2110-2-11-14

TELEPHONE 3281 CENTRAL 8. MORAY PLACE, EDINBURGH.

10th February 1914.

My dear Buchan,

Many thanks for your reply to my letter.

We seem to be in more substantial agreement than I had hoped for, I wish to return to the charge only at two points.

I think there is the greatest urgency for having the question of Food-duties, and Imperial Preference generally, decided (by Conference and Referendum) at the earliest possible opportunity, and secondly, I think that the effect of differentiating in favour of Colonial wheat in our market in the way suggested would be for a little the diversion of capital from wheat-growing to wheat-transport: railway, canal and steamship development would not be hung up by an uncertainty as to the most paying direction: thus we should get what we require.

With regard to your point of the local income-tax to which you say you wish you could convert me, I do not need conversion so much - as the general principle seems attractive to me - as enlightenment as to the basis on which the system would be arranged and further consideration of its probable results. You could not simply put a rate on a wealthy man's income in every locality where he happened to own the smallest conceivable building or plot of ground. That would be either tax him multidinously out of all relation to any benefits he might derive from the improvement of each locality, or else to prohibit his owning properties

in localities where if taxed in moderation he might be a valuable asset. If the scheme contemplated is based on some proportion between the individual's income and the size or value or both of his local property, then I think I should heartily agree with it. But though for some time I have been rather inclined to some such system I must admit that I have not given it much thought. Anyhow I quite agree with you that the anomalies of the present system are unbearable, and that the taxation of sitevalues would be "only to substitute one illogical basis for another." I am Yours sincerely, P. J. Ford