ee, for anything except party
politics, and even for purposes of party politics we are not organised
so well as they are in the United States. A more scientific, a more
elaborate, a more comprehensive social organisation is indispensable
to our country if we are to surmount the trials and stresses which the
future years will bring. It is this organisation that the policy of
the Budget will create. It is this organisation that the loss of the
Budget will destroy.

But, we are told, "it presses too heavily upon the land-owning
classes." I have heard it said that in the French Revolution, if the
French nobility, instead of going to the scaffold with such dignity
and fortitude, had struggled and cried and begged for mercy, even the
hard hearts of the Paris crowd would have been melted, and the Reign
of Terror would have come to an end. There is happily no chance of our
aristocracy having to meet such a fate in this loyal-hearted,
law-abiding, sober-minded country. They are, however, asked to
discharge a certain obligation. They are asked to contribute their
share to the expenses of the State. That is all they are asked to do.
Yet what an outcry, what tribulation, what tears, what wrath, what
weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, and all because they are
asked to pay their share.

One would suppose, to listen to them, that the whole of the taxation
was being raised from, or was about to be raised from the owners of
agricultural estates. What are the facts? Nearly half the taxation of
the present Budget is raised by the taxation of the luxuries of the
working classes. Are they indignant? Are they crying out? Not in the
least. They are perfectly ready to pay their share, and to pay it in a
manly way, and two hundred thousand of them took the trouble to go to
Hyde Park the other day in order to say so.

What are the facts about agricultural land? It is absolutely exempt
from the operations of the new land taxation so long as agricultural
land is worth no more for other purposes than it is for agricultural
purposes: that is to say, so long as agricultural land is agricultural
land and not urban or suburban land, it pays none of the new land
taxation. It is only when its value for building purposes makes its
continued agricultural use wasteful and uneconomic, it is only when it
becomes building land and not agricultural land, and when because of
that change it rises enormously in price and value--it is only then
that it