DAY BY DAY

Waikato Times, Volume 96, Issue 15034, 4 September 1922, Page 4

DAY BY DAY

Details of the scheme for the conversion of tax-free de-

Conversion of Debentures.

bentures which the Prime Minister proposes to bring down

before the end of the session will be awaited with some interest. As matters stand, with nearly fifty millions locked up in these securities, the Dominion suffers a heavy loss of revenue. If all free-of-tax debentures were held by individuals or companies subject to the maximum rate of income tax, this loss would amount at present to close on £1,000,000 annually. In his Budget, however, 'Mr Massey stated that tax-free debentures to an amount of £8,000,000 were held as investments by various State Departments, and that a large sum is held by numerous investors who are not subject to income tax. The conversion offer, if it is to serve its purpose, obviously will have to be fairly liberal, remarks the Dominion. One way of providing an inducement would be to follow the plan sometimes adopted by the British Government of offering an amount of new stock exceeding that, of the stock to be converted. Under this method the amount of the public debt, of course, would be increased. An increased rate of interest is inevitable in any case. It affects the position, however, that the rate of income tax may be expected to fall very considerably well within , the period the debentures have to run.

Fears regarding the activities of re-

Common Sense of British Nation.

volutionary societies in Britain were expressed by Lord Sydenham in the House of Lords.

In reply, the Lord Chancellor said that since the armistice the country had gone through a crisis greater than any in our history, unless it were in the troubled time which followed the Battle of Waterloo. They had had strikes and unrest in the labour world. What had happened? The essential stability of the institutions of the country and the fundamental tradi-, tional common sense of the citizens of the country had been vindicated month by month and year by year until they were in a position to-day to see these things in their true proportion, and to know that they would not appeal in va*n to that common sense which had been inherent in the British nation for so many centuries, •which was a steady force in the world, and which was in Europe the one hope which made us not despair of the civilisation of Europe. Continuing, the Lord Chancellor said: “Is it of no importance that the Labour Party, meeting in its usual congress, should, by an overwhelming majority, have repelled from among themselves that Inconsiderable Communist fragment G;f which the noble lord is so unduly apprehensive? It is to the credit of organised Labour of this country that they have perceived the specious sophistry and insidious danger of those doctrines. Whether there may or may not have been grave dangers in the last fo,ur years I do not pronounce. I am too strong a believer in the British character to believe that any dangers would have arisen with w r hich we would not have successfully dealt; but do you suppose that the British people are to embrace these crazy doctrines at a moment at which, in the sight of the whole world, they have involved the mighty Empire of Russia in devastation and ruin? To suppose that the working classes of this country are to be deceived by these mischievous new and vicious doctrines is, believe me, to lend a far too inattentive ear to the part that political education and intuitive common sense have played in the history of our country.”