Well done to Peter, posting on Liberal Review for looking out a piece in the Guardian from today, 97 years ago, on Lloyd-George's proposed land tax:

Land tax ninety-seven years on

The Lords and Tories fear a land tax

Tuesday September 28, 1909
The Guardian

That the Lords will reject the Budget - or postpone it, which is the same thing - till after a general election, the spokesmen of the Opposition seem now agreed.

No one with eyes and a memory really doubts why they will; what they dislike, as they started by showing quite simply, are the land taxes.

Read it all here, and recall just how much these people gave up in order not to have their land taxed - the Parliament Act of 1911 castrated the landed oligrarchy in the house of lords meaning that never again could they rule this land on a par with the elected chamber.

Cobden, talking about the Corn Laws half a century earlier, hit the nail on the head:

"For a period of one hundred fifty years after the [Norman] Conquest, the whole of the revenue of the country was derived from the land. During the next one hundred and fifty years it yielded nineteen-twentieths of the revenue. For the next century down to the reign of Richard III it was nine-tenths. During the next seventy years to the time of Mary it fell to about three-fourths. From this time to the end of the Commonwealth, land appeared to have yielded one half of the revenue. Down to the reign of Anne it was one-fourth. In the reign of George III it was one-sixth. For the first thirty years of his reign the land yielded one-seventh of the revenue. From 1793 to 1816 (during the period of the land tax), land contributed one-ninth, from which time to the present [1845] one-twenty-fifth only has been derived from the land. ...Thus, the land which anciently paid the whole of taxation paid now only a fraction. ...The people had fared better under the despotic monarchs than when the power of the state had fallen into the hands of a landed oligarchy who had first exempted themselves from taxation, and next claimed compensation for themselves by a corn law for their heavy and peculiar burdens." [from a speech delivered during the Parliamentary debate on the Corn Laws, 1845]

And you can read more about Winston Churchill's arguments IN FAVOUR of the land tax courtesy of "Wealth and Want".