Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 by Various
page 65 of 207 (31%)
page 65 of 207 (31%)
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It is no good talking about "holidays from taxation" and imagining you
can get rid of this thing easily; you won't. We are still in the war financially. There is the same need of the true national spirit and heroism as there was then. Thus hard facts may ultimately force us to some such expedient as the levy, but we should not accept it light-heartedly, or regard it as an obvious panacea. Perhaps in two or three years we may tell whether economic conditions are stable enough to rob it of its worst evils. The question whether the burden of rapidly relieving debt by this means in an instalment levy over a decade is actually lighter than the sinking fund method, depends on the relation of the drop in prices over the short period to the drop over the ensuing period, with a proper allowance for discount--at the moment an insoluble problem. I cannot yet with confidence join those who, on purely economic and non-political grounds, commend the scheme and treat it as "good business for the income-tax payer." FREE TRADE BY RT. HON. J.M. ROBERTSON P.C.; President of National Liberal Federation since 1920; M.P. (L.), Tyneside Division, Northumberland, 1906-18; Parliamentary Secretary to Board of Trade, 1911-15. Mr. Robertson said:--At an early stage of the war Mr. H.G. Wells published a newspaper article to the effect that while we remained Free |
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