The price of gold

IT is a pity that those who took part in the debate on the "Free Breakfast-table" in Parliament on Wednesday could not afterwards be publicly cross-examined on their economics; for the fallacious assumptions on which both sides rested their case and the consequent cross-purposes to which they were reduced made the debate at once unedifying and misleading. To Mr. Snowden's plea in favour of the remission of the taxes on food the reply of Mr. Asquith that each class, including the poorest, must proportionately contribute to the national expenditure was temporarily conclusive. On the face of it, nothing could be more just than the canon of taxation in proportion to means. So completely, in fact, was the Labour Party deceived by this plausible fiction that Mr. MacDonald was at pains to prove that the amendment of Mr. Snowden was entirely consistent with it. Mr. Asquith, however (if there had been any speaker on the Labour side to note it) had already destroyed his own case by an admission that ought to have been pointed out. It was the accepted canon, he argued, that taxation should be proportional to income and he proposed to act on it ;yet, such was the condition of the working classes, that practically all they contributed to the State had afterwards to be returned and was returned bo them in the form of pensions, free education, insurance, and poor-relief. But if this is the case as we have no doubt it is, what becomes of the doctrine of proportional taxation? The capitalist classes contribute out of their Rent, Interest and Profit a certain sum to the State annually and do not expect to have it returned to them directly, but only in the form of social and national services. The wage-earners, on the other hand, while also contributing annually to the State, do expect to have their money returned to them directly in the form of doles as well a s indirectly in the form of national services. It is surely obvious from this READERS AND WRITERS. By R . H. C. . . . . . . . . . . . . VIEWS AND REVIEWS. By A. E. R. . . . . . . . . . . . . KING DEATH. By Regina Miriam Bloch . . . . . . . . . REVIEWS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DRAMA. By John Francis Hope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ART. By Anthony 31. Ludovici . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PASTICHE. By Arthur F. Thorn, P. Selver, Ikbal Shah Jehan LETTERS TO THE EDITOR FROM Arthur Kitson, S. H. J., War Correspondent, E. M. Shepherd, S. West, H. W. Dick son, J. Beanland, Harold Drummond, Otto Bucht, Norman Grieffenhagen, Arthur Hood . . . . . . . . . . . .