IOO 
THE A B C OF TAXATION 
It is sometimes said that if land owners can right 
fully claim ownership they are entitled to all the 
ground rent; that the common right to land and the 
common right to ground rent go together. How can 
this be true, when even under the land tenure of 
to-day, which is that of ownership, no one claims that 
land owners, as, for example, those of the City of Boston, 
are entitled to all the ground rent, but only to that 
part which is not taken in taxation. Their own claim 
falls short of “all” by the $10,000,000 now yielded up 
in taxation. In case the demands of taxation should 
be twice as great, would they be any more than now 
entitled to “all”? It is not easy to see how owner 
ship can carry with it as a necessary consequence the 
private appropriation of ground rent, because, while 
there has never been a denial, there has always been 
a recognition, of the sovereign power and right to tax 
the land. 
Private ownership of land is no injustice to anybody 
to-day, nor has it been at any time. The untaxed 
private ownership of land value as it exists to-day is 
unjust. This does not mean that the ownership is 
unjust, but that not to tax it is unjust. An absolute 
ownership in land, such as Henry George recognises 
in the products of labour, would be unjust, but, says 
Mr. Edward Atkinson, no such “absolute ownership 
of land is recognised in the law books.” Its tenure 
is always subject to taxation, and to the superior right 
of eminent domain. Feudal tenure would seem to 
have been a rude recognition of the principle that the 
beneficiaries of a government should pay the expenses 
of government. 
Henry George said, in 1879, “ Progress and