THE A B C OF TAXATION 12 that a vacant lot was bought fifty years ago for $i,ooo, which to-day is worth 110,000. The chances are that when the purchaser paid his original 11,000, the people, in one capacity or another, paid for the same year $50 to maintain that purchase value, and that for forty-nine years thereafter the people have paid in annual arithmetical progression up to I500 for the present year. The purchaser paid 11,000 in one payment. The people have paid during the fifty years an average of $250 a year to maintain this value. On the part of the people it has been not unlike a continuous purchase in the proportion of I250 a year of the people’s tax money to $50 a year of the purchaser’s interest money. In addition to whatever income the purchaser has received, he possesses to-day 110,000 worth of land, while the people possess nothing except an outgo of 5 per cent in maintenance, offset in small part by an income of per cent in tax. Such an inheritance would usually be counted worse than nothing. Is it not reasonable that the community should derive profit from its part in this transaction, by appropriat ing to its own use the one-half at least of that ground rent that is manifestly created by the simple expendi ture of its taxes? Why should not taxes, all of which are spent upon the land, be taken from the land?* * E. Benjamin Andrews, formerly President of Brown University, said at Saratoga, N. Y., in 1890: “To turn the golden stream of economic rent partly or mostly into the State’s treasury, where it would relieve the public of taxation in burdensome forms, seems to be extraordinarily desirable. I by no means concur in all the reasons which many assign for this; nor should I expect from it, even if carried to Mr. George’s length, more than half the benefits to society which he antici pates. Still the proposition to lay the main tax on land impresses me as just, safe, accordant with the best canons of public finance, and in fact, every way excellent.”