ises held out by Mr. Lloyd George to the electors in 1918. Schemes
were ready, and are still in the official pigeon-holes, for the
production of electricity on a very large scale both from water power
and from coal, which would not only provide employment, but cheapen the
cost of production in all our industries. France, Italy, and other
countries are at this moment carrying out similar schemes whereby they
will relieve themselves to a large extent from dependence on British
coal. But here, four years of Coalition Government have left us
practically where we were. In France, although in many respects her
social system seems to me less enlightened than our own, the power of
the land-owner to obstruct enterprise and development is by no means so
great. Land Reform in this country is a necessary preliminary to the
fulfilment of Mr. Lloyd George's promises. Development at the public
expense without such reforms will result chiefly in further burdens upon
the tax-payer and further enrichment of the landowner.

RATING RELIEF FOR IMPROVEMENTS

This brings me to the last, and in my opinion the most important branch
of the Land Question, that relating to the reform of our system of
rating and taxation. I am myself an ardent supporter of the policy which
I think has been rather unfortunately named the Taxation of Land
Values. The vital point about this policy is not so much that we should
tax land values, as that we should leave off taxing buildings and other
improvements of land. The policy would be better described as the Relief
of Improvements from Taxation. Its economic merits seem to me so obvious
as hardly to require examination. It is only because the present system
has been in force for over 300 years that it can find any supporters. If
any one were to propose as a useful means of encouraging the steel trade
or the boot trade, or as a desirable method of taxation, that a tax of,
say, 50 per cent. should be imposed upon the value of every ton of steel
or every pair of boots turned out in our factories, he would be rightly
and universally denounced as a lunatic. Yet this is the system which
ever since the days of Queen Elizabeth has been in force with regard to
the building trade and all other industries which result in the
production of improvements upon land.

As long as land remains unused it pays no rates or taxes, whatever its
immediate potential value. But the moment it is brought into use, as
soon as a house, a f