T HEpaper which Mr. Bernard Mallet, one of the wealth of
those alive from the amount of wealth of Commissioners of Inland Revenue, read before the those who died during a given period was to ascertain the Statistical Society on Tuesday belongs to a class that the ages of the persons dying, to divide them into categories ordinary man must be content to regard with an admiration and find the average wealth possessed by those in each by a desperate clinging to unpopular rights. of the property becoming liable to the Death-duties in each Our second point is the need for strict financial reform. year be multiplied in order to arrive at the amount of the Senbor Franco was undoubtedly trying to do much in this national capital in that year ?
direction, and we cannot help wishing that he had been It is too early perhaps to expect any agreement among allowed a long enough political life to effect some lasting statisticians on a point of so much importance. Certainly retrenchment. We may even say that we think he will no such agreement exists. In the discussion which be judged more leniently by posterity than by his con- followed a paper read. before the Statistical Society just temporaries in Portugal. However that may be, Franco fourteen months ago the necessary multiplier was fixed by has fallen with so resounding a downfall that we do not one expert at 29, and by another at 65, this latter figure suppose a dictatorship will ever be possible in Portugal being subsequently reduced by its author to 55. Mr. again. Hitherto the two chief parties in Portugal have Chiozza Money in his work " Riches and Poverty " made regarded tenure of office as an opportunity for controlling the multiplier 30. In an appendix to the Report of the and disbursing the spoils. To a large extent there was Income-Tax Commission of 1906 Mr. A. L. Bowley collusion between them. But the limit has been reached, suggested 32. while Sir Henry Primrose, although admitting and if extravagance and corruption do not disappear, the his own preference for 30, qualified it by the prudent Portuguese Monarchy will certainly come to an end, and remark that, in view of the various ratios which had that soon. It seems at first sight as though there were been put forward, the proper multiplier is a " very not much chance of the young King inaugurating a regime doubtful problem." The totals resulting from the use of of integrity and economy through the agency of the very one or other of these figures show what Mr. Mallet parties which have failed again and again to establish it. characterises as " most - disquieting discrepancies." And further insistence on economy will provoke such Thus, with 29 as his multiplier, Mr. Harris puts the bitter personal resentments from sinecurists as will menace accumulated wealth of the country in the year 1905-6 the whole structure of conciliation. Nevertheless, it is at £7,893,015,463. Mr. Bailey, ou the other hand, taking this or nothing. Economy is essential to " save the 55 as his multiplier, gives a total of £14,776,560,000. Monarchy." If any Portuguese Mirabeau visited the If the work of foreign inquirers is taken into account, King to give him sound advice for "saving the Monarchy," we get other figures. In France M. de Foville started he would have to tell him this : that he must begin in his with 36 as his multiplier, which was adopted by the own Court. We hope that the King will set an example Italian economist, Signor Pantaleone. This, however, is himself, and we think that the advice would have a more necessarily arrived at by a different method,—the average auspicious sequel than Mirabeau's. If it became noised interval between transmission of real and personal property, abroad that the King stood for public honesty and just whether at death or by transaction between living persons. finance, and was willing himself to make 'sacrifices in the M. de Foville has now substituted 32 for 36 as his cause, we honestly believe that he might let the elections multiplier. Though Mr. Mallet had at one time accepted take their course on a Republican issue without allowing the first-named figure, by December, 1906, he had come his Ministers to pursue the immemorial expedient of to think that Mr. Harris was right in his choice of manipulating them. 29. But the discussion on Mr. Harris's paper suggested a new method of approaching the question. Mr. Coghlaa THE NATIONAL WEALTH. pointed out that the only true way of ascertaining the category, and to multiply the amount so ascertained by the numbers then living in each category. The result would give the total wealth of the community. Mr. Coghlan, how- ever, thought it useless to attempt any calculation of the kind, since the data on which it must depend do not exist. Mr. Mallet, on the other hand, was of opinion that it was "at least worth while to inquire whether our official statistical resources might not after all be equal" to discovering the data in question, and he found that between the Registrar- General's Office and the Estate-Duty Office a good deal of information was to be had. From the one Department he got the ages of persons dying in each age-category and the corresponding number of persons living. From the other he got the average value of the estates passing in each year, classified according to the ages of the deceased persons. These last figures have only been analysed for the years 1905 and 1906, as the accounts cannot be adjusted after the lapse of a certain time. But the unadjusted results for 1904 correspond so closely with those of 1905 and 1906 that Mr. Mallet thinks that he may safely rely on those two years only, as his purpose in doing so "is less that of stating positive conclusions than of indicating a method of computation, and obtaining the opinion of others on its validity." The figures thus furnished have led Mr. Mallet to think 24 the best multiplier yet sug- gested (though he freely admits that this figure is still open to criticism), and to place the estimated value of the national property somewhere between, in round numbers, £5,500,000,000 and £6,100,000,000.
Whatever may be the merits of these statistics, they did not secure universal acceptance at the meeting on Tuesday. Even Mr. Coghlan, who had originally suggested the application of the method which Mr. Mallet has followed, seems to have been disturbed by the result. His main objection, so far as we can infer it from the very abridged report which is all that we have seen, was that if Mr. Mallet's conclusions were correct, the wealth of England represented only £175 per inhabitant. This he thought a very startling result,—so startling, indeed, as to throw doubt on the process which had led to it. Objections founded on the inherent improbability of a conclusion have a claim to be heard in so far as they point to the importance of thoroughly review- ing the steps by which that conclusion has been reached. This inherent improbability does not, how- ever, seem as great to us as it did to Mr. Coghlan, or rather what improbability there is lies in the opposite direction. What is surprising is not that the wealth of each inhabitant of England should be only £175, but that it should be as much as £175.
Interesting, however, as were Mr. Mallet's conclusions, or, to speak more accurately, suggestions towards a conclusion, their chief importance, in our opinion, is to be found in the fact that we see a great Civil servant making a careful and reasoned attempt to deal with the national wealth, not by a series of guesses, but by the use of official information. Surely this is a field in which inquiry should be continued and developed. If properly collected and observed, the figures at the disposal of the taxing Departments ought ultimately to be able to yield us a sound approximate estimate of the national wealth. In order to reach an end so desirable in itself, we hold that the Government might very well establish a small Statistical Department to which would be entrusted the work of national stocktaking. The expense need not be very great, and the results could not but be useful. If authoritative figures are not sought for, we shall continue at the mercy of guesswork, and guess- work in this field is very dangerous. The statistician makes a guess, and on his guess, which may be some hundreds of millions out, a huge fabric of theory is built up by the politicians, often to the manifest injury of sound adminis- tration and sound legislation.
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