invariable, no parish pays the full original rate, and many pay only id. in the £, and even the fraction of a penny.[1]
The law regarding leasehold property is conceived almost entirely in the interests of the "ground" landlord, although he has spent less upon the "ground" than anyone else connected with it. Most of the occupied land of England is leasehold; that is, it is not the permanent property of those who build houses, streets, make roads, drains, wharves upon it, or who have cultivated the soil in order to produce the fruits of the earth, or who have sunk mines below the earth, in order to extract the mineral wealth of the earth. Whether land is the site of a town, or of a farm, or of a mine, whether corn and grass grow upon it, or the traffic of a city passes over its streets, or coal and iron mines burrow beneath it, it belongs but as a temporary possession to those who are using it. They are said to have "bought" the property, but this only means that they have bought the right to use it for a certain time. When that time expires they must "buy" it again in the same way. And if, as almost always happens, they have made it more valuable by their exertions, and by the money they have spent on improving it, they will have to pay more for the right to go on using what they have made more valuable. They will have to pay more, not as a contribution to the general purposes of the community (as they do when they pay taxes), but to enrich the individual who owns the ground. This ground landlord receives an increment earned by other men. Each time that the ground returns to the ground landlord it may return more or less enriched, and if so the enhanced value is carefully described in the bills which notify that the lease is once more for "sale," that is, for hire. And the landlord in many cases benefits twice over by these improvements which he has not made; for in a very great many instances he has made the tenant pay for permission to make them, though they were eventually to become his own! He is
- ↑ In the Poor Rate Returns, presented to the House of Commons in 1818, and reprinted by order of the House in 1826, the rental of real property in England and Wales is given from the Returns to the "Tax Office," for the year ending April 1804, as £38,000,000. The disproportion of rates is mentioned. Nine counties are taxed above 4s., twelve from 3s. to 4s., and eighteen under 3s.
