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 landlords take the lion's share of profits from improvements for which the public pay, has at this moment an additional interest in connection with another burning question of the moment. The story was told by Mr Chamberlain at Birmingham on the 2oth October 1885. After describing what the Board of Works proposed to do, Mr Chamberlain continued: "But when the Bill came before the Committee of the Commons, one great landowner along the line of route, by his agents opposed the Bill, and claimed the insertion of a clause for his special protection, which provided that the Board of Works should not take one inch more of his land than was necessary for the formation of the street, and that he should have the frontage along the whole line of his property. Just consider what that meant. It meant that this landowner was to have the fullest possible price for his land—it was to be bought from him at its prospective value; he was to have compensation for severance; then he was to have 10 per cent, for compulsory sale; and heaped up on all this he was to have the enormous advantage and profit which the turning of his property into the front land of a great thoroughfare would add to its value. Well, the Committee of the House of Commons, finding out that this proposal was altogether exceptional, that there was only one single precedent for it, and that in the case of a Tory peer. Lord Cadogan, rejected the clause. But when the Bill got up into the House of Lords, this great landowner was one of their number, a peer of great influence in the Upper Chamber, and the Committee of the Lords inserted this clause &hellip; Mr Fawcett moved that the House of Commons disagree with the Lords' amendment, and so strong was the feeling in the Commons that the resolution was carried without a division. &hellip; Who do you think was the landowner? &hellip; It was the Marquis of Salisbury, the Prime Minister of England."

The weight of evidence taken by the Commission of 1886 and following years (which sat to inquire into the general housing of the poor) went to disprove the assertion that large freeholders necessarily keep property in better condition than small ones. Thus, Mr Dixon, medical officer for Bermondsey, said: "The worst houses are those which are the fag end of a lease." Lord William Compton, a son of the Marquis of Northampton (who owns Clerkenwell), said that