Sanitary legislation is founded on a basis of mischievous lop-sided socialism, in which the sanitary well doer is heavily taxed for the support of the jerry-builder, and is called upon to pay for all the shortcomings of the negligent and filthy.
Encouragement ought to be given to the man who builds a house with ample curtilage; and if such house be removed from all other dwellings by a distance equal to its height, he ought to be freed from the restrictions of harassing by-laws, and the despotic control of district surveyors whose credentials are often of the flimsiest, and whose ideas are stereotyped.
The idea which was prevalent a few years ago, that open spaces should be taxed at 'site value' is, one must hope, dead. Its obviously mischievous tendency needs no comment.
The only equitable basis for calculating the rateable value of a house for sanitary purposes is the cubic capacity, because, as a broad rule, the bigger the house the greater is the amount of work which it throws upon streets and sewers. The 'grounds' or 'curtilage' of a house ought to be very leniently taxed, although one must admit that streets and pavements ought to be paid for in proportion to house and ground frontage.
If a man spend money in beautifying his house without enlarging it, this ought not to entail an increase in rateable value for sanitary purposes. Such beautifyings are good for trade in a proper sense, and ought not in the interests of the community to be checked.
The rich man who has a fancy for a fine house has already had his income handsomely taxed, and it seems scarcely just or wise that he should be further directly taxed for spending his income.
Horses if of similar dimensions used to be equally taxed, and no distinction was made between the 'Thoroughbred' and the 'Screw,' which was quite equitable, because the owner of the former had already paid income tax.
I have been at some pains to point out that in country or semi-rural districts, where it is possible to give a house a decent curtilage or small garden, it is easy for a householder to make the sanitation of his dwelling quite independent of the local authority. In fact, the householder is able if he be so minded to make his sanitation complete, and to finish, on his own premises and to his own profit, that 'circulation of organic matter' which is a law of Nature, and the only true basis upon which the science of sanitation can possibly stand firm.
The householder can do piecemeal what no public authority has ever succeeded in doing wholesale, albeit that millions of money have been wasted in silly attempts.