[To THE EDITOR Or THE "SPECTATOR. "] Srn,—Thank you for your
fairness in inserting my letter. If replies to editorial notes are allowed, kindly permit a word more. I have carefully read the debate in a pretty full report (that of the Bradford Observer), and I cannot see any ground for your statement that "those who controverted Mr. Beale's motion controverted it specially on the ground that it would create peasant-proprietors,"—that is, if you use the word "peasant-proprietors" in the usual sense of small freeholders. Mr. Wilson, as your article observed, did object to peasant- proprietorship, because it would make land-nationalisation more difficult ; but what makes you think that in this he was arguing against Mr. Beale's motion ? That motion—(which was ulti- mately carried unanimously, as a sort of rider to Mr. Holmes's moticn for land-nationalisation. also, but. previously, carried, from which fact alone we see that the Congress, saw no antagonism between them)—simply asks for more small holdings held of the local authority, like the few already created by the cumbrous Allotments Act of 1887. Nobody thinks such holdings freeholds, or calls the holders peasant- proprietors. They are held subject to the payment of the rent, and the rent is subject to revision at intervals.
And this answers your other criticism about my approval of the " three F's" surrendering my whole. case. It is true that one of these " F's " is " fixity of tenure." But another is " fair rent," a rent which may be periodically revised, and on pay- ment of which the fixity of tenure is conditional. How can such a holder be. " in interests a. proprietor "P What is he a. proprietor of ? Not of ground value, at all events. That value is, by assumption, regularly paid to the municipality. Such a holder has no temptation to obstruct the taxation of ground- [What the Congress thought is not the question, but what it did. We maintain that its two resolutions were mutually destructive. Suppose there were a million tenants at low rents with fixity of tenure as a legal right : does Mr. Hill think they could be evicted ? They would be proprietors as much as mortgaged landlords are.—En. Spectator.]
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