DIVES AND LAZARUS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 5678, 28 August 1905, Page 7

DIVES AND LAZARUS.

(From Our Special Correspondent.) LONDON, July 8. One cannot live very long in th.s country without having the conclusion forced upon him that tho wealth of Old England is mostly in the hands of a favoured few, it is one of the first impressions that strikes the newcomer from the Antipodes when he arrives in Loudon and a closer acquaintance deepens and strengthens the thought of it. If you orme from a land where millionaires are unknown, it is somewhat startling at first to be led down some busy thoroughfare and be told by your cicerone, with an airy sweep of his arm, “ the Duke of So-aud-So owns all that lot." The feeling intensifies when he leads you down another street and another, and another, and impresses upon you with a Londoner's pride in the rentrolls of his aristocracy that all these interminable blocks of houses, shops, theatres, and markets are the property of his Grace of Such-and-Suoh. You begin to wonder where the odd six millions or ay of Londoners come in.

As a matter of fact only a few of them "come in” at ail. A reiurn of the assessments to the income tax which has just bean ssued throws light upon some curious and interesting facte regarding the distribution of wealth in the Old Country. Taking only the people who are taxed on their income on ‘‘profits, businesses, professions and employments,'’ we find that the wealthy number only a handful compared with the workers whoso incomes are down near the exemption lim.t—.£l6o a year. Under the s ction referred to some twenty persons enjoy an income of .£50,000 a year; about 450 have incomes of over £SOOO and under £IO,OOO, and about 8000 are assessed at over £IOOO a year. This section. it should perhaps be explained, is not concerned with incomes derived from public companies or from land values. As for the workers with no more than £l6O a year apiece, the Income Tax Comm ssioners have note of 118,000, while those between £l6O and £2OO a year number 138,000. These latter are high figures compared with the number of the plutocrats, but they are insignificant when we think of tho hordes of people whose incomes are not taxable, being under £l6O a year. There are eight million families in the United Kingdom, and according to .S r Henry Campbell-Bannerman about twelve million of these people live on or below the border line whluti separates poverty from destitution. Two facts are clear from this return. One is that the great majority of the people of this wealthy country ate poor, and the other is that the heavy burden of the income tax has to be borne by a very small minority of the population—of which minority the small taxpayer feels the burden most.