[To THZ EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR...1 SIR, — It.is not only
right but prudent to give the devil his due. Your scathing indictment of the Land Value Duties is not quite fair to their author, because the figures quoted extend only to the year 1911-12, whereas, owing to the congestion of the system of valuation, the undeveloped land duty has not in large measure been collected until the present year. Many landowners are only now being harassed with demands for this duty for the four years from the operation of the Act until March 31st, 1913. The falling-in of these arrears will add considerably to the receipts from the land value duties for the financial year just closed and the succeed.
ing year, while not making any sensible reduction in the swingeing effect of your castigation, so broad is the surface for attack offered by this pompous and futile Act (excuse these classic adjectives). Your article, while promising future exposure of the injustice and injury effected by the Act, leaves untouched the gross scandal of its incomprehen- sible jargon. This nightmare of an Act of Parliament, this statute of Bedlam, reduces solicitors and surveyors to a state of bewildered distraction in their efforts to advise their clients for the best. It bristles with doubts and difficulties ; its interpretation is obscured in a labyrinth of confusion of thought and ambiguity of language. No man can foretell what will be the ultimate effect of the statute when the House of Lords has made the final and conclusive guess at the meaning of the thousand and one points in dispute. Columns could be written, too, on the scandalous delays in the assessment of death duties on land since the passing of the Act. Accounts, which formerly could be passed in eight or nine days, are now delayed in assessment for eight or nine months, to the despair of trustees and executors anxious to be quit of their trust, and to the agony of legatees hungry to acquire what is left of their inheritance.—I am, Sir, &c., A LONDON SOLICITOR.
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