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impossible to make omelettes without breaking eggs.
No single tax ever raised as much money as local
rates do in this country at the present time, and
though the grumbling is great in the aggregate, it is
probably less per pound sterling raised than the
grumbling against any other tax, except perhaps
some few which are well-concealed from their ultimate
payers by being administered in small doses wrapped
up in prices. It should be remembered too that a
grumble about rates is for the most part merely a
compendious method of complaining of the extrava-
gance and mismanagement of the particular local
authority whose operations the grumbler has oppor-
tunities for watching closely. The spirit of partisan-
ship in which national politics are almost always
discussed, joined with the alternation of power
between the two parties, prevents the national taxes
from being treated, in the same easy manner, as a
measure of the incompetence of the national
government.
Members of local councils often speak as if there was
a general demand for a transference of expense from
local rates to national taxes. It is only natural that
they should do so, the magnitude of the rates being
the measure of their own unpopularity; the strange
thing is that politicians should be apparently so ready
to believe them. Many an assembly of ratepayers
which would pass with acclamation a simple resolution
in favour of the relief of rates would melt away in
depression if this resolution were coupled with another
stating exactly the new taxation which would in fact
be caused by the necessity of providing for the relief.
Local councils themselves might hesitate in putting