Page:The Ethics of Urban Leaseholds.djvu/40

34 to Finsbury provided that no houses should be built within fifty feet of the road. On the abolition of the toll-gates it was enacted that any building within this limit should be treated by the parish vestries as a common nuisance, and removed. This, during the existence of select vestries, saved the open space, but on the passing of Hobhouse's Act the little tradesmen, wishing to increase the area of rating, tacitly permitted the encroachment of, first, unsubstantial and then solid structures, in advance of the original building line. The Board of Works has now to be applied to for permission to build over the front gardens. This permission is, on some parts of the line, habitually granted; and throughout, wherever dwelling-houses are converted into shops, encroachments are continually made. For anything the Board of Works or any local board has done, there will be lost to London the important right of an extended open space as large as a suburban park, and the continued opportunity for making what might be the longest, finest boulevard in Europe.

The reason of it all is Leasehold Tenure. The inhabitants of London have no pride or satisfaction in the place; they only wish to make their fortunes by its help, and then to get away from it as soon as possible. But why not move at once? Of the four millions who inhabit greater London not a thousandth part have any permanent, substantial interest in the land or buildings. The whole population suffer from an evil custom which some hundreds only are persisting in to their own hurt, not knowing why, and which they never care to make the subject of inquiry. Each year the population, in sheer misery of home existence, is, as we have said, becoming more unsettled and inclined to move; and in a few years' time the tendency of men will be nomadic. As it is they live in booths that scarcely can deserve the name of houses. Their best remedy will be migration: let them, having learnt the cause of all their suffering, decide by acclamation to remove, and quit the place entirely. The proprietors can still retain their piles of half-