The Express.
London, England, 1852-04-19 00:00:00

LANDLORDS AND RAILWAYS.

(Veal the Daily News.)
Mr. Disraeli and his followers delight to expa-
tiate on the undue weight of public burdens
allowed to rest on the " agriculturist"—" agricultu-
rist," in their acceptation of the word, meaning
"landlord." If one could believe them, the far
greater part both of our local and general taxation
has been made to fall upon this ill-used class. The
assertion is startling: the landlords have always
been the preponderating class in the House of Com-
mons; how comes it that they have taken so little
care of their own interests? If they are over-taxed,
this over-taxation has been their own work. It is
somewhat strange to hear men appealing to the few
representatives of commerce and industry who have
at last found their way into parliament; lbe;gging
these new enters to tie up their own hands and pre-
vent the landlords from being so excessively gene-
rous--sc self-sacrificing in future—as they have been
in time past.
A very slight scrutiny, however, explains the
mestere. It is that there are certain phrases wits&
hire (juju* a different meaning in the emallhaef
landlon, anti their partisans, from that Aidi
niches to them in common English. Vs wimp
men speak of compensation, they mean repaymest
for what has been taken from them; when landlords
speak of compensation, they mean an addition to
someth'ng Hwy have already taken from others.
Thus, by mans of the coru-laws, they have for
many p.m's taken large sums out of the pockets of
Englishmen. without giving value in return ; and
now that the trick has been found out, instead of
proposing to refund what they have unjustly taken,
they coolly plopirse that something additional should
be given them in another shape as "compensation."
It is the same in till their dealings. For example,
within the last feet years the country has been
covered by a stet-work of railways nearly 7.000 miles
in extent. No class has benefited more by the con-
struction of those railways than the landlords.
" The railway," it is well remarked by Mr.
Pasiti.t a, in 'his book on Pauperism and the Poor
Laws, " as soon as opened, tends both to diminish the
cost of reduction and to increase the price of agri-
cultural piodues..." The lion's share of the conse-
quent gains of the agriculturists has flowed into the
pockets of the landlords. " Es-en if English land-
owners." says the authority we have quoted, "had
abstained as completely as the gods of EPICURUS
from taking any pert in the struggle of the industrial
world below or mound them, stall they must, for
mete than half a century, have seen the
vales of their brood acres increasing." They have
respell shin others have sown. And with ust-
paralleled and:city they have made their hider
trims bent (newts key heavily for the privilege of
eariehina them. '1 he constructors of rails/Ilya have
had to pay enormous sums in the name of
"purchase moat] " and "compensation" to the
liedostuers who have profited an largely by
those very railways, without stirring a hand, or
contributing a penny, towards their construction.
The landlords hate not rested satisfied with this
preliminary exaction from railways; with making
them pay for their "footing" like sew comae le
a tsotlohop. As sun as the railways were opened
the landlords began to subject them to permanent,
systematic extortions, just as the nobler knights of
the lthine and Danube did with the trembling
traders of former days. A railway company, though
its line cannot add ono ppaauper to any parish
through which it passes, the mode of rating
which the Clan of Queen's Bench, on the applica-
tion of the landowners, has sanctioned—so heavily
taxed as sometimes to pay one-fifth, or even one-
fourth of all the poor-rates of an entire parish. The
railway companies, in 1848-9, when 2,5;69 miles only
of railway had been opened, paid as much as
270,000/. a year towards the parochial rates of the
different parishes traversed by their lines.
Mr. P %SULFA has furnished us with the following
startling account of the exorbitant exactions of the
landlords flour railways :
Turchase money" and "Compensation" paid by the alit
Went railway companies in England daring the last fifteen
years, seer sr to have amounted in the whole to millions
upoa millinouterling ; and it is in respect of this pardesse of
cultivable land that a large part of this payment has
been made The Manehester and Leeds Railway, 66 miles
is h, nnw part of the Lancashire and Triviality Railway,
east, in this respect alone, the enormous sum of 613,9461.,
mad the same short line has been required to pay, on an
average of several relent years, an annual contribution of
8,0161. to the poor-rates of the parishes through which it
Nemec The correctness of the figures given respecting this
Las is ensured by their resting on a return furnished to me
by Mr. Lawn, the accountant of the Lancashire and York-
Aire Railway Company, in which the Manchester and
Leeds Railway Company has been merged.
Facts like these illustrate curiously Mr. DISRAELI'S
assertion that the poor rate and other local burdens
fall with undue weight on his clients. Viened.by their
light, it is clear that his proposed modification
of local imposts is nothing more than a prac-
tical application of Fakredens's principle that tax-
ation and confiscation are one and the same thing.
The duty on foreign corn was a partial confiscation
of the property of all other classes for the benefit of
the landlords. The re-adjustment of local rates
as pro-
Cirtlby Mr. Dis a substitute for the corn-
i ill tunt
merely be a similar confiscation in another
form. In 1848-9 the landlords relieved themselves of
270,0001. of poor-rates by taking them out of the
chests of railway companies instead of their own
pockets: -by reducing their own expenditure for the
poor to this amount, and leaving the companies and
the travelling public to apportion the burden between
them as they best might. Upon this hint Mr. DIS-
RAELI is prepared to act. " Do not ask for a renewal
of the corn-a,' says Fakredeen to the landlords,
"we can arrive at the same end by shifting the inci-
dence of the local rates in the same way as you have
been doing with the railways."
There can be no doubt that a re-distribution of
local and general taxation is urgently called for.
But it is called for not because the landlords, but the
Weenie.' community, bear an undue share of the
burden. It will never do, then, to entrust the Dia-
raelites with the task, whose aim in to increase the
existing disparity consequent upon the successful
efforts of the landlords to throw their burdens upon'
other people. At the coming election constituencies
will act wisely in their selection of candidates, if
they prefer such as are able and willing to revise one
whole system of taxation, and to revise it in the
contrary way to that which Mr. Disaseu proposes.