persons with enormous interests in huge combines, will exercise more
and more an undue and dangerous influence on fiscal policy and political
life. The old nobility and the class of country gentlemen will have less
power. Their resources will be seriously crippled, and their families
perhaps extinguished through losses in the War. The middle class, which,
in the last century, exercised the strongest influence on political
life, and from which most of our men of letters and science have sprung,
may now be crushed. On the more highly educated part of the middle
classes whose means are limited the burden of the War has fallen most
heavily. Taxation seems deliberately arranged to place as heavy a burden
as possible on those of the middle classes who have children to bring up
and to educate in the way they think best, and who endeavour to provide
means by which their families can occupy the same position in life which
their parents have done. The rate of income tax paid by a bachelor and a
spinster is increased if they marry, although their necessary expenses
will be enormously increased if they have a family to support. A
bachelor with L500 a year may be living in ease and luxury; if he
marries and has four or five children to educate he may find difficulty
in meeting the needs of his family with L1,500. In the same way the
death duties are absurdly small on the estate of the bachelor who leaves
no family, but are a real hardship on the family of the man who dies
leaving a number of children.

The tendency is towards a rapid accumulation of huge fortunes. In
considering the incidence of taxation Bacon's advice might well be
remembered: "Above all things, good policy is to be used that the
treasure and moneys in a State be not gathered into few hands, for
otherwise the State may have great stock and yet starve, for money is
like muck, not good except it be spread."

CHAPTER XV

NATIONAL EXPENDITURE

_But where is the money to come from? Yes, that is to be
asked. Let us as quite the first business in this our
national crisis look not only into our affairs but into
our accounts and obtain some notion of how we annually
spend our money, and what we are getting for it. Not the
public revenue only; of that some account is rendered
already. But let us do the best we can to set down the
items of the national private expenditure and know what
we spend altogether and how._--JOH