THE LEASEHOLD ENFRANCHISEMENT BILL.
IT may, we suppose, be conceded without much debate that cities built on a freehold tenure will be better built than cities built on long leaseholds, and much better built than cities built on short leaseholds. The London builders who gave evidence before the House of Commons Committee said it was not so ; but they were not likely to condemn a system by which they profit, or to admit that they built houses which were not intended to last. It stands to reason that no man will build well when he does not profit by the durability of his building, and when he is forbidden to carry out his own ideas and gratify his own fancies. West London is often quoted as an instance to the contrary, the houses, for example, erected by the Brothers Adams being as solid as castles ; but it must be remembered that they built, as they thought, on perpetual leases, the old and kindly custom on the great London estates being renewals on extremely moderate fines. It may also be conceded without debate that business men and men of taste often want the freehold of their houses, and that it is hard that freeholds should be unprocurable for money, the great landlords being precluded from selling either by settlements or by family custom. And lastly, it may be conceded that in many country districts, poor men are hardly used by the middlemen and landlords who grant short leases of building-land, encourage tenants to build, and then refuse them reasonable renewals. The Welsh evidence, quoted by Mr. Thomas Ellis in the debate on Wednesday, is irresistible on that point ; and we believe there are districts in England also where isolated cases of hardship, amounting sometimes in the case of chapels to outrageous hardship, do occasionally occur. It would be well, if it were possible, to prevent such hardships, and well also to change leasehold into freehold if it could be fairly done ; but Mr. Lawson's arguments for the Bill which on Wednesday so nearly passed its second reading, were as extravagant as his Bill itself is. His main argument, the only one, in fact, which makes the proposal accord with English precedent, is absolutely without foundation. The Bill is not for the good of the majority of the community. It will benefit the squares, but not the mews behind them. It is nonsense to say that the Bill would prevent overcrowding, or abolish insanitary conditions, or improve the housing of the working classes of London in any way whatever. The artisans in great cities do not take leases, but hire houses by the quarter or rooms by the week, and value exceedingly their liberty of flitting. Freehold owners can overcharge them, and let them insanitary rooms, and neglect repairs just as easily as leaseholders ; and as a matter of fact, they do it in Liverpool and the great cities of Scotland just as unscrupulously as leaseholders do in London. There is nothing in freehold to turn a usurer into a philanthropist. Freeholders, moreover, will rarely take the trouble to collect their rentals weekly, and either leave their smaller properties to be managed by agents, whose first duty as trustees is to demand all they can get, or let them to middlemen, who, if the tenure were altered, would buy up whole districts, subdivide the rooms, and by relentless evictions make extrava- gant rents absolutely secure. There are men who control large capital who, if leaseowners could peremptorily demand enfranchisement, would buy the leases of whole streets in London, demand freeholds, and by taking weekly rents make 15 per cent. on the money invested in the trans- action. There would be no benefit to the body of the people from the change, and though there would be benefit, possibly great benefit, to the well-to-do middle class, they can live well enough without it as they have hitherto done. It is absurd, just for their convenience, to destroy the principle of contract through which so much has been accomplished, and injure the security of every variety of urban property. People talk as if half-a-dozen Peers owned London ; but the owners and sub- owners of London count by thousands. Under Mr. Lawson's Bill, any leaseholder of twenty years can claim ownership on paying- a price to be fixed by a County-Court, which price, again, may be commuted into an annual rent-charge, and the effect would be that landlords would have money which melts, instead of houses which do not ; that the only tenures obtainable by applicants would be freeholds and annual tenancies; and that the small owners of ground-rents, a very large class who have looked on their investments as men look on Consols, would lose from a fourth to a third of their capital. The Courts would never give, and are not expected to give, full auction value ; and if they did give it, there would be the trouble and expense attendant upon the litigation. We say nothing, though Parliament will hear much, of the still worse position of leaseholders who have sublet, and who would under this Bill receive a most inadequate compensation. There are thousands of families living on these differences, and regarding them as terminable annuities, to whom the pay- ment of their auction value would be no sort of compensa- tion. They want, and they purchased, large incomes for short terms,-7 or 8 per cent. for forty or fifty years, and not the capitalised. value. The disturbance would be endless, and it would be violent disturbance authorised by Parliament for no benefit to be secured to the body of the people.
On principle, we should fight the Bill annually to the end, meeting it with a blank resistance as a violation of the implicit contract between the State and the owners of property ; but we are not quite sure that this would be for landlords the expedient course. We cannot blind our- selves to the fact that a large class of voters do detest the leasehold system, do complain under it of endless grievances, real or imaginary, and have secured, God knows how, the support of the working class in pressing for its abolition. So great is their voting power, that the sup- porters of the Bill in Parliament increase rapidly in number; that Lord Lymington only won his victory by a proposal to wait for a Report which is scarcely needed, as the evidence is in print ; and that both Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Chamberlain voted for the second reading, doubt- less, in both instances, with a view to amendments in Committee. Proposals so situated almost always pass the House of Commons sooner or later, and we distrust both the power and the inclination of the House of Lords to stand permanently in the gap. The stake of the Peers in the matter is no doubt great ; but then, it is so great that they will detest the invidiousness of the position, and that they will be able to make heavy sacrifices without greatly suffering from the loss. The landlords, too, are about to be hampered by their position in the complicated matter of the taxation of ground-rents, as to which many of the ablest economists are as much opposed to them as the Radicals of the County Council are. It will be well, therefore, if the owners of town property, who, of course, have no sentimental considerations binding them to their squares and streets, would make up their minds to facilitate the multiplication of urban freeholds, and decide what terms they will agree to consider fair. The property is theirs, and unless it can be shown that ex- propriation is for the benefit of the whole community, it is for them to decide on their selling price ; but we would advise them to consider very carefully the Duke of Devon- shire's compromise at Eastbourne. The Duke is among the most successful of speculators in cities, and his plan, as we read it, is to allow any tenant with a ten years' lease to run, to buy the freehold at once, and without worry, on the payment of thirty years' purchase. The Radicals will exclaim at the price, which is not a low one except for houses built as they are not built in our suburbs ; but the compromise, nevertheless, has many advantages. It de- taches from the agitation all those classes which want their houses freehold, whatever their price, classes which include nearly the entire House of Commons,-80 per cent, of the Members, perhaps, living in London in lease- hold dwellings. It breaks the neck of the argument, which, after all, is the most effectual one, that there are districts where freeholds are unprocurable, whatever the need and whatever the price offered. And it secures that for the future, builders must buy the land they build on, a provision which they will not like, and which may possibly check the enormous overgrowth of suburban London, and so make its size a little, however little, more manageable. We recommend the landlords, in fact, to change ground-rents into Consols, and find comfort, if they want any, in the fact that the moment the process is complete, and London has six hundred thousand owners, all projects for plundering London owners by Act of Parliament will be pronounced by Members and County Councillors acts of immoral tyranny. This would not be in any way a bad ultimate solution—though it leaves the injustice still that a man may not keep his own house just because he has a fancy for keeping it—and intermediately, the Peers might greatly facilitate its adoption. Let them pass through their House a Bill enabling any urban tenant for life to sell his house with a clear title to any tenant for thirty years' purchase, making transfer as easy as the transfer of a watch, and see if the House of Commons will venture to reject it.
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