MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL’s Budget is, as he claims, a courageous attempt “to balance fairly the scales of social justice between one class and another”. The proposals for insurance and pensions are designed to give help where it is most needed, and assurance to the classes to whom uncertainty is the most insistent trouble. On the other hand, the income tax and super-tax relief are intended to release capital for investment, to stimulate industry and “thus incidentally to reduce unemployment”. To some extent the relief in the taxation of the living is counter-balanced by the increase in death duties, and it may be pointed out that death duties are an example of the capital levy advocated by the Labour Party and generally deprecated by Conservatives. It is not for us to enter into detailed criticism of the complicated proposals explained by Mr. Churchill with great lucidity in his Budget speech. They indicate the Government’s desire to carry out all promises to the country, and the criticisms they have already received are so obviously partisan and prejudiced that the average citizen will think the more highly of what is at least an effort to meet the necessities of the times. Disraeli dished the Whigs, and, with his proposals for widows’ pensions and increased death duties, Mr. Churchill is, to some extent, dishing the Labour Party. The return to the gold standard is applauded by most competent financial authorities, though it is suggested in other quarters that it will have the worst possible effect on trade. This is a technical question on which we are not competent to express an opinion.
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