The utmost pressure put upon any owner under this system would be that, if he would not pay rates on x pounds for his property, he would lie obliged to take x pounds for the property. he would lie obliged to take

The 33-1/3 per cent for compulsory purchase is illusory, and I have only put it in the statement of the scheme to meet an objection which I know to be common (and equally illusory). scheme to meet an objection

It will be at once seen that this form of Rate Book would really nationalise the land by bringing each piece into the hands of him who could make most out of it. If I saw my way to use a piece of laud so that it should be worth L1000 to me, and if on looking into the Rate Book I saw that the present owner only considered it worth L600 to him, I should at once lodge my L900 with the magistrate. A few owners would really feel as Naboth. They could indulge this feeling by putting a very high rateable value on their property.

The high rates they would thus have to pay would be the due ransom of the land; but in general every piece of land would pass into the hands of him who could make most of it. There would spring up, as in Attica, a large class of professional sycophants. By their incessant operations, properties small and great would be continually passing from the slothful and the old-fashioned to the enterprising and modern-educated. No nationalisation of the land could get so much out of it or conduce so highly to progress as the National Rate Book. We should have companies and adventurers buying up all sorts of pieces of land, just as formerly they speculated in taking up land for mining in Cornwall. We should see an extraordinary activity in the employment of capital in England.

For all public improvements, as a new street or a Government military station, a few minutes with the map and Rate Book would show the Government officer or engineer the best route or plot to take, and would also show him the exact cost of the land for the scheme. There would be no law expenses, no prolonged fights, no juries, no arbitrations.

Wastes, downs, heaths, bogs, would be rated very low. It would be in the power of Government to take up largely and at small cost large areas of Surrey heaths, etc., to provide air and recreation ground for an evergrowing metropolis. In this manner, too, public commons and quasi-public commons might be secured to the public all over England: a public-spirited town-council or a local Kyrle Society would have a wide field and an immense stimulus for action.

I have not stopped to rebut the common (but mistaken) idea that burdens on the land (being in gross not more than the rackrent) affect the cultivation. Partners have long drunk at market dinners "Confusion to the black slug that devours the English farmer." How is it that these farmers did not (do not) see that there are tithe-free farms (and some tithe-free parishes) in England, and that the tenants of such farms get no advantage by being tithe-free?

As I explain elsewhere, a tenant with several years of his lease to run is (economically considered) a part landowner: if the tithe were suddenly abolished, tenants with leases would get relief as well as their landlords.

So if a new tax or rate is laid on land (and made payable by the tenant), all tenants with leases will have to pay such tax or rate out of their own pocket so long as their lease lasts; afterwards it will fall wholly on the landlords.

It is repeated now, in nearly every country newspaper, that the English farmer cannot compete with the American grower because of the burdens on the land of England. I will not write out (I cannot improve) Ricardo's proof that rent does not enter into price. The "burdens" on land are really first charges on the rackrent and do not affect a year-to-year tenant at all. When a farmer meditates taking a farm he asks not merely what is the rent: he inquires what is the tithe, what the average amount of the rates (and is that likely to increase or diminish during the next seven years);

the intending tenant only wants to know what sum in all he will have to pay for the farm; whether any of this payment is called tithe or not, or whether some of it is quit-rent, or whether he is to pay the land tax for his landlord's convenience,--about all this he cares nothing; they are mere questions of names to him.