We note with interest that in the discussion of Thursday
on the compulsory enfranchisement of leaseholds, the balance of opinion at the Congress was wholly in its favour. Mr. Rubin- stein, Solicitor to the Birkbeck Building Society, who read the • longest and most striking paper, was in favour of the abolition of leaseholds altogether, and Mr. Leone Levi expressed himself on the same side, though anxious about the method and extent of compensation. Be suggested official arbitrators. There seemed to be a general impression that Mr. Broadhurst's Bill, or one akin to it, would be ultimately carried. We confess that this movement, of the depth and strength of which we receive constant evidence, is to us a serious perplexity. We cannot see, when sanitary considera- tions are not involved, any principle en which such a transfer of property is to be defenclel. Suppose a man builds a house, and wishes to keep it for any reason, but not to inhabit it, or to have the trouble of letting it by the year, why is that either wrong or inexpedient ? We see the practice cheeks improvement, but so does every right which is used to keep things as they are. My property-right to my own freehold may be horribly in the way of some much abler architect or landscape-gardener, who would make a paradise where I make a wilderness. Am I to be "compensated" out of my rude house or overrun garden ?
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