40 CONTROL OF RENTS 



of the people ; and they are given merely by way of 

 illustration of what would probably happen in the absence 

 of an efficient system of rural education and the concurrent 

 development of industries in the towns to attract away 

 surplus labor. 



The proposal to fix rents at less than the economic 

 level involves an interference with the distribution of 

 wealth by competition in the direction of a transference 

 from the rich to the poor, that is from the few to the 

 many. It must therefore be classed as socialistic legislation. 

 T do not mean that I object to it on that ground far 

 from it ; if I considered it practicable and on the whole 

 beneticial to the country in its results I should heartily 

 support it. I fear, however, that it would not only be 

 difficult to carry out in practice, but that the supposed 

 benefits are largely illusory in the present stage of the 

 development of the country. 



I do not deny that in a country where there is universal 

 compulsory education, where the tenant cultivators have 

 been taught improved methods of agriculture and are 

 accustomed to prudent and thrifty habits, where co-operation 

 in credit and distribution has taken firm root, and where 

 a high standard of living is set by the productiveness of 

 manufacturing industries, a direct transference of wealth 

 from the landlord class to tho tenant class may be effected 

 by State intervention, and is probably, in such circumstances, 

 desirable at any rate if the landlord class is not fully 

 exercising its true function. Those are not tho conditions 

 existing now in the United Provinces ; and it may be 

 doubted whether they could possibly arise until another 

 two generations at least have passed away. 



I think the principal results of any such attempt to fix 

 rents below the economic level would be : (1) the establish- 

 ment of a new and costly department of Government 



