150 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



is hard hit by the loss of its senior partner. To-day " tools " might be 

 interpreted in the city to include a factory and all its machinery ; in the 

 country 1,000 acres of woodland is a means of production using the sun's 

 radiant energy instead of coal. The limited liability company is a shock- 

 absorbing system in the economic order of the city, and factory work 

 goes on in spite of the funeral of a director. In the more primitive order 

 of the country the death of the landlord may paralyse his estate. Even 

 if one were to accept the argument that big estates ought to be broken 

 up into small estates (no matter whether these would be more or less 

 remunerative per acre), one effect of heavy death duties levied on rural 

 estate is to withdraw capital from agriculture at a most inconvenient 

 moment. Death duties on a landlord's personal effects — pictures, furni- 

 ture, &c. — might have one sort of justification — the distribution of luxuries. 

 Death duties (in excess of one year's rent on land) may mean the paralysis 

 of repairs, fencing, draining, planting, &c., for years, and inhibition of 

 capital development for decades. It might be more defensible if death 

 duties on land all went to the Board of Agriculture, to be redistributed 

 to the same industry in the form of agricultural education, expert advice, 

 new breeding stock, &c. But the drain on the capital sources of the industry 

 (to be distinguished from the drain on individuals) has widespread effects 

 which need not be confused with the whinings of discomforted individuals. 

 The old order accepted disposition by will to the family ; it was justified 

 as long as the family continued the business. If the families do not 

 continue the business, would it be wise to initiate a .new order in which 

 inheritance should go by occupation, so that if a manufacturer died intestate 

 his employees would succeed to his factory, so that legacy duties should 

 differentiate not in favour of near relatives, but in favour of those in the 

 same business, so that if there were any death duties these should 

 go not to the State but to the trades union, or in bonus shares to the 

 employees ? ' 



Businesses both of landowning and of commerce have become so 

 impersonalised that no great case for unlimited powers of bequest for 

 economic reasons can be based on the objective personal link. We are 

 thrown back on the subjective factors. 



X. 



In the sixth group, with questions 15 to 17, we touch upon the large 

 question of the influence of taxation, and it would take me too far afield 

 to deal with them at all adequately, because they involve comparisons 

 with the effect of alternative methods of raising revenue. But the Report 

 of the Colwyn Committee on Taxation and the National Debt, with which 

 I am concerned, will, when issued, probably deal with many features 

 germane to this address. I will content myself with saying that if practical 

 considerations are ignored, to raise a given revenue with some reference 

 to graduation by order of succession and time on the Rignano principle, 

 and to extend the graduation of taxation of bequests outwards by relation- 

 ship, would, in my judgment, offer some important economic advantages 

 over the present methods of raising the revenue. 



