DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.22140#0226
2IO
INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL HISTORY.
ask a question if they can get at the facts. So I went to the
Woods and Forests office in Whitehall and inquired. I found
that a forty years' lease at £\o a year had just expired, one granted
say in 1845, and that the land was now re-let at £Soo a year
ground rent. I did not ask the question, for whatever else the
Commissioners had done, they had certainly not neglected the
interests of the office. But the rise of twenty times in forty years
is as nothing to the rise from the time when Cockspur Street was
a field with cow-sheds on it, and fine ladies went into the Mall and
drank curds and whey. In the seventeenth century the site was
probably worth about two-thirds of a farthing, or the r 1440th of
a pound sterling. You may make your calculation as to its growth
in value since.
Now I daresay that no one who has undertaken to criticize
adversely modern rents, has provided himself with such facts as I
have given. Arable land has risen in rent eighty-eight times,
pasture nine, and building sites incalculably, for I think it probable
that the Cockspur Street site is not more than a tenth the ground
rent of a similar site near the Royal Exchange. A good many
years ago, I have been told, a working goldsmith, whose home
was not the pleasantest, left the freehold site of his shop in Lom-
bard Street to the Goldsmiths Company, in memory of the cheer-
ful evenings which he spent at the livery, and with the intention
of bettering their potations. The modern rent—Glyn's Bank
occupies the site—would give, I was told, all the worshipful people
among the goldsmiths a bath of Tokay. In a vague way these
things are known. My informant was a very considerable econo-
mist, a bank manager, and a goldsmith. Of course he thought it
a creditable bequest, and an exceedingly natural result. He was,
I think I shall show, right in the latter inference.
But how does all this show to the general public ? I will try
to state the case as it appears to them, and the inferences that they
naturally draw from the facts. And I venture on anticipating
that no case could be quoted which more thoroughly illustrates
what I have always striven to put before you, the wisdom of com-
pletely examining all the bearings of an economical theory, than
this rent question does. For to anticipate what I shall hope to
prove presently, the most dangerous, the most mischievous
INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL HISTORY.
ask a question if they can get at the facts. So I went to the
Woods and Forests office in Whitehall and inquired. I found
that a forty years' lease at £\o a year had just expired, one granted
say in 1845, and that the land was now re-let at £Soo a year
ground rent. I did not ask the question, for whatever else the
Commissioners had done, they had certainly not neglected the
interests of the office. But the rise of twenty times in forty years
is as nothing to the rise from the time when Cockspur Street was
a field with cow-sheds on it, and fine ladies went into the Mall and
drank curds and whey. In the seventeenth century the site was
probably worth about two-thirds of a farthing, or the r 1440th of
a pound sterling. You may make your calculation as to its growth
in value since.
Now I daresay that no one who has undertaken to criticize
adversely modern rents, has provided himself with such facts as I
have given. Arable land has risen in rent eighty-eight times,
pasture nine, and building sites incalculably, for I think it probable
that the Cockspur Street site is not more than a tenth the ground
rent of a similar site near the Royal Exchange. A good many
years ago, I have been told, a working goldsmith, whose home
was not the pleasantest, left the freehold site of his shop in Lom-
bard Street to the Goldsmiths Company, in memory of the cheer-
ful evenings which he spent at the livery, and with the intention
of bettering their potations. The modern rent—Glyn's Bank
occupies the site—would give, I was told, all the worshipful people
among the goldsmiths a bath of Tokay. In a vague way these
things are known. My informant was a very considerable econo-
mist, a bank manager, and a goldsmith. Of course he thought it
a creditable bequest, and an exceedingly natural result. He was,
I think I shall show, right in the latter inference.
But how does all this show to the general public ? I will try
to state the case as it appears to them, and the inferences that they
naturally draw from the facts. And I venture on anticipating
that no case could be quoted which more thoroughly illustrates
what I have always striven to put before you, the wisdom of com-
pletely examining all the bearings of an economical theory, than
this rent question does. For to anticipate what I shall hope to
prove presently, the most dangerous, the most mischievous