DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.22140#0238
222 INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL HISTORY.
errors in judgment, fostered by mistaken conceptions of econo-
mical relations, may as much need correction by law as deliberate
wrongdoing. If, in short, rent is the outcome of prices, the
landowner need consider no person's interest but his own, and
claim from the State, till the State becomes enlightened and
indignant, the literal fulfilment of all contracts which he has
imposed upon the unprotected and helpless occupier. Now I am
well aware that there is a widespread opinion to the esfect that
this power of unlimited inaction exists, and that nothing but
generosity or fear checks its exercise. I have often been told that
no change in our system of local taxation, under which all charges
are put on occupiers, will lighten the lot of such persons at all,
for that the landowner can at once levy an increased rent fully up
to the remission. The statement, indeed, betrays a total ignor-
ance as to the principles which govern the incidence and shifting
of taxation, but the opinion on which it is founded is dangerous,
because it infers that the position of the landowner is inevitably
anti-social and out of harmony with all other interests.
But if it be true that rent is the outcome of profits, and the
history of agricultural rent, and even of ground or building rent,
is absolutely conclusive on this point, when the economic basis of
rent is examined, and irregularities of individual or collective
action are checked, as I hope to show that they must be checked,
the whole aspect of the situation changes. The landowner takes
his place in the general harmony of social interests. If his present
and future interests are to be and remain unimpaired, he is pro-
foundly interested in the prosperity of the occupier, because in the
success of those who occupy the soil, in which he has ownership,
lies the continuity of present, and the prospect of future, rent. He
has to consider the advantage of others if he has a care for his own
advantage. The susficiency of his tenant's capital, and vigilant
care that that capital may be undiminished by any act of the rent
receiver, are subjects on which, in his true interest, he should be
nearly as anxious as the tenant himself ; for if the landlord's rent
absorbs the tenant's capital, the rent verges, as we now know, to
extinction. And, beyond doubt, the present condition of British
agriculture is due to the absorption of agricultural capital by
exorbitant or exhaustive rents, rents which no profits would bear.
errors in judgment, fostered by mistaken conceptions of econo-
mical relations, may as much need correction by law as deliberate
wrongdoing. If, in short, rent is the outcome of prices, the
landowner need consider no person's interest but his own, and
claim from the State, till the State becomes enlightened and
indignant, the literal fulfilment of all contracts which he has
imposed upon the unprotected and helpless occupier. Now I am
well aware that there is a widespread opinion to the esfect that
this power of unlimited inaction exists, and that nothing but
generosity or fear checks its exercise. I have often been told that
no change in our system of local taxation, under which all charges
are put on occupiers, will lighten the lot of such persons at all,
for that the landowner can at once levy an increased rent fully up
to the remission. The statement, indeed, betrays a total ignor-
ance as to the principles which govern the incidence and shifting
of taxation, but the opinion on which it is founded is dangerous,
because it infers that the position of the landowner is inevitably
anti-social and out of harmony with all other interests.
But if it be true that rent is the outcome of profits, and the
history of agricultural rent, and even of ground or building rent,
is absolutely conclusive on this point, when the economic basis of
rent is examined, and irregularities of individual or collective
action are checked, as I hope to show that they must be checked,
the whole aspect of the situation changes. The landowner takes
his place in the general harmony of social interests. If his present
and future interests are to be and remain unimpaired, he is pro-
foundly interested in the prosperity of the occupier, because in the
success of those who occupy the soil, in which he has ownership,
lies the continuity of present, and the prospect of future, rent. He
has to consider the advantage of others if he has a care for his own
advantage. The susficiency of his tenant's capital, and vigilant
care that that capital may be undiminished by any act of the rent
receiver, are subjects on which, in his true interest, he should be
nearly as anxious as the tenant himself ; for if the landlord's rent
absorbs the tenant's capital, the rent verges, as we now know, to
extinction. And, beyond doubt, the present condition of British
agriculture is due to the absorption of agricultural capital by
exorbitant or exhaustive rents, rents which no profits would bear.