THE COROLLARIES OF REVOLUTION BY FINANCE.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR:1 Siu,—That the present Budget introduces into party polities the novel principle of legislation (and thence revolution) by finance has already been urged by more than one critic of the ethics of the Session's Finance Bill. Up to date no speaker, whether in the House or on the platform, appears to have improved the occasion to the extent of exposing the full reductio ad absurdum of the new principle surreptitiously introduced, and the various corollaries which can be ascribed to it. When the catalogue is studied, Mr. Lloyd George might well feel, like Clive, "astonished at his own moderation," in having limited his tentative Bill on these lines to mere vindic- tive reiteration of his two erst rejected licensing and land revolutionary schemes. To illustrate. He has gratuitously lost his chance for this Session of carrying both Welsh Disestablishment and abolition of plural voting by two simple financial sections,—e.g., tax Church revenues in Wales out of existence, to nineteen shillings in the pound if required, and the first and essential desideratum is practically attained, and removed from Lords' veto ; while the plural voter can be extinguished by a tax of £100 or more per annum upon all votes on the register in excess of one for each elector. Again, if Mr. Haldane had coveted conscription, and yet had hardly dared to propound it as an independent measure, he could have practically attained it, through the complaisance of his Chancellor colleague, by the resource of taxing the non- enrolled or absentee yet able-bodied citizen to a tune far heavier than any reasonable Petty Sessional fine for non- enrolment or neglect of drill. The magician wand of finance might even, on the same lines, be utilised to attain the Socialist aspiration of "ending or mending "the House of Lords. An annual five-figure tax analogous to the duty on armorial bearings, levied upon a passive and muzzled Peerage for the privilege of right to a coronet (even if never worn), would practically annihilate the Upper House drag on the wheel of revolution. "Which is absurd," the shade of Euclid murmurs. None will gainsay him; yet, if the ethics of the Finance Bill were in conformity with equity, such reductio ad absurdum of their principles would be impossible.—I am, Sir, &c.,
W. B. WOODGATZ.
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