venue. His
proposed luxury tax he has left to be evolved by the wisdom of a
House of Commons Committee, and has thereby given plenty of time to
extravagantly minded people to lay in a store of stuff before the tax
is brought into being.

Space will not allow me to deal fully with the Chancellor's very
interesting analysis of our position as he expects it to be at the end
of the financial year on the supposition that the war was then over.
He expects a revenue then of L540 millions on the present basis,
making, with the yield of the new taxes in a full year, L654 millions
in all, without including the excess profits duty, and he expects an
after-war expenditure of L650 millions, including L50 millions for
pensions and L380 millions for debt charge. It seems to me that
his expectation of after-war revenue is too high, and of after-war
expenditure is too low. He says that the estimates have been carefully
made, but that they include "a recovery from the absence of war
conditions," but surely the absence of war conditions is much more
likely to produce a diminution than a recovery in taxation. Under the
present circumstances, with prices continually rising, the profits of
those who grow or hold stocks of goods of any kind automatically swell
The rise in prices has only to cease, to say nothing of its being
turned into a fall, to produce at once a big check in those profits,
and when we consider the enormous dislocation likely to be produced by
the beginning of the peace period expectations of an elastic revenue
when the war is over seem to be almost criminally optimistic.

The Chancellor arrived at his after-war debt charge of L380 millions
by estimating for a gross debt on March 31, 1919, of L7980 millions,
which he reduces to a net debt of L6856 millions by deducting half
the expected face value of loans to Allies, L816 millions, and L308
millions for loans to Dominions and India's obligation. But is he,
in fact, entitled to count on receiving any interest at all from our
Allies for some years to come after the war? If not, then on that
portion of our debt which is represented by loans to Allies we shall
have to meet interest for ourselves. He also gave an imposing list of
assets in the shape of balances in hand, foodstuffs, land, securities,
building ships, stores in munitions department, and arrears of
taxation, amounting in all to nearly L1200 millions. It is certainly
very pleasant to consider that we shall have all