The Moi'al of this Narrative. 523 



render compensation when the property of the private indi- 

 vidual, from no fault of his own, becomes deteriorated ? The 

 Betterment principle implies, if we may coin the expression, 

 that of the " Worsement." Once let the justice of this conten- 

 tion be admitted and the impracticability and absurdity of the 

 whole scheme deals it a death blow. 



But there is another and more intelligible phase of the 

 Betterment principle, which is at the present moment a burn- 

 ing question in London. A neighbourhood is improved by the 

 Municipal authorities, streets are widened, lighted at night, 

 and better paved, whereby the value of the house property is 

 enhanced. It is quite clear that the ground landlord, whose 

 leases vary in length from 99 to 999 years, does not benefit by 

 the outlay, nor does the leaseholder improve his income until 

 he pulls down and rebuilds with finer houses that portion of 

 the street belonging to him. Ought he then, for the better 

 rents thus derived, to contribute his share towards the expen- 

 diture of the Municipal authorities, without which it would 

 have been useless for him to improve his property ? H^j, 

 answers that he does so in the shape of increased rates, anu 

 that if he is to be charged a further sum still, it is one of those 

 imposts on capital which is admitted to be a discouragement 

 of thrift. But then, in these days the strong dislike of earlier 

 financiers to derive fiscal advantages by taxing capital has 

 vanished, and we see in the death duties, an expedient re- 

 commended by Adam Smith and adopted by North in 1796, a 

 far more important attack on thrift than that objected to by 

 the victim of the Betterment doctrine. In fact, in our humble 

 estimation, the death duties, when derived from landed pro- 

 perty, are just so much valuable capital extracted out of the 

 soil by the State. 



It is, however, an open secret that the Radicals are increas- 

 ingly dissatisfied with the apparent partiality displayed by the 

 Treasury for the landlords over the imposition of these taxes. 

 Mr. Gladstone's Act of 1853 merely whetted their appetites, 

 and they now crave for some measure which would not only 

 place the succession duty on all fours with the legacy duty, 

 but bring landed property under the influence of the probate 



