Pre 
face 
) 
Vi] 
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