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53

LOCAL TAXATION IN COPENHAaEN.

creditably; wliile the well-to-do bachelor or other person who finds a comfortable club more to his taste than a handsome and highly-a ssessed private residence, may be eminently able to contribute. This is an old story, but I do not think another point is so hackneyed. It is this : Why should the contribution to local expenses levied on you or me be dependent on our abilities to make good terms with the owners of the houses in which we live, and on the ignorance or inexperience which may lead us to agree to pav a considerable percentage beyond what would be chargeable for our houses if the hiring of houses was carried out under conditions calculated to establish as true a competitive price as is established for yarn or cloth on the Manchester Exchange? The same idea may be applied con- versely. A landlord or landlord’s agent may let houses below vhat may be'called competitive terms as well as above them. In making our taxation depend on the outcome of one particular bargain alone in respect to the conduct of our lives, and that bargain one in which many, if not most, people are peculiarly at a disadvantage, it is difficult tb believe that the best possible approach to ideal justice is obtained. I confess to no love for our one-tax system in local finance. It is a system which has ite roots far back in our history, which has grown up very gradually, and which retains the defects that soon showed them­ selves. Its inequities have hardly, in my view, been removed by the lapse of time and the re-adjustment of burdens in the process kiiown as the shifting of taxation. I believe that any taxation' based on ia single measure of the relative power to contribute of different contributors is certain to lead to evasion by some, and consequent undue pressure on others. The appearance of inequity certainly remains, and that is in itself an evil, though it may be a not unrecompensed evil when ancient custom and long experience have made the mode of levy adopted both con- venient and economical. I have no proposal for change to make to you, and in the description I am about to give of a different system I do not desire to take up the position of recommending the adoption of