Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/207



"injure himself through the deterioration of his property, but meantime he has been getting 8 or 10 per cent, on his purchase-money. This is by no means a rare case. The scandal which such occurrences cause casts its reflection on transactions of a wholly different and perfectly legitimate kind, where the removal of the tenants is simply an act of mercy for all parties.'"

A thorough reform of the law of landlord and tenant has no chance of passing the House of Lords. To a person acquainted with other parts of England it seems incomprehensible that the people of London should submit to the tyrannous absurdity of being compelled to build houses upon land which, by the terms of the lease, is, at the end of ninety-nine years, to be given up, with everything on it, to the landowner, while during the ninety-nine years they are to pay a yearly rent, called a ground-rent, for the land. The device of such ninety-nine years' leases in London is due to the power of the great land monopolists, the Dukes of Bedford, Portland, Westminster, the Marquis of Salisbury and others. Those persons, not content with having become owners of large portions of national property by the liberality of Henry VIII, James I and William III in giving away what did not belong to them, employed the most astute lawyers that could be got for money