I am purchasing an estate, intending to farm it myself. There are 400
acres of land, and I reckon the land worth 30s. an acre. I am willing
to give twenty-five years' purchase. I find the tithe is L100 a year.
I therefore propose to give twenty-five times L500 = L12,500 for the
land. But before the bargain is completed I find that the tithe is
L150 a year. I at once sink my bid to twenty-five times L450 =
L11,250, and buy the estate at that price. The next year some
financier "equalises" the tithe, and my tithe is reduced to L100. Is
it not clear that, by the equalisation, I pocket L1250, and somebody
else loses it?

New taxes when imposed should be "equal," as far as can be arranged.
When a legacy duty was imposed, it would have been just to impose a
succession duty also. But, after the legacy duty had been imposed
twenty years with no succession duty, it was similarly inequitable to
put on a succession duty; for quantities of land had been bought in
the interval of twenty years at a slightly higher price than if there
had been no legacy duty, because there was no succession duty.

The proposal for "equalising" taxes is usually put forward in order
to get a somewhat larger gross income from the taxes equalised, or as
a political cry. Nothing can be more absurd than the cry that the
land is over-burdened in comparison with other property. There is no
comparison in the case. Some land being tithe free, some land tax
free, some nearly rate free, those persons who do not trouble
themselves to master the political economy may yet be satisfied that
the "burdens" of the land affect neither the farmer, the labourer,
nor the produce of the farm; the burdens fall _wholly_ on the
landlord (a farmer with a lease being, as above shown, a part