for a longer term, but she is to pay him interest on the fine for the eight years already expired! This antedating of interest proves that the Hebrew race has no monopoly of sharp practice.
This is the private side of leasehold. The public side is no better. The law which gives to the ground landlord all the unearned increment created by the community injures the community as much, if less ruinously, as it injures a private person. It is only less ruinous, because a whole community is better able to bear extortion than is any one member of that community. But the same principle is at work, with similar results.[1]
Leasehold property is sometimes let, not for a term of years, but for a term of "lives." [2] Leases for lives are very common in Cornwall. The lessee names three persons of whom he himself may be one—and the lease is to last until the death of the last survivor of the three. The evils of such a custom are obvious, especially in a district which, like West Cornwall, is almost wholly mining, and where, therefore, there are greater risks to life. But even without mining accidents, such leases can fall in at any moment. Mr Dawson, in his "Unearned Increment," gives instances. On an estate in West Cornwall, "five farm leases on sets of lives" fell "in hand" within ten years. An epidemic of typhoid carried off the whole fifteen lives. In another case, "a leaseholder in a Cornish village had spent £260 in building a house on land held for three lives. All the lives expired in fifteen years, and the landlord became the absolute possesser of the building." The system has been well described
- ↑ "The more numerous the community becomes and the more it thrives, the higher the tribute it must pay to the owners of the soil upon which its dwellings have been placed. In lending or selling land the owner renders now no greater service to the community than he did years ago—when land was cheaper—but he requires far greater remuneration for the service. Where the landlord, by his own labour or expenditure, increases the value of his property this growing tribute is, to some extent, justifiable; but it will generally be found that it is not the owner but society which makes the land more valuable. Nevertheless the law says that society may be rack-rented on its own improvements."—Dawson, "The Unearned Increment," p. 15.
- ↑ Sometimes also for "years and lives"—that is, for so many years, usually twenty-one, after the death of the last "life."
