millions to 20,000 millions.  A 10 per cent. levy on this, he proceeded, would realise 2000 millions.  It would extinguish debt to that amount and reduce the interest on debt by 120 millions.  The levy would be graduated—­say, 5 per cent. on fortunes of L1000 to L20,000; 10 per cent. on L20,000 to L50,000; up to 30 per cent. on sums over L1,000,000; and the individual taxpayer was to pay the levy “in what form was convenient, in his stocks or his shares, his houses or his fields, in personalty or realty.”

Just about the same time the Round Table, a quarterly magazine which is usually most illuminating on the subject of finance, chimed in with a more or less similar suggestion in an article on “Finance After the War.”  It remarked that the difficulty of applying a levy on capital is “probably not so great as appears at first sight.”  The total capital wealth of the community it estimated at about 24,000 millions sterling.  To pay off a war debt of 3000 millions would therefore require a levy of one-eighth.  Evidently this could not be raised in money, nor would it be necessary.  Holders of War Loans would pay their proportion in a simple way by surrendering one-eighth of their scrip.  Holders of other forms of property would be assessed for one-eighth of its value and be called on to acquire and to surrender to the State the same amount of War Loan scrip.  To do this, they would be obliged to realise a part of their property or to mortgage it, “but,” added the Round Table cheerfully, “there is no insuperable difficulty about that.”

The first thing that strikes one when one examines these two schemes is the difference in their view concerning the amount of capital wealth available for taxation.  Mr Gardiner made the comparatively modest estimate of 16,000 millions to 20,000 millions; the Round Table plumps for 24,000 millions, and, incidentally, it may be remarked that some conservative estimates put it as low as 11,000 millions.  Thus we have a possible range for the fancy of the scheme builder of from 11,000 to 24,000 millions in the property on which taxation is proposed to be levied.  But it is when we come to the details of these schemes that the difficulties begin to glare.  Mr Gardiner tells us that millionaires would pay up to 30 per cent. of their property, and that they would pay in what form was convenient, in houses, fields, etc., etc.  But he does not explain by what principle the Government is to distribute among the holders of the debt, the repayment of whom is the object of the levy, the strange assortment of miscellaneous assets which it would thus collect from the property owners of the country.