ers--that
is to say, nearly three-quarters of the whole number of income-tax
payers--who formerly paid at the shilling rate have obtained an actual
relief from taxation to the extent of nearly L1,200,000 a year in the
aggregate. The present Chancellor of the Exchequer in the present
Budget has added to this abatement a further relief--a very sensible
relief, I venture to think you will consider it--on account of each
child of parents who possess under L500 a year, and that concession
involved a further abatement and relief equal to L600,000 a year.
That statement is founded on high authority, for it figured in one of
the Budget proposals of Mr. Pitt, and it is to-day recognised by the
law of Prussia.

Taking together the income-tax reforms of Mr. Asquith and Mr.
Lloyd-George, taking the two together--because they are all part of
the same policy, and they are all part of our treatment as a
Government of this great subject--it is true to say that very nearly
three out of every four persons who pay income-tax will be taxed after
this Budget, this penal Budget, this wicked, monstrous, despoliatory
Budget--three out of every four persons will be taxed for income-tax
at a lower rate than they were by the late Conservative Government.

You will perhaps say to me that may be all very well, but are you sure
that the rich and the very rich are not being burdened too heavily?
Are you sure that you are not laying on the backs of people who are
struggling to support existence with incomes of upwards of L3,000 a
year, burdens which are too heavy to be borne? Will they not sink,
crushed by the load of material cares, into early graves, followed
there even by the unrelenting hand of the death duties collector? Will
they not take refuge in wholesale fraud and evasion, as some of their
leaders ingenuously suggest, or will there be a general flight of all
rich people from their native shores to the protection of the
hospitable foreigner? Let me reassure you on these points.

The taxes which we now seek to impose to meet the need of the State
will not appreciably affect, have not appreciably affected, the
comfort, the status, or even the style of living of any class in the
United Kingdom. There has been no invidious singling out of a few rich
men for special taxation. The increased burden which is placed upon
wealth is evenly and broadly distributed over the whole of that
wealthy class who are more numerous in Great Britain than in any