OUR MONEY AND THE STATE

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E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY NEW YORK

OUR MONEY AND THE STATE

BY HARTLEY WITHERS

Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on. SAMUEL BUTLER, _Essays on Life, Art and Science_

NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 681 FIFTH AVENUE

COPYRIGHT, 1917 By E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

Printed in the United States of America

PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION

Problems of Public Finance are looked at from different angles by different peoples, but are, in essence, much the same all over the world. Moreover it is possible that if the present war ends in the establishment of a League of Peace, based on the brotherhood of Mankind, as foreshadowed by President Wilson in his noble message to the Russian people, there may be a change in the outlook on questions of taxation, and they may be henceforward looked at from a new point of view, directed to the furtherance of that brotherhood. In any case, since one of the benefits that the people of the United States have always enjoyed is the power to profit by the mistakes of Europe, it is possible that an English view of the relations between the State and the property of its citizens may be of some interest in America.

HARTLEY WITHERS.

_July_ 1917.

PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION

This book grew out of a course of lectures on Public Finance delivered at the London School of Economics in February and March. The subject had already been dealt with ably and fully by writers who had made a special study of it; but the present war, by making us spend with such titanic recklessness, has supplied us with a huge magnifying glass, by which cause and effect are more clearly seen than in times of peace. The results of borrowing, inflation of currency, and inequities in taxation are seen at work now on such a scale that if we use the experiences of the war aright they may help us to better financial methods when the war is over. Students who wish to pursue the subject into its technical and scientific details can do so with the help of _Public Finance_, by Prof. Bastable; _The Income Tax_, and other works on taxation by Prof. Edwin R. A. Seligman; _British Budgets, 1887-1913_, by Sir Bernard Mallet; _The System of National Finance_, by Mr. E. Hilton Young, M.P.; _The Financial System of the United Kingdom_, by H. Higgs, C.B.; and that monument of industry and mine of statistical and other information, the House of Commons Return (366) of 1869, on Public Income and Expenditure, etc., drawn up in years of patient labour by Henry W. Chisholm, sometime Chief Clerk of the Exchequer: it is commonly called _Chisholm’s Analysis of the Public Accounts, 1688-1869_.

HARTLEY WITHERS. 6, LINDEN GARDENS, _June_ 1917.