catalogue of men's requirements from the land; and they do not, for we
require plots upon which to build, and good houses are just as necessary
as cheap food. But even where land is made more valuable by its becoming
used for building purposes, is there any justice in either the State or
a municipality taking the whole increased value? Let the case be that of
a man who thinks that he sees a chance of a town expanding, and who
purchases a piece of land which will be of little use to anybody unless
his idea proves correct, but which will bring him a good profit if he
has skilfully foreseen. Why should he not be as fairly paid for his
skill and foresight as if he had bought a house on a similar belief? The
reply is, "The quantity of land is limited; that of houses is not;" but
that is only true up to a certain and very definite point; and with the
reforms which have already been suggested, and with a fairer system of
taxing the land, the community would gain all it could fairly ask.
My contention, shortly put, is this--That the State has a right to share
in the increased value of all property, landed or otherwise; and that,
in the case of land, it has an additional, though limited, claim,
because of the conditions upon which that commodity passed into private
ownership. Those who work for wages have to pay income tax immediately
those wages touch a certain point; as they rise, so does the payment
increase; and, after a given amount, the tax is proportionately much
heavier. Why should not the same principle be applied to income of every
sort from land as to income of every sort from wages, profits, or
invested capital?
It is not so at present, as a study of the land tax will show.
Nominally that tax is four shillings in the pound on the full annual
value, but actually what does it stand at? It was fixed by Parliament in
the seventeenth century, the semi-owners of the land, who had held their
property under certain weighty conditions of contributing military
strength to the King, and who had managed by degrees to slip through
their obligations, agreeing thus to tax themselves as a compensation for
the burden that had been lifted from them. But in 1798 it was
enacted--by a Parliament in which practically only landowners were
represented--that the valuation upon which the tax was to be paid should
be that of 1692, when on its then conditions it was first levied. And
the consequence is that, although this later Act directed that it should
be assessed and collected with impartiality, in parts of the country
which have stood still the tax now is not far from the original sum,
while it amounts in the immediate neighbourhood of such a city as
Liverpool to about a fifth of a farthing in the pound. It may not be
feasible, because of the manner in which much of the impost has been
"redeemed," and it might in some cases be unjust, to raise the land tax
at once to four shillings in the pound on the valuation of 1888 instead
of 1692; but the same Parliament which put the clock back has the power
to bring it up to the proper time; and, at least, something could be
done to lessen the loss the State is now made to suffer.
There is another way in which landowners could justly be called upon to
pay a portion of the unearned increment to the State, and that is
through the taxation of ground-rents. This is a point which keenly
touches the towns, and deserves the early attention of Parliament. At
present the great ground landlords escape their fair share of the
burdens which fall heavily upon those who take their leases. And, so
certain are some of them that the taxing time will soon come, that they
are already selling a portion of their town estates, so as to "get out
from under" before that period arrives.
It may therefore be submitted that, with a fairer land tax and the
taxation of ground rents, we should secure to the State the proportion
of the "unearned increment" to which she is justly entitled. Those who
would go further must be prepared to prove that property in land is so
different in every essential from all other kinds that it would be
honest for the State to absorb the whole unearned increment of the one,
and to levy only an income and property tax on the other.
XXI.--HOW SHOULD LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT BE EXTENDED?
It is always consolatory to find amid the welter of party politics some
topic upon which all say they agree, and such a topic certainly is that
of the reform of local government. Politicians of every shade have long
professed their desire for such a reform, and it ought now to be within
measurable distance of accomplishment.
Upon the great question of the extension of self-government to Ireland I
have already spoken; and in regard to the purely domestic affairs of all
the four divisions of the kingdom--England, Scotland, and Wales, as well
as Ireland--it need only here be added that the solution of much of the
difficulty which springs from an overburdened Parliament will be found
in devolving upon a special authority for each the right of dealing with
its own local concerns. But, as to three of the four divisions, it is
not so pressing a question as that which is commonly known as the reform
of local government, and the main proposition touching which is summed
up in the demand for county councils.
This is a matter which more intimately touches the country districts
than the towns, for in all the latter of any size there are popularly
elected municipal councils, which exercise much power over local
affairs. The only exception is the greatest town of all, for London was
specifically exempted (by the action of the House of Lords) from the
reform effected in all other cities and boroughs by the Municipal
Corporations Act of 1835. There is a Corporation of the City of London;
but this body, against which a very great deal can be said, has
authority only over one square mile of ground, the remaining 119 square
miles upon which the metropolis stands being governed by vestries,
trustee boards, and district boards of works, all connected with and
subject to the Metropolitan Board of Works--or Board of Words, as it was
once irreverently but truly called--which is not chosen directly by the
ratepayers, but is selected by the vestries, who themselves are elected
by handfuls of people, the general public paying them no heed. And thus
it comes to pass that the greatest and wealthiest city in the world is
worse governed than the smallest of our municipal boroughs, for nine out
of ten ratepayers take not the least interest in electing the vestries,
and not one ratepayer in a hundred could tell the name of his district
representative on the Metropolitan Board of Works, now proposed, by even
a Conservative Administration, to be abolished.
