THE ACCUMULATION OF CAPITAL IN ENGLAND.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5302, 23 March 1878, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE ACCUMULATION OF CAPITAL IN ENGLAND.

The Examiner says :—The opinion of Mr. Robert Giffin, of the Board of Trade, and formerly of the Economist, on the question whether the country is growing richer, is of course well worth listening to, and, so far as it goes, it is highly reassuring. The national capital, as indicated by the income-tax returns, shows an increase of H per cent, during ten years, and he thinks that the community has acquired in that period three times the amount of the National Debt. We confess that we look with some distrust on these plausible calculations. They are a little too much of that imaginative character which used to mark the quaint arithmetical romances of the late Mi-. Dudley Baxter. They are guesses at best, aud we receive them with some respect only because they are made by a sound political economist. Unfortunately, Mr. Griffin’s figures, if accurate, do not go beyond 1875. They leave off at the time when they would be most interesting. They say nothing of the period in which commercial depression has been chiefly felt. They do not satisfactorily explain whether the enormous difference between our exports and imports is ascribable to the efficiency of our capital and labor, or to the fact that we are virtually living on our accumulated capital. It is poor comfort to know that the growth of our wealth between 1865 and 1875 was unprecedentedly rapid, if this onward movement has ceased. At a time when the Queen’s speech expresses a hope that the “ liberality ” of Parliament will supply a loan or vote fresh taxes, it is highly expedient to scrutinise with some jealousy comfortable statements about. the large “margin of taxation.”