276 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL CHAP. 



payable will be uniform over the whole country, and will 

 only be raised or lowered for State purposes, or as a sub- 

 stitute for oppressive or injudicious taxation, so that it 

 will be impossible that any favouritism should be shown to 

 particular individuals or particular localities. 



So much being premised, we will return to our 

 illustrative case of the estate whose last private owner 

 has just died. In due course the heirs will come into 

 possession of so much of the land as the last owner 

 personally occupied, at the " ground rent " determined by 

 the general valuation, which will be open to inspection in 

 every parish, and whose amount will thus have been long 

 known to the heir. If he decide to continue to reside in 

 the house and occupy the home farm he may do so, with 

 the same certainty and security as if he were still the 

 freeholder and the " ground rent " were merely an 

 enlarged land-tax ; and he will also be able to transfer 

 the occupation to his son or successor, or to sell his 

 " tenant-right " to any one so as to obtain the market 

 value of any improvements he may make in the estate. 

 He may, if he likes, pull down houses or fences, cut down 

 trees, plant or remodel in any way he pleases ; for in 

 doing this he is only improving or injuring his own 

 saleable or transferable property. One thing, however, he 

 must not do, and that is to sublet or mortgage the land 

 or tenant-right, it being a principle of State policy 

 (carried into effect by the Act already referred to) that 

 no one must hold land except from the Government 

 direct, and must not, except under certain defined 

 conditions, subject it to any claims which would destroy 

 or interfere with the security for the ground-rent payable 

 to the Government. This is the very essence of the 

 proposed system of land-tenure ; since, if it were not 

 adopted, the same accumulation of land in the possession 

 of individuals that now prevails might again occur ; tenants 

 would again be subject to prohibitory stipulations ; and 

 that perfect freedom and unfettered ownership essential 

 to the full development, both of the capacities of the soil and 

 of those good moral and social effects which such owner- 

 ship is calculated to produce, would be again destroyed. 



