You must not palter with it. If
you do, I have striven at least to point out as well as my feeble
powers will permit, the almost desecration I would say, certainly the
gross breach of duty to your country, of which you will be found guilty,
in thus putting to hazard one of the most potent and effective among all
its material resources. I believe it to be of vital importance, whether
you keep this tax or whether you part with it, that you should either
keep it or should leave it in a state in which it will be fit for
service on an emergency, and that it will be impossible to do if you
break up the basis of your income tax.
"If the Committee have followed me, they will understand that we found
ourselves on the principle that the income-tax ought to be marked as a
temporary measure; that the public feeling that relief should be given
to intelligence and skill as compared with property ought to be met, and
may be met with justice and with safety, in the manner we have pointed
out; that the income tax in its operation ought to be mitigated by every
rational means, compatible with its integrity; and, above all, that it
should be associated in the last term of its existence, as it was in the
first, with those remissions of indirect taxation which have so greatly
redoubled to the profit of this country and have set so admirable an
example--an example that has already in some quarters proved contagious
to the other nations of the earth, These are the principles on which we
stand, and these the figures.
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