TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 1159 
and are, in fact, the complement and support of one another. . It is the old story 
of the bundle of sticks—united they are strong, separated they are weak. 
In this country the old communal system has for the most part gone, and it 
would be very difficult to replace it throughout the country, but in most self- 
governing towns it long lingered. In Scotland most of our Royal burghs had 
considerable land—the ‘common good ’—till it was alienated by the corrupt Town 
Councils of former days. And to this day in Scotland the town is usually the 
superior or ground landlord of the proper municipal area, individual sites being 
held under the town on ‘burgage’ tenure. Towns have now extended far beyond 
those old municipal limits, and can only find room by taking sites from the 
surrounding landlords, Not only is there an enormous increment of the value of 
this circumjacent land, unearned by the proprietors and due to the industry of 
the townspeople, but this land is also subjected to a monopoly value far beyond 
what it would fetch if freely thrown on the market. Land, which will in no 
other way fetch 12. or 2/. per acre, is not given for building purposes till the 
pressure is so great that 20/., 30/., or 40/. per annum is paid. Hence comes the 
deprivation of gardens, overcrowding, and many evils which haye been recently 
depicted by the Royal Commission on the Housing of the Poor. 
In Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland it will probably be found that the 
system of very small agricultural holdings requires some communal organisation 
for many purposes, but I will not enter ou that here. Admitting that in the 
greater part of Britain agriculture has reached a stage which could make agri- 
cultural municipalisation on a very large scale very difficult at present, I address 
myself now to the municipalisation of the land near towns and populous places. 
The population of this country is now so great and the supply of food from all 
quarters so enormous that very much of our land is more important from the 
point of view of health and recreation than for the raising of corn. 
Some of us may be inclined to think that no good comes out of Ireland. Yet 
I believe that nowadays some things are conceded as an indulgence to Ireland 
which are afterwards found not to be altogether inapplicable to this country, The 
< Labourers’ Dwellings (Ireland) Act’ was looked on with much suspicion. But 
now, as the result of the report of the Royal Commission on the Housing of the 
Poor, a new departure in the same direction has been taken in Britain by the Act 
for the Housing of the Working Classes, which has just passed the Legislature. 
It contains an important provision enabling town and rural authorities to take up 
lands, subdivide them, and let them out for cottages and gardens in plots not 
exceeding half an acre each. That is, I think, a first and very large step towards 
what I call the municipalisation of the land. Something might also be done to 
settle labourers on larger crofts in the country, but I leave that for the present. 
No one who has paid any attention to the subject can doubt the extreme 
importance and necessity of giving room to our working classes, both from a 
sanitary and from a moral point of view. The deprivation of gardens and back 
yards, the crowding into unhealthy tenements, not only deteriorates the race 
physically, but drives the men into the public house, the women into dirt and 
disrepute, the children into the gutter. More room is absolutely required, and 
more room means more land in decentralised positions connected with the centre 
by the facilities which modern means supply. If the rent of building land is 300. 
or 40], or more per acre, gardens and yards are impossible to the working classes ; 
and, therefore, more room is only possible with cheaper land. It would be very 
difficult, and tend towards socialism and want of self-reliance that the public 
authority should not only find the land, but build, equip, and maintain the houses 
ona large scale. What is required is such a tenure that individuals may do so 
much. At the same time, in crowded communities it is right to maintain a 
sufficient control over individuals, so as to ensure that one man may so use his 
own as not to injure others. And it is well that a public revenue should he 
derived from the land rather than from excessive taxation. 
Not only is the monopoly price of land near towns excessive, but the tenure is 
unsatisfactory. The English system of terminable building leases is one against 
which modern feeling rebels, and if there is sometimes some advantage in the 
