Labour and the Popular Welfare

Synopsis

The landed rental of the country is given by me as something under a hundred million pounds. It has been asserted that were the ground-rents in towns properly estimated, the true rental would be found to be a hundred and fifty million pounds or a hundred and eighty million pounds. It is no doubt difficult to differentiate in town properties the total rental from the ground rental; but the most recent investigations made into this question, so far as it affects London, will throw light on the question as a whole.

The highest estimate of the present ground-rental of London as related to the total rental gives the proportion of the former to the latter as fifteen to forty. Now house rent in London is higher than in any other town in the kingdom; therefore, if we assume the same proportion to obtain in all other towns, we shall be over-estimating the ground-rent of the country as a whole, instead of underestimating it.

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