great extension of unnecessary buildings must mean empty streets, with bankrupt builders and mortgagees. Desolation would reign, and discontent verging on Revolution, would endanger the safety of the Metropolis. Mr. Saunders writes (page 43):

"It is now generally admitted that vacant building land should be taxed on its capital value."

No one admits this but Mr. Saunders and the few persons who are connected with him in this agitation. The public as yet know nothing of the proposalprobably not one person in a hundred thousand has ever even heard of it, much less knows anything of what it involves-but when they do know and reflect upon it, Mr. Saunders will find that his estimate of the intelligence and honesty of his fellow citizens is based upon a delusion.

The question naturally arises, Who is to determine what is building land? Take the South-Western Railway country as an example. It will be agreed that the land between Clapham Junction and Wimbledon is building land; then in passing Wimbledon, we notice boards announcing land to be disposed of for building purposes. Take the next field, and the next, and the next. If one field has a residential value, why not the next? If up to the northern hedge of one field is building land, why not three feet off, just over the hedge, the southern side of the next field, and so on? We reach Surbiton, which is a centre of its own, but the same principle will apply to lands ranging out of every centre in the kingdom. Lands are worth more than agricultural value-have probably been bought, not at a building value but at some residential value-that is a value between an agricultural and a building value; but it may be many years before such lands will be used for any other than

an agricultural purpose, and in the meantime are they to be assessed by Mr. Saunders and his friends as vacant building land, and charged with rates at prices far exceeding the rentals obtained for them? Certainly not!

Owners who improve neighbourhoods by constructing roads, sewers, etc., and thus turn agricultural land into residential land, are not likely to be handicapped by any Government imposing upon them fines for benefiting the community.

Vacant building land is a great advantage to a neighbourhood, in that it forms a reservoir of pure air; if it were subject to rates, it would be built on in some form or other, or else would drift into the possession of the wealthy, who could afford to pay rates and let it lie until it was much needed, when an exhorbitant price would be demanded. Vacant building land surrounding a town does not derive any benefit from the rates.

Let any one read the purposes enumerated on their rate and tax demand papers and say how vacant building land is benefited by the application of rates to any of such purposes. So soon, however, as this vacant land is built upon, then it contributes to these purposes.

In conclusion, some importance has been given to this subject, because when the Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes sent in its report it opined that "land available for building in the neighbourhood of our populous centres," should be

rated.

A Royal Commission, or a Committee, is only a delegation to obtain evidence which those appointing it may or may not use in its consideration of a subject. This Commission introduced this clause into its report practically without any evidence whatever to warrant it in doing so; the result was that some of the members of the

Commission, namely, Lord Salisbury, Mr. Goschen, and Lord Cross, objected to the clause because it was based on no evidence, and they refused to sign any agreement with the suggestion. Lord Salisbury said, "This paragraph was introduced into the report just before it was signed, and I cannot find that it is based on any evidence laid before the Commission. I believe that the evil results of such a change would outweigh its advantages."

When the grounds of the agitation are understood by the people, they will be rejected, as has been every other proposal which has not been based upon our old English sense of justice; and capitalists may continue to own or buy ground rents or residential or building lands with the assurance that no more legislative injustice will affect them in this than in the purchase of any other description of property whatever.

C. F. DowSETT.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

LAND AND HOUSE INVESTMENTS.

BY C. F. DOWSETT, F.S.I.,

Author of various Articles on Land and House Properties; "Striking Events in Irish History"; &c.

WHEN investors are brought to face an income of only £25 per annum for every £1000 of capital, their energies may well be quickened to contemplate the whole field of possible investments, so that by reflection they may be able to ascertain how their means can be more profitably employed than in two-and-a-half per cent Stock.

Debentures, bonds, and the whole tribe of scrip securities have little attraction for some persons, especially those who remember losses which their friends have made by Stock Exchange securities. They dislike depositing their money and only receiving in exchange a piece of paper which admits them to possible privileges or responsibilities. They prefer to see something for their money; they believe in something tangible-so many acres of solid earth, so many well-built houses-these are the securities which, apparent to their senses, they are better able to understand, and so the better able to appreciate.

FARMS.

Farms may now be profitably purchased, if care taken in the selection to buy land in sound condition, with substantial buildings, conveniently placed as

to

roads, station and market, and let to tenants who are not impecunious. Considering the rise in the price of corn, and other favourable conditions referred to in other chapters of this book, such farms purchased to pay four per cent. on their present rentals will prove to be not only safe, but improving investments.

Dairy Farms command higher prices, and if purchased to pay 3 per cent. would be a sound investment. They are not subject to such fluctuations as arable or even mixed farms, and are always in demand by a good class of tenant.

RESIDENTIAL LANDS.

By residential lands, I mean land which has more than an agricultural value, and yet would not correctly be described as building land. Residential land has peculiarities of value in its position in relation to towns, villages, parks, stations, etc., also in its contour and its intrinsic merits as to soil, water, timber, etc.

Such lands, if wisely chosen, and paying an interest from an agricultural rental of from one to three per cent. are worth securing by those who can afford to wait, or who buy for posterity. Immense fortunes have been made by buying land having residential capabilities, and which has grown more or less rapidly into building land.

Very striking instances of this were demonstrated to me in crossing the Continent of North America from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean at the end of 1890. I learned that that vast continuity of cities, townlets, and homesteads west of Chicago, that is, for more than 2000 miles, are the growth of fifty years, that in fact fifty years ago the extensive prairies west of Chicago were known only to the Indian and the occasional white-man-trapper. For the information of such of our readers as do not know