There was, however, a short and dull debate on Thursday
upon the Income-tax, Mr. Hubbard moving that both imperial and local taxation should be based upon real property, and that taxa- tion levied upon industrial earnings should be subject to such abatements as should equitably adjust the pressure to the pressure felt by real property. He maintained that the real cause of fraud was the public feeling that the tax was unfair, incomes dependent on health paying as much as incomes derived from property. Mr. Sclater-Booth, who replied, made the usual answer,—that there were anomalies in the tax, but that the difficulty of removing them had proved insuperable, and the motion was defeated by 156 to 84. Mr. C. Lewis also moved that the tax should remain at twopence, accusing the Premier of bad faith, but he was beaten by 113 to 52, after a speech from Sir Stafford Northcote, in which he denied that the Conservative party stood pledged to repeal the Income- tax, though they were quite willing to do it, if there were any more convenient way of meeting the resulting deficit. The debate was unusually uninteresting, and quite in the air, as the constituencies are not thinking about taxation.
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