CONFERENCE ON FRUIT GROWING 



53 



of taxation — you made those recommendations apparently in the belief 

 that the Agricultural Rates Act was to be permanent. I hope that the 

 question whether glasshouses are to be rated on a deduction of one- 

 sixth or one-third will not come into public consideration very much, 

 because I want the matter treated on a very different basis. I want the 

 Poor Rate, the Education Rate, and the Highway Rate to which glass- 

 houses are rated, to be made charges on the national revenue ; and although 

 I quite approve of your recommendations so far as they go, it is only 

 on the understanding that the Agricultural Rates Act is looked upon as 

 a temporary measure. As a definite outcome of this Conference I should 

 be glad if a resolution could be proposed and carried unanimously urging 

 the Government to pass measures dealing with the whole question of 

 local taxation on the lines recommended by the Royal Commission. One 

 other point, I think, might be dwelt upon. In your tenth recommendation 

 you suggest that the Board of Agriculture should appoint experts in 

 fruit valuation for estimating the amount of compensation to be paid to 

 an outgoing tenant. I quite agree that it would be a good thing to 

 appoint experts ; but I think it would be better if, instead of the Board 

 of Agriculture appointing experts to formulate general rules for estimating 

 the amount of compensation, a joint Committee could be nominated by, 

 let us say, the Royal Horticultural Society, the National Fruit Growers' 

 Federation, and the Surveyors' Institution. I think the recommendations 

 of such a joint Committee might perhaps be more readily acceptable 

 to fruit growers and valuers, than recommendations by a Committee 

 nominated entirely by a Government department. I have in my mind, 

 that some twenty years ago the Newcastle Farmers' Club appointed a 

 special Committee, and instructed that Committee to draw up a scale 

 of compensation for unexhausted improvements. The scale recommended 

 by the Farmers' Club was adopted by the whole of the North of 

 England. A Committee of the Central Chambers of Agriculture 

 formulated a scheme for the whole country. That was only in 1902, 

 and I am glad to say that that scale is coming into much more general 

 use than any scale before, and that was because it was a scale adopted 

 by purely practical men, and I think matters become established on a 

 more firm footing if they are done by private persons, or societies, 

 than if done entirely by a Government department. One of the 

 recommendations made by Mr. Hooper was that the rates should be 

 divided between landlord and tenant. I know a good many people are 

 in favour of it, but I think it would end in an advantage to the occupier, 

 because the real incidence of taxation is on real property, and you will 

 find that in the end all the local burdens fall on the shoulders of 

 the landlord. That is not my dictum. It is the opinion of the late 

 Mr. Gladstone. 



Mr. Edwin Vinson : I am pleased to be able to say that I am 

 personally greatly indebted to Colonel Long for his Act. Before it the 

 landlord had the right to the trees immediately they were planted. Since 

 the passing of Colonel Long's Act we are in a different position, and now 

 the landlords are complaining. Well, a man cannot be at the wicket all 

 the time ! I look upon that Act as the salvation of the fruit-growing 

 industry of this country. Owing to it I was enabled to obtain £1,200. 



