8 4 
THE A B C OF TAXATION 
pays, and must pay, for the use of his land, and no 
constitution or statute, army or navy, can relieve him 
f rom this natural tax. He now pays this ground 
rent, and all other taxes besides. Our desire is to 
turn Ephraim from his petrified idols of taxation until 
he pays no tax except his ground rent, which he must 
pay in any event. 
The inequality in the division of wealth effected 
through special privilege is caused by the failure to 
put a natural tax in the right place, and the subsequent 
aggravation of this unequal division is caused by the 
error of putting artificial taxes in the wrong place. 
The single tax is not a new device with a set of newly 
devised principles peculiar to itseT; it must stand, if 
it stands at all, upon demonstrable scientific principles 
of political economy. These we are seeking to deter 
mine and apply, believing that the operation of such 
principles must bear the fruits by which they may 
be known and justified. 
Other sciences — mathematics, chemistry, physics, 
astronomy — have long been showering the world with 
blessings. Is it not time that economics, the science 
par excellence of the fair distribution of all these 
blessings, should assume its high privilege and preroga 
tive as quartermaster, commissary, and purveyor, 
to govern the issue of all these Aladdin stores? 
In considering the possible ease with which the 
burden of taxation may be made finally to weigh, let 
the fact never be lost sight of that the selling value of 
land will, with the new purchaser, subsequently to the 
imposition of a new tax, slip out from under the burden 
like a globule of mercury from under the thumb. We 
find that the only place where the tax yoke will stay