Page:The Ethics of Urban Leaseholds.djvu/41

Rh burnt clay and matchwood; and in a ghastly wilderness of hollow, empty houses, they may sit at gaping doors and melancholy windows, and in sorrow beg their bread as showmen and joint fabricators of the biggest and the ugliest folly that has been inflicted on the world.

In London, freehold property when leased, as almost all the London freeholds are, is as a rule unrepresented. It pays no rates; these are all thrown upon the leaseholder, who, as if in mockery, is called the 'owner,' and the occupier in the first degree. There is, however, one remarkably absurd exception. Freeholders, who have no personal interest in the population, are, by a law designed for rural property, allowed to vote for guardians of the poor, whose duties are entirely personal and thus by accident alone are local; but in all matters having reference to public works, in which the permanent proprietors must have a special interest, this most important class is totally ignored.

It is a first essential for efficient action in municipal affairs that freeholders should be both taxed and represented, and that, by some general and equitable system of land transfer, those who are the subjects of taxation should obtain possession of the soil in fee. London, for instance, should be held, as real property, by Londoners. The ultimate proprietary leaseholder with more than twenty years of unexpired term should have a legislative right to purchase, at an equitable valuation, all superior interests, including the fee simple of the land; all titles should be registered and parliamentary, and transfers should be prompt and inexpensive. Every freeholder should have a vote, or two if he be resident, and any severance of the occupiers from the land in fee should be discouraged.

This can be done experimentally, with very little individual disturbance. Of the land in London and its suburbs an unusually large proportion is in public hands. It is in fact a mere security for income which the public use, and of which,