Page:Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne.djvu/202

188 much longer. In the writings of the vulgar economists, nothing more excites my indignation than the subterfuges by which they endeavour to accommodate their pseudoscience to the existing abuses of wealth, by disguising the true nature of rent. I will not waste time in exposing their fallacies, but will put the truth for you into as clear a shape as I can.

147. Rent, of whatever kind, is, briefly, the price continuously paid for the loan of the property of another person. It may be too little, or it may be just, or exorbitant, or altogether unjustifiable, according to circumstances. Exorbitant rents can only be exacted from ignorant or necessitous rentpayers: and it is one of the most necessary conditions of state economy that there should be clear laws to prevent such exaction.

148. I may interrupt myself for a moment to give you an instance of what I mean. The most wretched houses of the poor in London often pay ten or fifteen per cent, to the landlord; and I have known an instance of sanitary legislation being hindered, to the loss of many hundreds of lives, in