From The Times, November 4, 1921:
Some arresting figures as to the desperate financial position of large estates in land were placed by Lord Clinton before a well-attended gathering of Lancashire landowners for the purpose of developing the Lancashire branch of the Central Landowners’ Association. Lord Clinton’s case was the unfairness of the combined burden of super-tax, income-tax, death duties, and local rates upon agricultural landowners, as compared with owners of income derived from the Funds and other forms of capital. He had compared the audited statements of income and expenditure during 1919 of a number of large estates with an average revenue of £20,300. Their total expenditure for income-tax, tithe, rates, and other expenditure averaged £15,800, leaving a “free income” of £4,500, or 4s 6d in the pound. Out of this all the other charges connected with the estates had to be paid, mortgages, rent charges, jointures and the owners’ upkeep, and these, taken out of the 4s 6d in the pound, often left a minus figure. Yet 1919 was an abnormal year, in which the cost of labour and material was so high that necessary expenditure was deferred in many cases. In 1920 Lord Clinton took a number of estates with an average gross rent roll of £12,400. Income-tax, tithe rates, &c, deducted in the same way, left in these cases a “free income” of only 1s 5d in the pound of the gross. Comparing the income from £20,000 in the Funds, the yield to the owner of the invested capital was nearly 10s in the pound, instead of 4s 6d from land in 1910 and 2s 3d in 1920.
This inequality is to be laid before the Chancellor of the Exchequer to convince him that something must be done if landed estates are to be kept going. Lord Clinton said there is a corresponding unfairness in death duties and local rates on land compared with other property. “What we are threatened with,” he declared, “is the extinction of the agricultural owner as a class. You have seen how rapidly estates are disappearing, how many owners are having to sell up. It is not individuals only. The class will go altogether, and I believe that will be a disaster to the country, for no class has been more assiduous in the public service or has done more voluntary work than the country squire.”
