46

THE  A  B  C  OF  TAXATION

“But  whatever  may  be  thought  of  the  legitimacy  of  making
the  State  a  sharer  in  all  future  increase  of  rent  from  natural
causes,  the  existing  land  tax  (which  in  this  country-[England]
unfortunately  is  very  small)  ought  not  to  be  regarded  as  a  tax,
but  as  a  rent-charge  in  favour  of  the  public;  a  portion  of  the
rent,  reserved  from  the  beginning  by  the  State,  which  has  never
belonged  to  or  formed  part  of  the  income  of  the  landlords,  and
should  not,  therefore,  be  counted  to  them  as  part  of  their  taxation,
so  as  to  exempt  them  from  their  fair  share  of  every  other  tax.
As  well  might  the  title  be  regarded  as  a  tax  on  the  landlords;
as  well,  in  Bengal,  where  the  State,  though  entitled  to  the  whole
rent  of  the  land,  gave  away  one-tenth  of  it  to  individuals,  retaining ­
  the  other  nine-tenths,  might  those  nine-tenths  be  considered
as  an  unequal  and  unjust  tax  on  the  grantees  of  the  tenth.  That
a  person  owns  part  of  the  rent  does  not  make  the  rest  of  it  his
just  right,  injuriously  withheld  from  him.  The  landlords
originally  held  their  estates  subject  to  feudal  burdens,  for  which
the  present  land  tax  is  an  exceedingly  small  equivalent,  and  for
their  relief  from  which  they  should  have  been  required  to  pay  a
much  higher  price.  All  who  have  bought  land  since  the  tax
existed  have  bought  it  subject  to  the  tax.  There  is  not  the
smallest  pretence  for  looking  upon  it  as  a  payment  exacted  from
the  existing  race  of  landlords.
“These  observations  are  applicable  to  a  land  tax  only  in  so
far  as  it  is  a  peculiar  tax  and  not  when  it  is  merely  a  mode  of
levying  from  the  landlords  the  equivalent  of  what  is  taken  from
other  classes.  In  France,  for  example,  there  are  peculiar
taxes  on  other  kinds  of  property  and  income  (the  mohilier  and
the  patente),  and  supposing  the  land  tax  to  be  not  more  than
equivalent  to  these,  there  would  be  no  ground  for  contending
that  the  State  had  reserved  to  itself  a  rent-charge  on  the  land.
But  wherever  and  in  so  far  as  income  derived  from  land  is
prescriptively  subject  to  a  deduction  for  public  purposes,  beyond
the  rate  of  taxation  levied  on  other  incomes,  the  surplus  is  not
properly  taxation,  but  a  share  of  the  property  in  the  soil,  reserved
by  the  State.  In  this  country  there  are  no  peculiar  taxes  on  other