uld be levied on the excessive profits distributed
in respect of the capital embarked in businesses of every kind. It was
pointed out long ago that a tax thus levied on all alike would be paid
wholly by the capitalist and "would neither affect the prices of the
commodities produced nor the distribution of capital." The duty might be
graded according to the percentage to be received on the capital of
each investor. It might be reasonable for the first 10 per cent. to pay
only the ordinary rate of income tax. Money in fixed permanent
securities may now produce 5 per cent. or 6 per cent., and the
additional 4 per cent. free from the excess duty would be a fair return
for risk and an inducement to enterprise. The rate of excess duty might
be increased according to the excess of profits above 10 per cent. until
when the profits reached, say, 30 per cent. the duty on the amount in
excess of 20 per cent. might be very high. The effect of the tax would
not be to reduce the spending power of the community; it would only be
that the State instead of the individual would to the extent of the duty
obtain the power of purchasing what it required, and discharging its
liabilities with the money it took from excessive profits. The amount of
the tax, the method of grading and mode of levying it, would require
careful consideration; but if the difficulties and inequalities
introduced by the War excess profits duty could be met, there seems no
reason why the difficulties of the tax thus proposed should not be also
solved; at all events, an attempt should be made to see how it would
work out.

Where money is rapidly acquired by some stroke of fortune and is not the
result of steady industry the result is constantly unwise and often
harmful expenditure either by those who have acquired it or their
immediate successors. There is an old Lancashire saying as to fortunes
rapidly made, that there are only three generations from clogs to clogs:
"What is unreasonably gathered is also unreasonably spent by the persons
into whose hands it finally falls." It may be spent "in a stupefying
luxury twice harmful both in being indulged in by the rich and witnessed
by the poor."

There is a great danger to the State at the present time from large
amounts of money rapidly acquired being accumulated in few hands. There
are many signs that we are likely to enter a period which may be
described as the reign of the "nouveaux riches." The great financiers,
the