GROUND RENT A SOCIAL PRODUCT 5 
long run, the State cannot prevent being collected. 
Seldom has there been a more beau 
tiful illustration of the wise yet relentless 
working of natural law than in the proved im 
possibility of justly collecting any tax other than 
upon ground rent. It shows that nature makes 
it impossible to execute justly a statute which 
is in its nature unjust.” This definition of Mr. 
Shearman is offered as one difficult to be improved 
or condensed. 
Such, it may be added, is the nature of rent — 
ground rent — that all the public and private improve 
ments of a community to-day are reflected in the land 
values of that community. Not only this, but the 
value of all those ideal public improvements conceived 
of as being possible under Utopian conditions would 
be similarly absorbed, as it were, in the ground, 
would be reflected in its site value. Stand before a big 
mirror and you will see your image perfectly reflected 
before you. If you are a man scantily, shabbily 
clad, so is the image in the glass. The addition 
of rich and costly attire is imaged in the glass. 
Load yourself with jewels and fill your hands 
with gold: in the mirror, true to nature, is the 
image and likeness of them all. Not more perfectly, 
nor more literally, is your image reflected in the 
mirror than are public improvements reflected in 
the value of the land. 
One peculiarity in the nature of ground rent to which 
we urge your attention is the subtle relation existing 
between this natural income and the artificial outgo 
°f the public taxes — a relation not unlike that of 
cause and effect, by which the wise expenditure of the