PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND 
97 
sion, ownership, and property, used in describing the 
tenure of land, we find that while they are far from 
synonymous, they yet have much in common, and 
the terms are often used interchangeably. The 
“possession” of the dictionaries does not always 
imply ownership; but possession does imply the same 
physical dominion that belongs of right to ownership 
— which right the legal title to ownership grants and 
conveys. Henry George’s proposal was to leave 
owners in possession of land, and to accord to that 
possession the legal right of physical dominion by 
means of a broad definition of the word, made to 
include the right “to buy and sell, bequeath and 
devise,”* or, in the usual form of the real estate deed, 
“to give, grant, bargain, sell, and convey”—a right 
universally granted to ownership and property. 
A title to land is a title to the rights and privileges 
that constitute its value, and that, largely at least, 
are created by the labour of the community. Title 
to the land itself, whether its value is one dollar or a 
million dollars, is necessary to security of improve 
ments. Title to the annual value of land — ground 
rent — is not necessary to the security of improve 
ments, which would be equally secure whether one- 
quarter or three-quarters of ground rent be taken in 
taxation. The dictionaries do not include land value 
in their definition of land. Land itself, deprived of 
the rights and privileges pertaining thereto — that is, 
land with a ninety-nine years’ restriction of a tight 
and high board fence around it so that there would 
be no legal right of way to and from it — could have 
no market value. The value of land is in large part 
* “ Progress and Poverty” (Doubleday, Page & Company), 1906, p. 403.