20 THE TAXATION OF LAND 



value" on land is certainly an attractive temp- 

 tation to a Chancellor of the Exchequer ; but 

 it must indeed be disconcerting to those econo- 

 mists who have raised the question of taxation 

 of land values to discover what a maze of diffi- 

 culties they have uncovered in their innocence. 

 How little can they have anticipated what a 

 horrid tangle would be disclosed, or what a 

 many-sided snowball of intricacies their hasty 

 theories would set rolling. 



In order to appreciate how the present 

 situation has arisen, a short analysis of the 

 organization as we find it at the present time 

 will not be out of place. The industry is 

 divided into a species of working partnership, 

 shared between three distinct and separate 

 parties. Firstly, the landowner holding as his 

 property the foundation of the whole industry, 

 the land and necessary buildings ; secondly, 

 the tenant farmer paying rent to the land- 

 owner for the purpose of stocking, cultivating, 

 and occupying a holding to carry on the busi- 

 ness of farming ; and thirdly, the agricultural 

 labourer who supplies the manual labour 

 necessary. It will be observed that the first 

 and second parties are the capitalists of the 



