Renr and Taxes being the natural complements of each other, the cost of occupancy is the aggregate of these two component parts, the respective proportions of which adjust themselves by a law as certain in its operation as that of gravitation. Properly considered, therefore, the tenant need only concern elf with the total which he has to pay, and on the average be makes his contracts of lease in fall recognition of that principle. The more he has to pay for Taxes the less he oan afford for Rent. The gross outlay is regulated in the same way as the price of any article of merchandize from a chest of opium to a police constable, and is the net result of a struggle between two opposing forces, the ro. ceiver extorting all he can and ti payer giving as little as possible. The adjustments of the two items in the ange of lenses are not of course immediate, but periodical, as variations both in public burdens and in the supply.and demand may take place during their currency; but in the case of tonants-at-will the operation is simple, perfect, and constant, as we see beantifally illustrated in the case of the Chinese tenants in this Settlement, whose rents fluctuate month by month like the tin-shares of Selangor.
Applying this elementary principle of political economy to the ciroumstances of our local finance, it would appear to follow from it that the por-sous who are pecuniarily interested in the Revenue are not the occupants but the owners of house property, for the occupant virtually deducts what he pays in taxes from what he pays as rent, and his account is thus squared. Bat if the owners are alone interested in the Revenue, the occupants, being residents, have a very special interest in the Expenditure, It is for their comfort, health, and safety that the money is used. Hero then we appear to have reached a conflict of interests which is certain in the nature of things to elicit some sparks of controversy in the future. Ona primd facie view of the matter, one would be apt to say that those who in the long ran provided the money should have the sole voice in fixing the taxation. But the tendency of democratic institutions all over the world—and ours is ultra-democratic—is quite the other way, for it is putting the few who have property to tax more and more at the mercy of the many for whose benefit the money so raised is expended. And here in Shanghai, though io are to a large extent oat of the influence of the political currents which ran so strong in the countries of our origin, we see and feel that here are cogent reasons for this tendency. Indeed, what is elsewhere a matter of argument, agitation, and denunciation, la here reduced to a crucial demon. stration,—as we endeavoured to shew short time back, and will therefore spare our readers a repetition of the argument, The couclasion arrived ut then was that the land-owners should pay, as in fact they virtnnlly do, all the Manicipal taxes, and that the residents, whether they be Iand-owners or not, should have all the power of levying them.
'The validity of the principle is well illustrated by the regular violation of it in all our Municipal procedure; the Ratepayers' meeting on the 28th ultimo was a particularly neat exemplification of the anomaly of proxy voting. Out of 'a total vote of 232 by eight-six persons no less thay 73 were cast by three in-duals. Obviously therefore these three men, if united, can control any meeting of Ratepayers, and as their votes are all for absentee proprietors it follows that the administration of our Manicipnl Government is under the sway of these estimable but distant and unseen personages, And like all other noxious growths the fundamental anomaly tends to reproduce itself in a crop of derivative anomalies. Thue the original sin of allowing absentees to vote results in this, that the greater the absenteeism the more is the voting for the votes become consolidated more and more in the hands of a few professionals, who, by specialising their factious, must eventually supersede all amateur house-agents, The weaker thareforo becomes the tie of personal sympathy between our absent landlords and ourselves, the more absolute their power over our health and happiness; 9
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.