On Wednesday the Lord Advocate moved the second reading of
the Land Values (Scotland) Bill,—a Bill which if
it were acted on would, he deelared, "benefit the improving landlord, the agricultural landlord, and the improving tenant" His speech ended with the threat that if the Bill were thrown out in the Lords, the result might be that rating as well as valuation would appear in the next measure. Mr. Harold Cox moved the rejection of the Bill in a speech of a very high order of merit. He displayed a complete mastery over a question complicated and obscured by some of the most specious sophistries and paradoxes that have ever assailed the public mind. After showing that in practice the rating system to which the Bill was a preliminary would tax the poor man for the advantage of the rich, and would transfer local burdens from the shoulders of the idle to those of the industrious, Mr. Cox pointed out how shallow was the argu- ment used by the supporters of the Bill that you must not tax enterprise. "If they wanted revenue they must tax enter- prise, for it was enterprise that produced wealth, and it was out of wealth that they got their revenue." Mr. Cox went on to show how false was the picture drawn of a public yearning to buy land, and a wicked landlord refusing to sell it. "The whole genesis of the idea of the Bill was Henry George." As soon as the system proposed in the Bill was understood, it would be condemned by the common-sense and common honesty of the people.
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