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33
upon which ground thus set apart is not the scene of youthful
exercise.
The amount of land which the owner relinquishes for the
construction of new roads is in many instances insufficient.
Forty feet, a dimension which in the framing of the Act was
considered as a minimum contribution between forecourt and
forecourt, has become in usage the maximum space between
house front and house front. Mouses rising many stories in
height, and abutting upon the pavement upon cither side of
the carriage-way, may be observed in some of the later
schemes of "town improvement." In suburban districts
where new roads at no distant time may become the
main arteries of commmunication between suburb and
suburb, the provision of forty feet is an inadequate allowance.
The Local Authority will be required at a later date, and at
great expense, to purchase and set back the houses adjacent
to these roads, in order that they may meet the demands of
public convenience.
The efforts which arc made by a community to extend
the area of occupation and thus to meet the pressure
of a growing population, arc thwarted by the attitude
maintained by the owners of vacant land, and the abnormal
value to which that commodity is elevated by speculative
holding. A readjustment in the basis of assessment would
have the effect of bringing home to the owner a responsibility
in regard to public improvements. In the cost of these
improvements he now has no share; but from the enhanced
selling value of his property, the result of public expenditure,
he derives a peculiar advantage. Besides, a fair readjustment
would in a large measure tend to remove vacant land outside
the field of the operations of the speculator. Upon this
subject the Royal Commission were emphatic in their Report.
"At present land available for building in the neighbour
hood of our populous centres, though its capital value is very
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