NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14203, 28 October 1909, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Vr TAXATION AND CAPITAL. In the discussion now raging in the English press regarding the Budget it is pointed out that what is withdrawn iu taxes from the total of capital engaged in the business of the country is lost, as capital, when spent, by the Government, except in rare cases. The objects to which. the money .is applied may >be necessary or useful to the community; but they are very unlikely to be ■ economically reproductive. In fact, Governments have habitually used the death duty receipts as part of their regular revenue, ''with a smiling conscience and an unembarrassed countenance." The effect of this on the economic position of the community as a whole is the same as that described by John Stuart Mill'in regard to loans made to a Government, the proceeds of which are used unproductively. The passage oc-' curs in Book 1., chapter 4, of his "Principles of Political ' Economy" :—"The breach in the capital of the country was made when the Government . took A's money whereby a value of £10,000 was withdrawn or withheld' from productive employment, placed in the fund for unproductive consumption, and destroyed without.equivalent." Some little time ago the Asquith Government received £1,000,000 from a certain large deceased estate; not , one penny of that' large sum of capital will be,used reproductively. It may ; be spent usefully, or it may not. All we know is that the country's capital has been diminished by that.amount. There have been some disingenuous attempts to treat Lord- Rosebery's and other people's observations on the evil attending the destruction of such "great chunks of: capital" as merely the "bleat" of rich men who wish to shirk their share of taxation. If not disingenuous, such suggestions-are the result of ignorance. It is not a question of shirking. You cannot "take from the rich to give to the poor," on the scale now proposed, without to some extent weakening the productive organs of the whole economic organism, and thus injuring the whole community, "the poor" included. Moreover, you cannot effect this wonderful operation oft.<m. Capital in some degree resemble? the apples of Iduna in the Norse legend, which she with slender fingers took out of a magic box, but •which disappeared when a roughhanded giant, who hid temporarily captured her from the gods of Valhalla, attempted to seize 11* em.

THE GIFT OF ORATORY. Every great speaker is something of, a mesmerist, like the great actor- or' the great physician. No one who heard Bright or Gladstone at his best ever can forget ,the„ curious feeling of complete acquiescence, so long as the. great rolling sentences came, one after another, from the golden mouth of the speaker. And 1 if there was any other worthy to be put beside these two it was perhaps the eloquent Bishop Magec, whose • wonderful speech in defence of the Irish Church in the House of Lords is preserved by those who heard it as a thrilling memory. Disraeli had another kind of. gift—the power of humorous badinage or keenedged sarcasm, often conjoined with a somewhat ponderous and bombastic- verbiage. Chamberlain was, in his prime, a directly practical speaker, of no little force and power of words. In our own day, perhaps, only Lord Rosebery, with hi.? closely reasoned eloquence, and Lord Rathmore, with his genuine rhetorical powers, keep to the older ideals, unless, indeed, we care to add the name of Mr. John Redmond, whose fluent periods, though sometimes a little hollow-sounding and artificial, have.often the genuine stamp. What, after all, is the reason why one man is so often impressive to an audience, and another, possibly endowed with more glib utterance, . nevertheless fails to produce this effect ? It is a question of individuality— that obscure essence of all influence and authority/, A man steps on to a platform, and possibly begins with a few hesitating and halting sentences just as an actress like Elconora Duse will come on the stage and disappoint us at first with an unimpressive walk and manner. And then the miracle happens. We find ourselves listening with all our ears, staring with all our eyes, violently forced out. of our own orbit, and dragged triumphantly at the heels of our conqueror.