352 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL CHAP. 



unaltered the difference between the produce obtained from the 

 least productive land in cultivation and that obtained from land of 

 every other quality." 



John Stuart Mill says : 



" A tax on rent falls wholly on the landlords. There are no means 

 by which he can shift the burden upon any one else." 



Professor Thorold Rogers and most other writers on 

 political economy have followed these great authorities, re- 

 peating their statement in slightly modified words ; and in 

 many recent articles as well as in discussion in the County 

 Council, either these authorities are accepted as con- 

 clusive, or if any attempt is made to prove that the same 

 results would follow the imposition of a 4s. or higher land 

 tax, the logic is at fault, and the attempted proof utterly 

 breaks down. This I shall hope to show in a very few 

 words. 



The whole essence of the question at issue is contained 

 in the concluding words I have quoted from Adam Smith, 

 that the landlord " always acts as a monopolist, and exacts 

 the highest rent which can be got for his land." It 

 follows, therefore, that however much you tax him, 

 however much you impoverish him, you do not, by that 

 act alone, enable him to extract more rent from the tenant, 

 who is not benefited by the landlord's tax. Now this was 

 the only kind of tax contemplated by the early writers. 

 Governments were always in want of money, always 

 seeking to impose new taxes ; and having taxed the poor as 

 much as they could bear, if they put a special tax on land 

 the landlord must pay it, since the tenant was already 

 rented and taxed up to the hilt. He could bear no more. 

 Adam Smith, and Ricardo, and Mill never contemplated 

 the case of a landlord-government taxing land, not to 

 supply its own dire necessities, but to relieve the 

 tenant. Such a thing was inconceivable to them, was 

 beyond the range of their practical politics, and therefore 

 they did not deal with it. But this is the very essence of 

 the modern proposal. The 4s. tax is not to be a war- tax, 

 or, what is much the same thing, the money obtained is 

 not to be thrown into the sea. It is not proposed to tax 



