3. In the event of any invention or improvement being made, and proved to be commercially successful, whereby the benefit to the community can be increased, and provided the concern remains in its nature a monopoly, such improvements should be taken over and worked by the State or municipality, and meantime =there should be no prohibition of any private enterprise carried on in competition= apparent or real. 4. All such concerns, whether national or municipal, should be worked or directed by one or more Department of State, having at its head a Minister, who should be a Member of the Cabinet, and =responsible to the House of Commons, and as such liable to a vote of censure for any abuse or want of efficiency in the concern=. As to Rule No. 1, there appears sometimes to be a very thin line between what is, and is not, susceptible of effective competition. As a general rule, =any concern which involves a right or easement over land, must be in the nature of a monopoly=. Thus the supply of gas, water and electricity, all of which must be conveyed by pipes or wires into houses, are in the nature of a monopoly, but the fittings used in the houses are not, but are susceptible of very efficient competition, both as to workmanship, manufacture and design. All roads, including railroads and tramways, are, and must be, in the nature of a monopoly, but the manufacture of materials and rolling stock, the catering of hotels, forming part of the railway undertakings, or in the trains themselves, or in railway steamers, are all the subject of effective competition and should, therefore, be put up for competition with special supervision and restrictions against abuse of the privileges obtained by competition on Government property. Now, I would ask any unprejudiced reader who has studied the writings of the eminent authors already quoted, and other opponents of nationalisation, to read those books again with these four rules in his mind, and consider whether all the objections so forcibly brought forward against nationalisation would not be very nearly, if not completely, answered, if such nationalisation were carried out with strict adherence to these rules. I venture to think that Lord Avebury himself would have admitted the force of this contention. It would, at least, answer the question he puts more than once, “Where, indeed, is it (municipal and national trading) to stop? Is it to stop at all?… It is sometimes said that the line should be drawn at necessaries. But if so, to light, gas, water and tramways, we should have to add bread, meat, fire insurance, … etc., while many would also add tobacco, tea and beer.”[13] In effect, the whole of the objections to State ownership, as will appear from a perusal of the various books referred to above, and the arguments of other opponents, are all comprised under three heads, namely, according to the relationship of the State:-- 1. With traders.