GROUND RENT A SOCIAL PRODUCT 7 
rent, if that ground rent does not return, the body 
politic is prostrated or enervated by loss of blood. The 
body politic to-day, like a man with a ravenous 
appetite, is cleaning its plate of all the millions a year 
that it can earn, and mortgaging the future for nearly 
as much more, always eating, yet always hungry, and 
simply because the best part of its millions of dollars' 
worth of arterial life blood, instead of coming back to 
the public heart, ebbs rapidly away through severed 
blood vessels in the private appropriation of ground 
rent. 
These illustrations of the miscarriage of a bene 
ficent provision seem to hint strongly at the true 
theory of ground rent, as waiting to be naturally 
developed under a natural law, and as a natural 
social product. 
III.—The Operation of Ground Rent 
Critical consideration is invited to Mr. Shearman’s 
statement that the operation of ground rent is to 
exact from every user of land the natural tribute 
which he ought to pay in return for the perpetual 
public and social advantages secured to him by his 
location, a part of which natural tribute now goes 
to the State in the form of a tax, and the remainder 
to the landlord in the form of rent. Objection to 
monopolies and special privileges is that they partici 
pate in the private appropriation of an undue share of 
this natural tribute, and while recognising that in 
the end all quasi-public, as well as all public service, 
should be at the least practicable cost to the people, 
it is held that meantime whatever monopoly is enjoyed 
should be obliged, through taxation, to repay to the