I have not stopped to cumber the statement of this simple plan by
adding the details necessary to meet severance of a farm by a railway
company, etc. The provisions to meet complicated tenures, etc., would
run much the same as in the Lands Clauses Consolidation Act.

It will be at once seen that this form of Rate Book would really
nationalise the land by bringing each piece into the hands of him who
could make most out of it. If I saw my way to use a piece of laud so
that it should be worth L1000 to me, and if on looking into the Rate
Book I saw that the present owner only considered it worth L600 to
him, I should at once lodge my L900 with the magistrate. A few owners
would really feel as Naboth. They could indulge this feeling by
putting a very high rateable value on their property. The high rates
they would thus have to pay would be the due ransom of the land; but
in general every piece of land would pass into the hands of him who
could make most of it. There would spring up, as in Attica, a large
class of professional sycophants. By their incessant operations,
properties small and great would be continually passing from the
slothful and the old-fashioned to the enterprising and modern-
educated. No nationalisation of the land could get so much out of it
or conduce so highly to progress as the National Rate Book. We should
have companies and adventurers buying up all sorts of pieces of land,
just as formerly they speculated in taking up land for mining in
Cornwall. We should see an extraordinary activity in the employment
of capital in England.

For all public improvements, as a new street or a Government military
station, a few minutes with the map and Rate Book would show the
Government officer or engineer the best route or plot to take, and
would also show him the exact cost of the land for the scheme. There