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