It is not a small concern, this of reforming the government of London,
for it affects four millions of people--a number not far short of the
population of Ireland; but politicians in the mass, as even the keenest
metropolitan municipal reformer will admit, are more interested in the
general question of local government.
Speaking broadly, the defects of the system proposed to be reformed are
that of the popularly elected bodies there are too many, and that the
great governing body is not elected at all. In a certain town of 3000
inhabitants, there are at this moment a Town Council, a School Board, a
Burial Board, and (because under the Public Health Act an adjoining
parish was tacked on) a Local Board of Health; while, notwithstanding
that it sends representatives to a Board of Guardians for the whole
Union, it had until recently, and in addition to the other bodies, a
Local Board of Guardians, chosen under a special Act. And, beyond all
these, a Highway Board meets within its borders, which has to be
consulted and negotiated with whenever a road leading into the town
needs to be re-metalled or an additional brick is required for a
neighbouring bridge.
As if all these boards were not sufficient to keep the district in good
order, there is the Court of Quarter Sessions, which has jurisdiction
in various details that the multitude of small bodies cannot touch.
These latter have one justification, however, that the former cannot
claim, and that is that, despite there being magistrates who are members
of the boards of guardians by virtue of their office, and although the
more property one possesses the more votes one can give for certain of
the local bodies, these in the main are popularly elected, and are,
therefore, directly responsible to the ratepayers for the manner in
which their trust is used.
It is quite otherwise with the Court of Quarter Sessions. This consists
only of magistrates, such magistrates being appointed by the
Lords-Lieutenant of counties, and the appointments being made mainly on
political grounds. As a rule, the holders of that distinguished position
are Tories, and they take good care that the magistrates shall be Tories
also. It is not long since it would have been impossible to find a
single Liberal on the commission of the peace for Huntingdonshire; and
when comparatively recently it was pointed out to the Lord-Lieutenant of
Essex that an almost exactly similar state of things prevailed in that
shire, he replied he did not consider there was a Liberal in the whole
county who was socially qualified for the magisterial bench. The idea of
making a banker or a merchant a justice of the peace was too shocking;
and thus the commercial classes and a good half of the population
(giving the other half to the Tories) were completely unrepresented, not
merely on the bench, but in the Court of Quarter Sessions, which
governed the affairs and spent the money of the county.
There is no necessity to prove that these courts have spent the county
monies wantonly or with conscious impropriety in order to show this
condition of things to be wrong. In imperial affairs, the doctrine that
taxation without representation is tyranny has been asserted to the
full; in municipal matters, since the Act of 1835, the same has
prevailed; but in county concerns it has been non-existent. The
magistrates represent no one but themselves, their party, and their own
class; they are necessarily swayed by the passions and prejudices that
party and class possess; and, seeing that the English people long ago
refused power over the national purse to an unrepresentative body like
the House of Lords, it is surprising they have until now allowed power
over the local purse to be in the hands of such equally unrepresentative
bodies as the courts of quarter sessions.
The line which the immediate reform of local government must take is,
therefore, the creation of a directly-elected body to deal with county
affairs, and the federation of such of the smaller boards as have to do
with the more purely district concerns, both of which points the Cabinet
of Lord Salisbury appear disposed to concede. But upon the former point
Liberals will claim that the whole--and not merely three-fourths--of the
County Councils shall be directly elected, for the system of aldermen,
included in the Municipal Reform Act by the House of Lords, has been
used for partisan purposes, as it was intended to be, and the same
effect will follow in the case of the counties if the same cause is
provided.
Any system, in fact, which involves "double election" tends to make the
body concerned hidebound and cliquish. A county alderman once chosen,
especially if he were a squire, as he most likely would be, would have
to behave himself in most outrageous fashion ever to lose his post. The
ratepayers might grumble, but it would be difficult in the extreme to
dislodge him, for he would be removed from their direct control, and the
Council would consider it ungracious to get rid of an "old servant." If
one wants to know how this double election operates, let him ask some
clear-sighted Londoner who is acquainted with the manner in which his
own city is ruled. He will be answered that for scandalous and wanton
expenditure not many bodies can equal the Metropolitan Asylums Board,
the members of which are mainly chosen by the various boards of
guardians; while for jobbery and general mismanagement it is even beaten
by the Metropolitan Board of Works, which is elected by the several
vestries. And he will add that this chiefly arises from the fact that
the ratepayers have no direct control over either of these bodies, and
that the good result of such direct control was shown by this fact--that
when the metropolitan ratepayers considered that the School Board, which
is directly elected, was practising extravagance, they placed at the
bottom of the poll those responsible for the policy, with the effect
that considerable savings were speedily effected.
