He proposes to leave the total capital in private hands intact on the pretext that it is needed as "an available reserve for national emergencies." And as an evidence of this he refused to increase the existing rate of inheritance tax levied against the very largest estates (15 per cent on estates of more than L3,000,000).

Though up to this point he graduated this tax more steeply than before, and nothing could be more widely popular than a special attack on such colossal estates, Mr.Lloyd George draws the line at 15 per cent, on the ground that a large part of the income from such estates goes into investments, and more confiscatory legislation might seriously affect the normal increase of the capital and "the available reserves of taxation" of the country.[22] Mr.Lloyd George does not fail to guarantee to capital as a whole, "honest capital," that it will suffer no loss from his reforms.

"I am not one of those who advocate confiscation," he said several years ago, "and at any rate as far as I am concerned _honest_ capital, capital put in honest industries for the development of the industry, the trade, the commerce, of this country will have nothing to fear from any proposal I shall ever be responsible for submitting to the Parliament of this realm." (My italics.)[23] Mr.Lloyd George is well justified, then, in ridiculing the idea that he is waging war against industry or property or trying to destroy riches.
He not only disproves this accusation by pointing to the capitalist character of his collectivist program, but boasts that the richest men in the House of Commons are on the Liberal side, together with hundreds of thousands of the men who are building up trade and business.
And the attitude of the Radicals of the present British government is the same as that of capitalist collectivists elsewhere.

However certain vested interests may suffer, there is nowhere any tendency to weaken capitalism as a whole.

Capitalism is to be the chief beneficiary of the new movement.
There are many differences of opinion, however, as to the _ultimate_ effect of the collectivist program.