If it be true that in the long run every country gets ...

If it be true that in the long run every country gets the land law that its soil and circumstances require, history seemed to have determined that England was made for landlord and tenant, and Ireland for the Peasant Proprietor.

But no

owner of rural property expected to

make a trading profit, and an old rule laid it down that no gentleman should try to get more from his land than he would have got from its value in Government Stock. Urban property, on the other hand, might at any moment owe a sudden and enormous increment of value to some shift of population; to a new industry, a new railway station, a new municipal tramline ; and the public was equitably entitled to a share in the wealth which it had created.' In this way, the nebulous project of land nationalization came to be condensed about one topic, the principle of betterment and the taxation of site values.

In 1889 the new London County Council projected a Bill to secure for the ratepayer the whole of the increment due to public improvement.

...next: >>