And therefore now, when County Councils are being established, all
Liberals will have very carefully to watch the points upon which the
Tories and Whigs may combine in an attempt to give the country a
semblance without the reality of representative local self-government.
What must be insisted upon is--(1) That the Councils shall be entirely
elective; (2) that the ratepayers shall directly elect; (3) that there
shall be no property qualification for membership; (4) that the voting
shall be by household suffrage--one householder one vote; and (5) that
women ratepayers shall have the same right of voting for county as for
town councils.
With such a Council in each county, or, in the case of Lancashire and
Yorkshire, in each great division of a county, we should have a central
local organization, to which highway boards, local boards of health,
village school boards, and other small bodies could be affiliated; and
it is not impossible that, as a development of the system, the various
bodies controlling the destinies of our lesser towns could be federated
to save friction, trouble, and expense; while, above all, it must be
insisted that the representatives of the ratepayers shall have full
control over the police.
It is a truism that without good citizens the best of governments must
fail; but our experience of the House of Commons and of the many town
councils has shown that the improvement of the machinery and the handing
over of control to the great body of the people have brought
public-spirited men to the front to do the duties required. As it has
been at Westminster and in the towns, so will it be in the counties.
England has become greater and freer, our towns have expanded and
benefited, owing to the whole of the inhabitants having a direct voice
in the rule; and the counties will correspondingly improve when the same
is applied.
XXII.--HOW IS LOCAL OPTION TO BE EFFECTED?
Intimately connected with the question of county government is that of
local option; and the problem of transferring the licensing power from
an irresponsible bench of magistrates to a specially elected body, or to
a direct vote of the ratepayers, has ripened towards settlement in a
remarkable degree since the day--just twenty years since--when Mr.
Gladstone wrote to the United Kingdom Alliance that his disposition was
"to let in the principle of local option wherever it is likely to be
found satisfactory," and thus used in relation to this question for the
first time, as far as is known, a phrase which has become famous.
No leading politician to-day disputes that some form of local option
must speedily be provided; but, as a body, they have been shy of
touching a problem that presents a host of difficulties, and the attempt
to settle which could not fail to arouse a number of enemies. What
those, therefore, who wished for local option have had to do was to show
the body of electors that it was reasonable and just, and to trust that
their appreciation of these two qualities would lead them to its
support.
As to its being reasonable, the very fact that the granting of licences
even now is in the hands of the magistrates, and not in those of a
Government department, indicates that it is intended that local feeling
shall be consulted. This, in fact, was specifically stated in an Act of
1729, which, after reciting that "inconveniences have arisen in
consequence of licences being granted to alehouse-keepers by justices
living at a distance, and, therefore, not truly informed of the occasion
or want of ale-houses in the neighbourhood, or the character of those
who apply for licences," enacted that "no licences shall in future be
granted but at a general meeting of the magistrates acting in the
division in which the applicant dwells."
Just a hundred years later, Parliament thought fit to withdraw from the
magistrates--who, at the least, knew something of "the occasion or want
of alehouses in the neighbourhood, or the characters of those who apply
for licences"--the power over applications for beerhouse licences; and
the result showed that even the most modified form of local option was
better than none. The Act of 1830, "to permit the general sale of beer
and cider by retail in England," provided that "any householder desirous
of selling malt liquor by retail in any house" might obtain a licence
from the Excise without leave from the magistrates. Within five years
another Act had to be passed demanding better guarantees for the
character of those applying for such licences, the preamble declaring
this to be necessary because "much evil had arisen from the management
of houses" created by the previous statute. Other amending Acts
followed, and in 1882 the magistrates were once more given complete
jurisdiction over beer off-licences, with the result that in the borough
of Over Darwen alone the renewal was at once refused of 34 out of 72
licences of the kind, a decision which, it is important to note as
bearing upon a point yet to be raised, was upheld by the Queen's Bench
on appeal.
