CONSCRIPTION OF WEALTH

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume XLV, Issue XLV, 1 February 1918, Page 4

CONSCRIPTION OF WEALTH

" ROINOU.S TO. ATTEMPT IT WHILE .. THE WAP. IS 0N.." T s SAYS MR BONAR LAW. In a speech which he made to a deputation of the Parliamentary Committee of the Trade Union Congress, Mr. Bonar Law made the interesting confession that when he was young he was perhaps more ■ of a Socialist tihan many of those he has been recently addressing. " I did think," the Chancellor of the Exchequer went on. " that it was possible to get some arrangement of that kind, and even now I do not say it is absolutely impossible. But you cannot go on the principle that your are tb pay no regard whatever to credit, to the incentives which men use in creating capital—that your are to pay no regard to that—-and yet have the present system going on." Wealth was credit, and it was not easy—as 'one of the deputation had argued—to create any amount of notes and circulate them with a mortgage on property be.liind them. There was a sample of it at the time of the French Revolution, when a- sum which ought to have represented £3OO did not represent move than a couple of shillings. (Mr Bonar Law quoted Carlyle's ' French Revolution ' to show that at the time a cab fare cost £300.) DANGER OF LEVY ON CAPITAL. ; If they destroyed credit while the present system existed they would do Tav more harm to the -working' class than to any "other, because those who had more money would find somewhere else to go and spend it. ■lt was on the question of the conscription of wealth that Mr Bonar Law was speaking, and concerning this the Trade Onion Congress at Blackpool reaffirmed Labor's opinion that wealth should be conscripted. The Chancellor, however, insisted on the enormous contribution that was being made by the accumulated wealth of"the country during the war, and he instanced mining royalties, the super tax, 1 ; and the excess profits tax. It would be folly to make a levy on capital as capital, and -he did not think it could he done, while it would be'ruinous to attempt it while the war was going on.