Thoughts on a Capital Levy. 
By JOHN ZORN. 
This Treatise formed the basis of the Articles 
published in the “ Daily News ” in November 
and December, 1919. 
Art Extract from John Stuart Mill. 
“To an individual anything is wealth which, though use 
less in itself, enables him to claim from others a part of their 
stock of things, useful or pleasant. Take, for instance, a 
mortgage of a thousand pounds on a landed estate. This is 
wealth to the person to whom it brings in a revenue, and who 
■could perhaps sell it in the market for the full amount of the 
debt. But it is not wealth to the country. If the engagement 
were annulled, the country would be neither poorer nor richer. 
The mortgagee would have lost a thousand pounds, and the 
owner of the land would have gained it. Speaking nationally, 
the mortgage was not itself wealth, but merely gave A. a 
claim to a portion of the wealth of B. It was wealth to A., 
and wealth which he could transfer to a third person ; but what 
he so transferred was, in fact, a joint ownership to the extent 
of a thousand pounds in the land of which B. was nominally 
the sole proprietor. The position of fund-holders of the public 
debt of a country is similar. They are mortgagees on the 
general wealth of the country. The cancelling of the debt 
would be no destruction of wealth, but a transfer of it; a