Essays in Finance

yet colour strangely the discussion of practical reforms. I refer to the proposals of the Land Tenure Reform Association on the one side, and the agitation against local rates, or rather against the burdens on land, on the other. There could not be a wider divergence of ideas and aims than what is here discovered. The Association addresses itself directly to one of the gravest questions which can come before an old and crowded community?the question, namely, how the ownership and occupation of its narrow area should be regulated. It challenges the complete applicability here of the rule of absolute ownership which is found expedient as regards other property, and proposes, among other restrictions, that individuals who are allowed to have exclusive possession of any part of the national soil should be specially taxed. In this way, it is argued, the whole community may benefit in some degree from the competition which is inevitable when a large population is crowded into narrow room. The proposal has at least the merit of coming down from philosophy to practice, and raises in a suitable manner a question of the first importancein a democratic society, where the political power is in the hands of masses who are not the possessors of the soil. The opposing cry?that the possessors of land, or that land itself, are already unjustly burdened?is of a very different kind. It has long occupied a principal place in the party politics of England, though perhaps it was never... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.