ability of the people to buy, but in the difficulties connected with the transfer of title. Land has been driven into the hands of the wealthy few because the cost of land transfer is prohibitive to the many. The title to land is based on the possession of deeds, and poor people who have no bank and no safe-deposit cannot keep them securely. Besides, the title to land is considered good only if it is forty years old and has a 'good root' going back another forty years. Consequently, whenever property changes hands the history of the title is laboriously investigated, and the amount of labour is often as great in the case of a plot worth 201. as in that of an estate worth 20,000l. Hence the cost of transfer is proportionately by far the highest in the smallest transactions. The Report of the Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes quotes the case of the purchase by a working man of a cottage for 2201. where the deeds cost 661. The ad valorem scale of 1881 has not abolished that injustice. According to that scale the rate for the sale or mortgage of property worth 1001. is 51. for each party, or 10 per cent. for both, whilst the rate for 100,000l. is only 2951. for each party, which is equal to 6s. per 1001. for each side, or to three-fifths per cent. for the two. A poor man finds the purchase of a little piece of land not only prohibitively dear, but he may have to wait many months until the investigation of the title is completed, and if he wishes to raise a mortgage or to sell his land the whole process is again gone through at the same prohibitive cost and with the same delay. These enormous charges and needless delays have made land a luxury and have made it impossible for all but the rich to own it. If land is to become, as it ought to be, the favourite investment of the people, it must be as readily negotiable as stocks and shares. Hence the title to land must not rest in mouldy deeds but in an official register. The introduction of a national land register, which exists in most civilised countries, has been agitated for in Great Britain during more than two centuries, but the lawyers have prevented the reform of our land system, which is a danger to the State and a burden to all. The Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes stated in 1885:

It has been asserted that at present it is almost impossible for a working man to become the owner of his house without putting an enormous additional percentage of its value into the possession of the lawyers. The evidence before your Majesty's Commissioners shows that there is a widespread dissatisfaction, especially among the more provident of the working class and those desirous of purchasing their own houses, at the difficulty and cost connected with the transfer of land and the belief that this expense and difficulty might be greatly diminished by a reform in the law.

The Committee on the Housing of the Working Classes Amendments Bill stated in 1906:

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The Committee have had evidence of the relatively excessive cost attached to the present conveyancing system for the transfer of ownership in land, and are impressed with the great economy that might be effected by a system of registration of title being made universal and compulsory throughout the country. The Committee have been struck by the relatively enormous amount of solicitors' costs in comparison with the actual value of the land conveyed, which of necessity has a repressive effect on the free interchange of land.

Mr. Lloyd George's accusations that the landlords have robbed the people of the land are untrue. Not the landlords but the lawyers are responsible for the fact that the wealthy few own the soil of Great Britain. The reform of our medieval system of land transfer should prove the strongest factor in restoring the people to the land and the land to the people in town and country. It is the indispensable first step towards land reform.

The creation of a national land register by the methods hitherto attempted and proposed-a Royal Commission is at present investigating this question-will take many years, and the solution of the land problem is most urgent. I would therefore suggest to simplify, accelerate, and cheapen the transfer of land in small quantities in the following way. Fraud in the transfer of land is exceedingly rare, and in the case of small transactions is practically unknown because it would not pay. Official land registers should be opened in all districts. These registers should guarantee without any investigation sales of real estate up to the value of 500l. in town and country against a fee of perhaps 1 per cent. ad valorem if the seller can furnish satisfactory references. Upon application for such a guarantee the registrar should publish a notice of the sale, and if no claimant should come forward within a month the title would be considered good, and the property be entered in the name of the buyer on the register and on the Ordnance map. The title would henceforth repose in these entries. In case the buyer should wish to raise a mortgage, the amount and the lender's name would be entered in the register and on the plan of his holding. He could effect a sale by an ordinary agreement consisting of a printed form in which the names of buyer and seller, position of property, and purchase price would be entered, and the transfer of title could henceforth. be effected without any delay by the substitution of the buyer's name on the register and the map. The register would be liable for all mistakes, and the charge of 1 per cent. ad valorem should suffice to cover expense and risk. As intending buyers of land would prefer buying cheaply and expeditiously registered land, landowners would hasten to get their land on the register.

It is to be hoped that the lawyers will no longer resist this reform, which should be highly profitable to them. The reduction of postage increased the number of letters a hundredfold. The cheapening of land transfer should have a similar

result. It should not only enormously increase transactions in land but also reduce the lawyers' working expenses when the investigation of numerous lengthy documents in archaic language has become a thing of the past.

