24 
under the present system of taxation the National Debt causes 
unjust differentiation between taxpayers. 
Let us continue our investigation of the case of Messrs. 
Brown and Jones. The latter has lent to the Government 
£100, on which he receives £5 per annum interest. As 
Government has to pay this interest it imposes an additional 
£2 10s. per annum tax on each of the pair. Therefore, Jones 
in reality pays half his interest to himself. Government 
abstracts from his right-hand breeches pocket £2 10s. and 
pays over to him £5 to put into his left-hand pocket. It pro 
cures the additional £2 10s. from the right-hand breeches 
pocket of Brown. Therefore Brown pays half of the £5 per 
annum Jones receives from the Government. Jones is a 
National Creditor. Brown and Jones are both National 
Debtors. Brown is a mere debtor, whereas Jones is a creditor- 
debtor. Now, in the Nation the Browns outnumber th< 
Joneses by 10 to 1; they form the great mass of the popula 
tion; they contribute to the taxes as shown earlier out of all 
proportion to their wealth, and the effect of a National Debt 
is to fasten upon them the bulk of the burden of the interest 
payments made to Jones. For example, if the £5 tax for 
interest payment be split equally amongst nine Browns and 
one Jones, each citizen pays 10s., so Jones’s .£5 represents a 
contribution of 10s. out of his own pocket and £4 10s. out of 
his neighbours’, some of whom may be war widows and similar 
poor folk. It is all, as our present Premier says, “ m the 
family ” ; the Debt is owned and owed in the family. The 
generalisation is delightfully broad, but is the Premier’s a 
just and scientific way of looking at the question? In his 
work, “ The Standard of Value,” published some forty years 
ago, William Leighton Jordan directs attention to this differ 
ence between the National Creditor and the National Debtor, 
and its coincidence with a class division of the Nation. Our