SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND. 
289 
of rent, and it offered to any landowner, w^ho might prefer to 
relinquish his land, its full selling value. This would still be 
advantageous to the nation, “ since an individual never gives, 
in present money, for a remote profit, anything like what that 
profit is worth to the State, which is immortal.” * Whatever 
may be thought of the practicability of this proposal, it is not 
nearly so open to the charge of injustice as most of the schemes 
of land nationalization which are propounded to-day. All that 
can be said against it is, that unearned increment is not a 
peculiarity of property in land ; it occurs, for instance, in rail- 
' way shares, which often increase in value solely “ through the 
growth of population and wealth.” We hear little, however, 
about this particular proposal to-day, partly because far more 
drastic measures are being pressed upon our attention, and 
partly, perhaps, because agricultural land in England has 
recently been falling in value—receiving, in fact, an unearned 
decrement—and its early recovery is a matter of doubt. 
The publication of “ Progress and Poverty,” early in 1881, 
gave a great impetus to the land nationalization movement. 
Its author, Henry George,f was born at Philadelphia, on the 
2nd of September, 1839, of American parents. His father 
was desirous of giving him a thorough education, but the lad 
was self-willed and preferred to study in his own way. “ They 
teach nothing at the Academy that I don’t know or think I 
know already,” he said, and accordingly he was not sent to 
school after his twelfth year. When he was sixteen he went as 
cabin boy in a sailing-ship to India, because “ he had read so 
much about that unhappy country ” and wished to investigate for 
himself the state of affairs there. For some years he led a roving 
life without any settled employment In 1858 he worked his 
way on a merchant-vessel to San Francisco, and spent the next 
three years in unsuccessful mining enterprises. Finally, in 1861, 
he settled down in San Francisco, where he was successively 
* See J. S. Mill’s papers on Land Tenure in the fourth volume of his 
“Dissertations and Discussions.” 
t I have gleaned most of these biographical facts from a recently 
published sketch of Mr. George’s life by Mr. Henry Rose, editor of the 
//«// Express. 
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