9 8 
THE ABCOF TAXATION 
created by those tributary surroundings which are 
provided through taxation, and hence such value is 
largely the product of the labour of the community as 
represented in its public, quasi-public, and private 
outlays. A man who owns land owns the soil, which 
of itself has little or no value, and he owns every right 
and privilege, fee, title, etc., pertaining to the land 
from zenith to earth’s centre, exclusive and absolute 
as against any other individual, but qualified and 
conditional as against the community. 
Private ownership of land may be defined as the 
proprietorship of the rights and privileges pertaining 
to the situation. It extends to the exclusion of all 
other persons (person being limited in law to “ an 
individual, or a body corporate, other than the State”), 
but is subject always to the claims of the community 
to its share in the value of those rights and privileges, 
so far as that value is a social product, this claim to 
be asserted and maintained by means of the sovereign 
power of taxation. 
Property in land, ownership of land, in law, means 
tenure, holding, right of possession (subject to the 
sovereign right of taxation) and no more. The owner 
can have no more enjoyment of these rights than can 
the possessor as defined by Henry George. Either 
must have an exclusive enjoyment (proprietorship) 
in the benefits of which no one else can claim a share 
except through the agency of taxation. The rights of 
the public are the same under either definition. 
If, under the single tax, land owners should be 
allowed to retain a small percentage of rent, there is 
no moral difference whether such privilege attach to 
their ownership or to their possession. In either case