[To THM Emma OP THE "SPECTATOR.'1 SIR,—You prefer short letters,
or I should like to begin by expatiating at length on the Spectator's broad-minded fairness to all sides, and particularly on its attitude to America, where I spend half my time and welcome the Spectator as my weekly joy; but the interesting letter on " The Afflictions of Land- lords" prompts me to add a word for this most unjustly treated class in Britain. On the whole our people are fair-minded, and, if they understood, would not allow such injustice. The whole system of raising local revenue is crude and pernicious. The old window-tax was long ago abolished as barbarous, since it deprived men of light and air; but the system of rating and land taxation is, of course, worse, and is the main reason for bur bad housing. Consider also the result of an inhabited house duty.
The subject is too complex for a letter, but even without comment the following figures speak for themselves. They only illustrate in extreme form what is going on all over the country. I have a small property with a gross rental of 492 Os. 6d. The owner's county rates this year amounted to .244 19s. 5d., parish rates ..223 19s. 1d., minister's stipend .26 35., heritor's dues 22 5s. 2d., land tax 21 2s. 44,., total 278 9s. In addition, there is the property and income tax. Could anyone out of a lunatic asylum expect an development of land or housing, or anything else, under such absurd conditions? Yet, as our Socialist friends are so fond of telling us, land is the economic foundation of all things. The case is even worse than it appears, and it would be a service to the country to publish this point, as it is what the Labour Party seems incapable of grasping. The rates above are the owner's rates, and the occupier's rates are prac- tically the same; so that the property pays far more than the
total rental. Consequently it works out thus was asked by a tenant to build him another house and charge a proper interest as rent. But in order to get 6 per cent.—not a very high rate of interest to allow for repairs and depreciation—it would have been necessary to charge about 20 per cent. to cover rates alone, apart from the other burdens. On each hundred expended on the house I should receive .220 and pay away .215 lla, in rates. But he also would have to pay a similar .215 lls, in rates, or a total of .235 11s. per cent., plus his share of the other burdens. He did not get his house. But we think this is a civilized country. We also wonder why there is a shortage of houses.
I have another piece of property with a small acreage of -woodland. The Government professes to be interested in forestry and re,afforestation, and even, in a left-handed way, by unemployment doles, renders assistance. But with the other hand it actually takes away through local rates and taxation more than the total that the land could possibly earn, refusing the benefit of the agricultural relief rating Acts to forest-land and absurdly over-rating woodland values. Briefly, our ignorant town-bred politicians would seem to imagine that trees plant themselves and require no attention, and that fencing, rabbit-wire, drains, &c., grow of themselves like the trees. If we are to have a sound Conservative party, let us hope that they will make it possible for country land to yield a return and support a population, instead of being crushed by such preposterous burdens as the road-rate in our county of lie. 9d. on the pound, divided between owner and occupier, in order that city trade and city holiday-makers may run their motor lorries and chars-k-bancs.---I am, Sir, etc., IAN B. STOUGHTON HOLBORN.
1 Mayfield Terrace, Edinburgh.
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