34 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and poor. In his distant State he has seen land taken up by specu- 

 lators and held untilled for years, that it might advance in value by 

 immigration settlers by such action being far too widely scattered 

 for their private good or the general welfare of the State. Taking the 

 ground of natural right, and following Quesnay and others, Mr. George 

 declares that except in the improvements due to labor no man can have 

 a valid title to any part of the earth's surface. He therefore proposes 

 a tax on real estate which shall be equal to its rental as unimproved 

 land. In defense of this virtual confiscation in its results, he declares 

 his opinion to be that his tax would render any other unnecessary, so 

 that, in exemption from duties and other government levies, property- 

 holders would receive a considerable palliative for the loss caused them 

 by his discovery of the invalidity of their titles. The owners of town 

 and city lots whereon buildings exist, and owners of improved farms, 

 would retain the whole value of buildings and improvements, so as to 

 be left with a large proportion of their former wealth. Objections 

 bristle on all sides against Mr. George's proposal. First, he takes no 

 note of the pretty general diffusion of real estate among the American 

 people, property which all except a few of the whole population regard 

 as real and substantial in a special sense. The confiscation of land, in 

 past years freely exchangeable for other property and not generally 

 held to-day by the enjoyers of very much unearned increment, would 

 be resented by the common sense of the people ; and the conscience 

 of the needy classes, once weakened as to the validity of the tenure of 

 one kind of property, might, under pressure of want in a commercial 

 panic, indiscriminately attack all. 



Most of us feel that the millionaires have too much even for their 

 own good, yet any confiscation which might begin by depleting ple- 

 thoric purses might end by larceny from very slender ones ; and a 

 movement ostensibly begun on grounds of public justice might, by 

 additions of envy and the spirit of common theft, degenerate into 

 wholesale pillage. Besides, how could a government like that of the 

 United States be trusted with so vast and difficult a business as assess- 

 ing all the land within its borders at its value that is, at its market 

 price, minus improvements ? But the injustice of unearned increment 

 in land remains with us still, and makes us wish that in America, on 

 original settlement, the leasing for. long terms had been established 

 instead of absolute sale or gift by the Government ; and also directs 

 attention to the advisability of taxing the increase of value in land due 

 to advancing population, say to the extent of one half such increase, 

 in cases of depreciation just rebate being made. Some perception of 

 the evils which Mr. George has beheld and would endeavor to correct, 

 led a few years ago to the forming in Melbourne, Australia, of a land- 

 reform society, which intended to urge on the Government the plan 

 of leasing its lands instead of selling them to men who were reproduc- 

 ing in the colony some of the worst features of the English land- 



