In a later part of his speech Mr. Cox declared
that the Finance Bill started from a false principle. The only sound principle of taxation was to tax people according to their means. A rich man should pay more because he was rich, and the poor man should pay less because he was poor. The community had always the right to take land when it was wanted for public purposes, but that did not justify the imposition of a special tax on income derived from land. The distribution of wealth was not what it ought to be, but the only way in which they could deal with this unequal distribu- tion of wealth by taxation was to tax people on what they had got, and that they did by means of the Income-tax and Death- duties. The country had been made to believe that the Land- taxes would hit a few great landlords, whereas it was the million of small men who would be hit. These taxes would greatly injure the building trade, and thus make housing dearer. They would impose an insurmountable barrier in the way of ideal Free-trade in land, and they would cost more to collect than they would ever yield in revenue.
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