Parliament has been spending the week in debating the second
reading of the Rating Bill, but with little increase of illumination. On Monday Sir Henry Fowler returned to the attack, and pleaded that the whole urban population was being sacrificed to a section of the rural. The Bill helped only one class that had suffered from the agricultural depression, the farming and land-owning class, yet that depression had affected the rural mill-owner, shopkeeper, and artisan just as severely. We doubt it. Compare the village shop with: what it was twenty years ago. The bakers, again, do very good business, and also the butchers, for the fall in prices has much enlarged the area of purchasers. Oa Wednesday the debate was enlivened by the revolt of Mr, Whiteley, the Unionist Member for Stockport, who opposed the Bill" because of the exceeding cruelty and the exceeding- injustice it did to the residents of urban districts." It was a class measure. Many industries, coal, cotton, iron, and ship- ping, were just as much in need of help. Lancashire was opposed to the Bill. If there was any doubt, let its Members resign and take the verdict of the constituencies. He was himself quite ready to do so. Mr. Fenwick, the miner Mem- ber, who attacked the Bill from the point of view of the coal industry, made a good point when he drew attention to the- fact that the royalties did not pay rates. That, however, is rather an argument for a general readjustment of local taxation than one for not relieving land,—undoubtedly the industry most oppressed by local taxation.
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