No reform of the land system can be complete without a reform of the rating system. The British system of local taxation is a most unjust system. Rates are based not on the ratepayer's ability to pay but on the hypothetical letting value of his house. The old Elizabethan rating system was based on ability to pay. That principle was thrown to the winds by the Free Traders. McCulloch wrote in his book, Taxation and Funding Equality of contribution is an inferior consideration. The distinguishing characteristic of the best tax is not that it is most nearly proportioned to the means of individuals but that it is easily assessed and collected.' Other Free Trade economists have uttered similar sentiments. Rates, as at present arranged, press most severely on the poorest of the poor, because these spend proportionately by far the largest part of their income upon rent, as will be seen from the following hypothetical figures. Assuming that rates amount on an average to one-third of the rent, rates will tax income as follows:

Rates raise rent. The rent of the poorest of the poor is made excessively high not only by the leasehold system but by our rating system as well. The Royal Commission on Local Taxation, which sat between 1898 and 1902, acknowledged the gross injustice of our rating system, but failed to propose a remedy. A remedy can be found and must be found. It is indefensible that a hospital is often more heavily rated than a bank (the London Hospital pays 1500l. a year in rates); that a castle such as Chatsworth should be rated no higher than the shop of a struggling tradesman; that the poor greengrocer who requires a large shop is rated more heavily than the wealthy jeweller next door who requires a small one; that the poor clerk with a large family is rated more heavily than a wealthy bachelor because the former requires a larger house. It is equally indefensible that the owner of building land worth 100,000l., who lets it at 3001. for grazing, should be rated only on that 300l., and thus be encouraged to restrict the extension of the town and to increase the rent and living expenses of its inhabitants. The British rating

system, which our Free Trade economists have forced upon the country, relieves the rich at the cost of the poor.

Local taxation is paid not by houses but by men, and it should be based on their ability to pay. It should be based on their income, except in cases where, by holding up building land, people can increase their capital very greatly without paying their due share of either rates or income tax. Such land should pay rates and income tax on the income which its capital value would yield when invested at 4 per cent. The Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes already recommended in 1885 the rating of vacant land as a measure of financial justice and as a measure likely to relieve overcrowding.

The leading principle of taxation should be justice. Both France and Germany have solved in different ways the problem of levying local taxation in accordance with the taxpayer's ability, and my inquiries have convinced me that we can do likewise. As the great majority of income-tax payers make income-tax returns, the difficulty of basing local taxation upon income is not insurmountable. A man who has three residences might be taxed in each on a third of his income. Besides, local authorities should be allowed to impose certain taxes which are of great municipal, social, and educational importance. They should be allowed to tax, within certain limits, amusements and entertainments. especially those of an objectionable type, vacant land, and successful speculation in land. Mr. Lloyd George's fantastic ' unearned increment tax' is based on valuers' guesswork, and therefore grossly unjust; but I cannot see any objection to a graduated local tax on the net profits which speculators in land have actually realised.

The land problem is our greatest social and political problem. The conditions under which a large part of the English, and half the Scottish, people live are a danger to the race, Society and the State. Socialism threatens nation and Empire with destruction. An Empire cannot exist without an imperial race. Freeholders have ever proved the strongest defenders of law and order. The policy outlined in these pages should make the people happy and prosperous, diminish immorality, drunkenness and crime, re-create the race, lay the spectre of Socialism-and win the General Election. A strong association should immediately be formed for promoting this great national policy and explaining it to the people.

J. ELLIS BARKER.

1910

ON THE MAKING OF AN OVER-SEA

DOMINION

THIS article is in no sense intended to be controversial, nor an answer to Lord Stanhope's article on Great Britain and Japan in the Far East,' which appeared in the March number of this Review. It was written before that article appeared, from notes made during a holiday, and the critic criticised in it is essentially impersonal. I have endeavoured to look at the making of an oversea dominion from a general rather than from a specific standpoint to point out the endless difficulties which, as our own experience shows, stand in the way of such an undertaking; and to indicate some of the important details which it involves, which we ourselves have still left unsolved. The article of Lord Stanhope tempts me only to say one thing in connexion with the familiar criticism of Japanese commercial morality. What would be said of a foreigner who, after studying the Digest of the Law Reports,' under the head of 'Fraud,' should pronounce the opinion that the commercial morality of the English seems to be at rather a low ebb?

Since the Imperial Roman days over-sea dominion has fascinated the nations, leading them to vast expenditure of blood and treasure; even honour has sometimes trembled in the balance. In these Imperial English days we hold the keeping of our heritage as a sacred duty. But the glamour of the conception has somewhat blinded us to many things which went to the building up of the Empire. What a world there is of unrecorded labour! And the materials-how little we know of them! Yet human beings were the bricks, the early settlers were the layers, their brains the mortar, with the home administration for scaffolding. Occasionally some official or human document comes to light, kindling a fleeting enthusiasm for the workers in that past which seems to recede faster and faster into the deep groves of memory as we press onward. The history of that past is being fitfully process is a tedious one, and Time's evil

made to-day, but the