Recoupment and Betterment. 45 ^ 



at the opening of this paper, it seems curious that such a problem 

 should arise at all in a town which has not twenty years of life behind 

 it. I do not know, indeed, if the problem has presented itself at all 

 before in South Africa. It might possibly occur in Durban, where 

 I see there is a proposal to clear away the accumulated filth of years 

 at the depositing site. The question, however, has naturally arisen 

 in England, where such expropriations of property for sanitary or 

 other public reasons are of yearly occurrence. 



In principle no doubt ever\- one would agree to the proposition 

 that no individual should profit personally by an improvement paid 

 for from public money, in which profit members of the same com- 

 munity less favoured by proximity would not equally share. But 

 how such people should pay their fair share of an improvement frnm 

 which they especially benefit is a question which has never been 

 satisfactorily answered. 



Broadly speaking, it may be said that there are two distinct 

 methods whereby a conununit\' may avoid charging itself unduly for 

 a local benefit. The one is by buying up at a small price property 

 in the neighbourhood of the improvement in the ho]:* of disposing 

 of it at a good profit, and the other is by laying a charge on the 

 people immediately benefited by the undertaking. 



There is no doubt that the second method, if it could be carried 

 out accurately and fairly, would be the proper method of adjusting 

 any inequality of advantage between neighbouring property owners 

 and the remainder of the communitv. but this method of adjusting 

 inequalities is not so simple as it appears theoreticalh . The 

 counterbalancing merits of the two systems were verv carefullv gone 

 into a feAv years ago by a Committee of the House of Lords, whose 

 inquiries clearly showed ver\- practical difficulties in the wav of this 

 second system. Briefly put, the difficulties which have to be met in 

 considering any scheme of a betterment rate on property likelv tO' be 

 improved by Municipal enterprise are these. 



(i) In the first place there is the difficulty of drawing the line on 

 the fringe of the area to be charged with the rate. Bv what method 

 is it to be decided whether a property will or will not be benefited 

 by such an undertaking, and who i.s the authority to decide it ? 



In America, where rough and ready methods are more favoured 

 than in England, a very simple method of solving the difficulty has 

 l)een adopted. In the words of an American citizen, who has had 

 a good deal of practical experience in these questions, the method 

 of dealing with the area tr> be included for a betterment rate is as 

 follows: — 



" Having determined that aggregate amount of damage, tl ev 

 proceed to get the money under the principle of benefit. 

 They soon find that the property along the line of the 

 street cannot possibly pay the damages. The\ . therefore, 

 resort to an arbitrary line on the hypothetical j principle that 

 with that arbitrar\- line the property is benefited. I am 

 free to confess that the C^ommissioners with whom I was 

 associated recognised from the first that it was imjiossible 



