an before it, thanks to the reduction in income tax,
which is assumed as axiomatically arising in its train. But is
this certain or even likely? Is it not much more probable that our
Government, finding its post-war Budget greatly lightened by a Levy on
Capital or a Compulsory Loan to redeem debt, will think itself free to
indulge in extravagance, maintaining a considerable part of the war
income tax and wasting it on rash experiments? All these weaknesses,
which appear to be inherent alike in the Levy on Capital or in the
scheme which gilds the pill by calling it a Compulsory Loan, seem to
be ignored or neglected (perhaps because they are unanswerable) by
their advocates. On the other hand, there are certain psychological
arguments on the other side. If the well-to-do, who would have to pay
the Levy or subscribe to the Compulsory Loan, would prefer that system
to a high income tax, there is no more to be said. A tax that is
popular with the payer, as compared with other modes of shearing
his fleece, needs no further recommendation. But, in view of the
probability of the experiment, once tried, being shortly and
frequently repeated, I Very much doubt whether this is so; as far as I
have been able by personal inquiry to test opinion on the point I have
found it almost unanimously adverse among those whom the Levy would
most seriously affect. If, as is much more likely, the imposition of
a Levy created better feeling among the working classes and the
returning soldiers and tended to more harmonious co-operation in
after-war tasks of reconstruction, it might be worth while to face its
evils and its dangers. But here again it is quite probable that if the
burden of war debt were clearly and palpably put on the shoulders best
able to bear it, that is, on those who are lifted by the gifts
of fortune--either in inherited money or unusual brainpower or
faculties--by an equitably graded income tax, the effect might be just
as good on the minds of those who suspect that the rich have battened
throughout the war on exploitation of the poor.

This much at least seems to be agreed by most reasonable people about
the debt charge--that it will have to be raised, either by a Levy on
Capital or by income tax or some other form of direct taxation, from
those who are blessed with a margin. We are not likely to repeat our
ancestors' mistake, after the Napoleonic War, of throwing the whole
burden on to the general consumer by indirect taxat