Chapter VII 
PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND 
“The primary error of the advocates of land nationalisation 
is in their confusion of equal rights with joint rights. . . In 
truth the right to the use opland is not a joint or common right, 
but an equal right; the joint or common right is to rent.” 
—Henry George. 
M OSES and Isaiah and Herbert Spencer made their 
ages resound with the thunders of the moral 
law on the land question, and yet a groping world had 
to wait for Henry George to devise a modus operandi, 
and so 
Make channels for the streams of love 
Where they may broadly run. 
Asserting “the equal right of all men to the use of 
the earth,” Herbert Spencer declared that “equity 
does not permit property in land.” But, failing to 
see any alternative other than “nationalisation of 
the land,” which was abhorrent to his philosophy, 
he later, while disavowing none of his former principles, 
proclaimed his intellectual despair and unconditional 
surrender in these words: 
I cannot see my way toward reconciliation of the ethical 
requirements with the politico-economical requirements. . . . 
The belief that land would be better managed by public officials 
than it is by private owners is a very wild belief.* 
* Letter to the London Times, November 6, 1889. See Henry George’s 
“Perplexed Philosopher” (Doubleday, Page & Co., 1906), p. 77. 
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