THE  ABCOF  TAXATION

1*4

With  the  right  to  possess,  “to  buy  and  sell,  bequeath
and  devise  it,”  provided  only  that  equal  rights  shall
be  asserted  and  secured  by  taking  in  the  form  of
taxation  enough  of  the  ground  rent  to  meet  all  public
expenses.  Because  taxes  are  spent  upon  the  land,  we
would  take  them  from  the  land.
The  tendency  to-day  of  this  regulation  by  taxation,
of  trusts,  monopolies,  franchises  and  special  privileges
in  all  its  forms  would,  we  claim,  be  strongly  toward
a  rectification  of  the  admittedly  unjust  distribution,
not  of  present  wealth,  but  of  wealth  hereafter  to  be
produced.
When  all  special  privileges,  including  the  special
privilege  of  private  appropriation  of  ground  rent,  are
abolished  by  exacting  payment  for  the  same  at  their
market  value,  then  taxation,  which  now  so  grievously
aggravates  an  unjust  distribution,  will  be  unnecessary,
and  you  will  have  one  channel  only,  and  that  the  one
proper  channel,  for  the  distribution  of  wealth,  viz.,
wages  proportioned  to  skill  and  industry.
In  all  primitive  societies  the  soil  has  been  held  as
common  property  with  equal  rights  of  the  many  to
natural  opportunities.  To-day  the  land  tenure  pendulum ­
  has  swung  clear  to  the  other  side,  and  in  highly
civilised  society  land  has  come  to  be  held  by  the  few
in  private  ownership  with  its  special  privilege  of  the
private  appropriation  of  ground  rent.  The  single
tax  aim  is  to  bring  the  pendulum  back  into  a  position  of
reconciled  equilibrium,  modern  individual  ownership
by  the  few  brought  into  harmony  with  primitive  common ­
  ownership  by  the  many.  One  reason  why  so
many  men  are  averse  to  conceding  to  the  individual
the  right  of  ownership  in  land  is  that  the  right  has