Page:The Ethics of Urban Leaseholds.djvu/43

Rh and carry into execution local and extensive public works, which would make London a true mother city, an example for all towns in England and all cities in the world. At present the reverse of this is true, and, save where Parliament has intervened, the great metropolis has been and is a bad example; in good works deficient and a laggard, and in constitution wanting vital power. As well make visitors at Brighton the rate-paying constituency and local corporation of the borough, as rely on the inhabitants of London, in their present lackland state, for the strong, enterprising government of the metropolis.

The principle of the expropriation of house property and ground rents has within the last few years made demonstrable progress. In 1872 it was called 'communism,' which it seems is something shocking, though most people are accustomed daily to the communistic use of light and air and of the Queen's highway, and are not scandalized, nor sensible of public harm. But it is said that purchase by compulsion of the seller is a trespass upon private right. Precisely so; and many another wholesome project equally infringes the prescriptive rights of property. An area a hundred times as great as that of London has, within the memory of men of middle age, been forced from its proprietors because the public good required it; and yet the thing was not called 'communism.' Commons — a very communistic word — have been extensively enclosed for the behoof of the adjoining land proprietors; but this has not been by the said proprietors esteemed a policy of confiscation. Tithe Commutation Acts were thought to be conservative in aim, and copyhold enfranchisement has not been stigmatized as revolutionary. Even the control of 'personalty,' not real property or freehold of the soil, has been restrained by legislation; and the Betting Acts, and what is called Thelusson's Act, are clear encroachments on proprietary rights. More recently our timid 'communistic'