Recoupment and Betterment. 457 



have been unfair if during the whole twenty years an increased bet- 

 terment rate had been charged ori the owners of these properties. 

 At the same time, if the surrounding owners to Victoria Street had 

 been told at the time the improvement was made that they would 

 be liable to a betterment charge they would probably have preferred 

 to have the charge determined immediately, even at the risk of its 

 being an unfair one, rather than have had to wait for twenty years or 

 so in a state of uncertainty as to what amount would then be imposed. 



To turn now to recoupment : the device of buying up surround- 

 ing property in the hope of making it pay is a somewhat crude 

 method of preventing loss to the communit}-. The idea of making 

 neighbours pay for an improvement is really almost lost sight of by 

 this method, because the neighbours who' are expropriated for this 

 object are thereby entirely deprived of any benefit from the improve- 

 ment. In the abstract the principle can only be defended on the 

 ground that the community is entitled to take reasonable means to 

 avoid too great a loss on these public improvements, but looked at 

 from the point of view of the individual, it no doubt has a some- 

 what unpleasant air of unnecessary spoliation. 



Even in the most democratic countries the law has alwa}s 

 hedged in with very careful safeguards any expropriation of private 

 rights for any public object. It would, it is true, be obviously im- 

 possible to carry on civil government properly, if the State had not. 

 in duly considered circumstances, the right of taking away private 

 property for a public object; but, although this is a principle which 

 nobody would think of cavilling at, it is also quite as clear in principle 

 that expropriation of private rights is indefensible, except for a very 

 well-defined public object ; and even in achieving such public object 

 the rights of property should be interfered with no more than is 

 absolutely necessar}'. If this principle is not obser\^ed, a sense of 

 insecurity may arise among the most stable portion of the community. 



Still, in England — -probably the most conservative country in 

 the world in regard to the care of private rights — there is no doubt 

 that this system of what has been called " recoupment for public im- 

 provements '' has gradually established itself. The way in which it 

 has done so is somewhat peculiar. When Bills for public improve- 

 ments (under which, of course, I include railways) began to be com- 

 mon about the middle of last century, in the scheduling of property 

 it became the custom, for obvious reasons, to include not merely the 

 bare limit necessarv for a railway or for cutting a new street, but 

 also a certain margin, so as to give free play in carrj'ing out the 

 enterprise. Sometimes the property within " the lines of deviation " 

 not actually required for the undertaking became quite considerable. 

 It occasionally happened that such surplus property became valuable, 

 and in time Municipalities began to think that this device of acquir- 

 ing surplus lands originally intended by the Legislature to save 

 engineers from being tied down too strictly, might be turned into a 

 source of profit, which would relieve the ratepayers of some of their 

 burden. I do not, however, think that the Legislature has ever 

 really sanctioned the principle of recoupment in so many words, 



