amenity or comfort of other people. This is just what happens on the Continent, where the landlord or wealthy owner of a chateau, aware that his estate will be subject at death to compulsory distribution, sets himself to save every not necessary expenditure, and gives away volwa- tarilv perhaps a tithe of the contributions made by his English rival. That is mean, it may be said; but the disposition of ordinary human nature, when oppressed by direct demands from the State, is to consider that mean- ness is transmuted into wise economy. Indeed, most men go much further and believe, honestly believe, that as the obligation to pay a tax arises solely from its being im- posed by law—even Ananias was not bound to pay a subscription—any legal evasion of the obligation, such as a gift inter vivos, is morally right. We are not quite clear as to that ourselves, the intention being evasion ; but when Sir William Harcourt calls it cheating, one-half his audience, at least, call his opinion an opinion " neces- sarily held. by a Chancellor of the Exchequer, and by him alone."
We do not quote the Duke of Devonshire's statement as a final argument against the Budget, for it is not. Much of the evil he foresees can be met by selling a por- tion of the property ; and it is by no means proved that great aggregations of land in single hands are beneficial. They are not, for instance, if they are mortgaged up to the hilt, as Savernake was by its last possessor. Much more of it, too, will hereafter be provided for by systematic insurances kept up from generation to generation for payment of the tax, made in fact a first charge upon the gross income ; but it is necessary that the public should see what they are doing, that they are striking heavy blows at the incomes most available for charity, for improvement, and for keeping up the standard of living, and are destroying, so far as their new taxes reach, the variety of life which is essential to a fine civilisation. They want great lives to be lived, and great pictures to be bought, and great woods to be planted, and they are cutting down the resources of the only class which will supply these things. They say the State will supply them all, but the State neither will nor can ; will not, because the poor voter will regard amenity as extrava- gance—imagine John Burns voting a Budget with Chats- worth in it—and cannot, because to produce the effect wanted, great means must be directed by personal taste and personal pleasure in collecting. The official is content with a British Museum, where everything is present except beauty. The Duke of Devonshire did not allude to it, but the variety and amenity of English life is exposed to other fiscal dangers than those in the Budget. We may have, are almost certain to have, an Income-tax levied in the form of a property-duty—the American form in the separate States—the consequence of which will be that every man who collects artistic treasures or builds a Chatsworth, or buys a library like Lord Spencer's, besides his original outlay will be compelled to pay a heavy rent for his house or pictures or books or curios of any kind. We could name a house where, under that law, the owner would have to pay the equivalent of an Income-tax on £3,000 a year for his prints alone, and this even if he had collected them in order to bequeath them to the nation. That would be a direct blow at civilisation, and so would be a system of rating houses according to actual value, which, indeed, would be fatal to half the finest houses in the land. They are kept up for the country rather than for the owners, who much prefer smaller residences, and to pay rates amounting to thousands a year for such a purpose would speedily be felt unbearable, and the houses would be pulled down. We may, in fact, carry direct taxation or democratic finance so far as to destroy much that is peculiar in our civilisation, and drive the rich to prefer interest-bearing investments to anything that makes life charming, either to themselves, or to the cultivated public. No one now remembers Pitt's tax on windows ; but it shut up half the windows in all houses that were pleasant. The windows were not a bad criterion of the occupants' or owners' wealth ; but the taxpayers grew savage and dispensed with light rather than pay a rental for its enjoyment. If Chatsworth is to cost £50,000 every time it changes hands, is it worth while to keep Chatsworth up for the benefit mainly of visitors to Derbyshire?
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