It is not merely a matter of historical interest, but it has very
distinctly to do with the argument in favour of local option, to show
that the magistrates for four centuries have had committed to them the
duty of seeing that the needs of the district were no more than
satisfied. In 1496, a statute directed "against vacabounds and beggers"
empowered two justices of the peace "to rejecte and put awey comen
ale-selling in tounes and places where they shall think convenyent;" and
in 1552 another Act confirmed this exercise of authority. In 1622, the
Privy Council peremptorily directed the local justices to suppress
"unnecessary alehouses;" and in 1635 the Lord Keeper, in his charge to
the judges in the Star Chamber previous to their going circuit,
denounced alehouses as "the greatest pests in the kingdom," and added
this significant hint: "In many places they swarm by default of the
justices of the peace, that set up too many; but if the justices will
not obey your charge therein, certify their default and names, and I
assure you they shall be discharged. I once did discharge two justices
for setting up one alehouse, and shall be glad to do the like again upon
the same occasion."
These facts show that the theory upon which our licensing system has
grown up is that the wants of a locality shall be strictly borne in
mind, and of late years the wishes of a locality have more and more been
considered. No one would deny that magistrates as a whole pay greater
attention to those wishes to-day than they were accustomed to do even as
recently as fifteen years ago; and when new licences are applied for
memorials against their grant, signed by the inhabitants, are allowed to
have considerable weight with the bench. But that, after all, is only
the result of indirect and irregular pressure. What Local Optionists
desire is that the pressure shall be made direct and customary.
The reasonableness of demanding that local wishes shall control the
issue of licences is proved by the facts adduced, and the justice is
equally capable of being shown. If a locality determines that no fresh
licences shall be granted, or that certain old ones shall be taken away,
no more injustice will be done than if the magistrates under the present
system did the like. No compensation has ever been granted to the holder
of a licence the renewal of which a bench has refused; and although the
majority of such refusals has been because of ill-conduct, there have
been many cases (and those at Over Darwen were among them) where the
magistrates have not renewed because they did not think the house was
required. The fact stands that a publican's tenure is in its nature
precarious; he holds his licence from year to year at the pleasure of
the magistrates; he would hold it in the same fashion were Local Option
secured. And the fact that the power of refusal to renew a licence would
pass from an irresponsible bench to either the whole of the ratepayers
or a body specially elected by them for the duty, would not entitle him
to demand a compensation then that does not exist for him now.
A great difficulty of the problem lies in consideration of the manner
in which the popular power shall be exercised. "Local Option" is a
somewhat elastic phrase, adopted by many who have never troubled to
think what it may involve. Broadly speaking, there are three methods by
which it might be carried into effect: (1) By placing the power of
licensing in the hands of the Town Councils or the proposed County
Councils; (2) in those of specially-elected licensing boards; or (3) in
those of the ratepayers, who would exercise by ballot a "direct veto."
It is the first plan that finds favour with most of our statesmen. It
was prepared to be adopted by the last Liberal Ministry, and is by no
means so novel as many suppose. The Municipal Corporations Act of 1835,
as originally drawn, contained a clause giving the Town Councils the
power of granting alehouse licences, but the proposition was abandoned.
The Local Government Bill of Lord Salisbury's Administration has a
similar provision, giving the licensing to the County Councils; but to
this has been urged the objection that these bodies will have sufficient
business to attend to without having the public-houses placed on their
shoulders. When our system of popular education was fixed upon its
present basis, it was resolved that the work should be done by specially
chosen school boards. Mr. Forster at first proposed that these boards
should in the towns be selected by the Municipal Councils; but it was
felt by the House of Commons that so special a function demanded direct
election, and direct election was provided, with the best results. And
if the licensing power is to be vested in a representative assembly and
local option is to be anything but a sham, it must be placed in the
hands of those elected by the ratepayers for that special purpose, so
that no bye-issues of waterworks, or paving, or the increase of rates
shall affect the one distinct question of the public-house.
The extreme temperance section argue that even such Licensing
Boards--directly elected by the ratepayers for the specific
purpose--would not meet the requirements of the case, and that nothing
short of a popular vote can be accepted. But why should the
representative system be abolished and a direct vote established in this
case, any more than in the equally burning questions settled every day
by Parliament, and the lesser but still important matters decided by
town councils and school boards? We in England long ago made up our
minds that the most excellent way to get public work done is to choose
the best men, give them the requisite authority, and then allow them to
do the duty to which they are called. And if we can disestablish a
church, revolutionize the land system, or reform our institutions from
top to bottom through our representatives, without a direct vote of the
people, the question of renewing public-house licences can scarcely
demand so exceptional a process as is by some suggested.
My answer, therefore, to the question, "How is Local Option to be
worked?" as well as to the kindred temperance question, "How is Sunday
closing to be settled?" is, "By means of licensing boards, directly
elected by the ratepayers." And if this solution be adopted, our
licensing system will be placed upon a basis at once more safe and more
free from friction or the likelihood of injustice than any other that
has been proposed.
XXIII.--WHY AND HOW ARE WE TAXED?