Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/210

 mentioned by Mr. Cobden's biographer that Mr. Cobden, having made speculative purchases of land in various quarters of Manchester where his imagination painted a great demand for buildings on the repeal of the Corn Laws, was compelled to pay a thousand pounds a year as ground-rent. But as long as the thousand pounds a year was paid the land was his own, and would have increased in value if houses, shops and factories had been built on it. Mr. Cobden it seems kept up for twenty-five years this payment, which would therefore amount to a sum of £25,000, and helps us to understand how Mr. Cobden was enabled to absorb the amount collected for him, which has been estimated at not much under £200,000. I have not happened to meet with any case of ground-rents in London being speculated on in this way. But suppose a man were to build an expensive factory such as are built at Manchester on a ninety-nine years' lease, at the termination of which lease the factory, worth several thousand pounds, would fall into the pocket of the ground-rent landlord, the inference is that no such factories would be built, and the trade of Manchester would not have existed, but Manchester would be now the village or small town it was two centuries ago.