188 History of Local Rates 
services—quite arbitrarily selected simply because they 
happen to be supplied by the kind of associated effort 
known as local government—is to be removed, these 
commodities and services must still be paid for from 
some source or other. The proposal is that they 
should be paid for by rates levied on the capital value 
of each parcel of land in separate occupation, valued 
as if it was cleared of its own buildings and other 
“improvements,” while the surrounding sites and the 
streets, drains, water and gas supply, and, in short, 
all the paraphernalia of modern civilisation round it 
remained untouched. The “site value rate,” as it is 
called, would be payable only by the owners, either 
directly or by way of deduction from rent. 
It is probable that many supporters of this scheme 
support it under the impression that it would throw 
the whole cost, or at least a large portion of the cost, 
of local authorities’ services upon the owners, loosely 
conceived as principally consisting of the London 
Dukes, so that the position of the respectable middle- 
class person, with whom “the ratepayer’ is usually 
identified, would be directly improved. Legislation 
which introduced such a scheme with no proviso for 
saving existing contracts would doubtless put money 
into the pockets of existing leaseholders at the expense 
of existing freeholders. But if existing contracts are 
saved, and in any case in the long run, the ultimate 
berms of the bargain struck between those who own 
and those who do not own the land will be the same, 
whether certain payments for services rendered are 
made in the first instance by the owner or by the 
occupier. If land is let carrying with the letting 
certain valuable rights, it will let for more than if it