156 REPORT—1862. 
honest owner of house property would willingly receive rents which he knew or 
even suspected to be derived from the plunder of his neighbours, it follows that 
the members of the predatory class can obtain tenancy only from landlords who 
are ignorant of the vocation of their tenants, or from landlords who are not unwill- 
ing to accept the proceeds of crime in payment. But for ignorance or connivance, 
therefore, the predatory class would cease to be able to obtain harbourage, and must 
speedily fall into dispersion. 
As to the conniving landlords, since there is no moral difference between re- 
ceiving the proceeds of stolen property knowingly and receiving the stolen pro- 
perty itself, they cannot expect much sympathy, whatever pressure may be put 
upon them to compel them to act as honest men, Enjoying their property under 
the shadow of the law, it is intolerable that they should knowingly allow their 
property to harbour those who live by breaking the law. 
As regards those landlords whose property is infested by criminals without their 
knowledge, such could not have happened had the public mind been so far advanced 
upon the subject as to have recognized it as the plain duty of the owners of house 
property to refuse tenancy to all persons of doubtful character, z, e, to all who could 
not show, beyond all reasonable doubt, that their rents would be paid out of honest 
gains, and nowise from the proceeds of crime, directly or indirectly. It could not 
have happened, even, had the interests of the landlords as a body, in the suppres- 
sion of the predatory class, been well understood, since, in the towns at least, the 
heavy expenses annually incurred in the repression of crime cannot but fall ulti- 
mately upon the house property—seeing that, although the tenants actually dis- 
burse the police and county rates, these outgoings are doubtless considered by the 
tenant in estimating the rent he can afford, it being immaterial to him whether 
he pays more to the rate-collector and less to the landlord, or more to the landlord 
and less to the collector. Hence a landlord who allows his property to harbour 
criminals is a traitor to the interests of the landlord body, and would no doubt 
be so stigmatized had the subject undergone that long and earnest discussion 
which must have ended in the formation of a strong and healthy public opinion 
regarding it. 
ad such public opinion been now existent, nothing further would have been 
needed than to find the means of restraining the few unscrupulous landlords who, 
for the sake of high rents, from whatever tainted source obtained, would set public 
opinion at defiance. The matter, however, has to be dealt with under existing 
conditions. The question therefore is, In what way can the law most readily deal 
with house property so as to induce its owners wholly to shut out the thief, his 
aiders and abettors—so that the landlord’s absolute rule may be, “ No honesty, no 
house”? The answer is, that the pressure of the rates now levied for the repression 
of crime, viz. the police and county rates, &c., do constitute an ample force adapted 
to this purpose, lying ready to our hands, and requiring only to be rightly wielded. 
It is but to “put the saddle on the right horse.” It is, in truth, simply a question 
between the great majority of householders who do moé suffer their property to 
harbour the plunderers of their neighbours and the small minority who do. 7 
Now the law, judging between these parties, might justly say to the offending 
minority, “ But = the shelter you afford the predatory class, that class must be 
wholly dispersed, and the heavy burden of its repression thenceforth cease. There- 
fore either do as your fellow-landlords do, and so sweep away the burden altoge- 
ther, or prepare to take it wholly on your own shoulders; justice will not allow 
that loss to fall upon the whole body, which, but for the laches of a few of its mem- 
bers, would be got rid of altogether.” To this it may be added that herein justice 
and sound policy go hand in hand ; for, of all means of getting rid of a preventible 
evil, surely that of making its continuance asource of loss, instead of profit, to those 
upon whose will such continuance depends must ever be the most simple and the 
most certain. 
There are two modes of proceeding whereby to fix the cost of repression exclu- 
sively upon the property concerned in harbouring the predatory class, viz., Ist, that 
of directly imposing the amount upon such property, so far as its complicity can 
be proved; and 2nd, that of exempting from the necessary rates all properties that 
should be shown to be wholly free from such complicity. 
4 
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