It is because we have done this that we are the object of all this abuse and indignation which is so loudly expressed in certain quarters throughout the country at the present time.  While the working-classes have borne the extra taxation upon their tobacco and whisky in silence, all this rage and fury is outpoured upon the Government by the owners of this ever-increasing fund of wealth, and we are denounced as Socialists, as Jacobins, as Anarchists, as Communists, and all the rest of the half-understood vocabulary of irritated ignorance, for having dared to go to the wealthy classes for a fair share of the necessary burdens of the country.  How easy it would be for us to escape from all this abuse if we were to put the extra taxation entirely upon the wages of the working classes by means of taxes on bread and on meat.  In a moment the scene would change, and we should be hailed as patriotic, far-sighted Empire-builders, loyal and noble-hearted citizens worthy of the Motherland, and sagacious statesmen versed in the science of government.  See, now, upon what insecure and doubtful foundations human praise and human censure stand.

Well, then, it is said your taxes fall too heavily upon the agricultural landowner and the country gentleman.  Now, there is no grosser misrepresentation of the Budget than that it hits the agricultural landowner, and I think few greater disservices can be done to the agricultural landowner, whose property has in the last thirty years in many cases declined in value, than to confuse him with the ground landlord in a great city, who has netted enormous sums through the growth and the needs of the population of the city.  None of the new land taxes touch agricultural land, while it remains agricultural land.  No cost of the system of valuation which we are going to carry into effect will fall at all upon the individual owner of landed property.  He will not be burdened in any way by these proposals.  On the contrary, now that an amendment has been accepted permitting death duties to be paid in land in certain circumstances, the owner of a landed estate, instead of encumbering his estate by raising the money to pay off the death duties, can cut a portion from his estate; and this in many cases will be a sensible relief.  Secondly, we have given to agricultural landowners a substantial concession in regard to the deductions which they are permitted to make from income-tax assessment on account of the money which they spend as good landlords upon the upkeep of their properties, and we have raised the limit of deduction from 121/2 per cent. to 25 per cent.  Thirdly, there is the Development Bill—­that flagrant Socialistic measure which passed a second reading in the House of Lords unanimously—­which will help all the countryside and all classes of agriculturists, and which will help the landlord in the country among the rest.  So much for that charge.