88

THE  A  B  C  OF  TAXATION

Boston  rate  of  |i6  per  thousand,  from  taxation  upon
the  land  of  any  one  of  the  above  named  ten  cities
or  one  county  of  the  state  for  the  year  1907.
Under  the  single  tax  such  conditions  could  not
prevail.  Prevailing,  as  they  do,  nothing  but  the
private  appropriation  of  a  public  ground  rent  can
perpetuate  them.  Nothing  but  the  taxation  of  ground
rent  can  correct  them.
The  St.  Paul’s  illustration  seems  extreme  on  account
of  the  total  exemption  of  church  property,  but  what
has  been  said  of  it  is  from  two-thirds  to  nine-tenths  true
of  all  vacant  land,  or  of  land  slightly  improved,  as  is  the
case  with  a  large  part  of  the  business  section  of
Boston.
Granting  all  that  St.  Paul’s  may  claim  for  religion
and  sentiment,  we  yet  maintain—and  its  forty-one
proprietors  will  doubtless  admit—that  an  impartial
distribution  of  the  cost  of  religion  and  sentiment  to
the  one  hundred  and  twenty  thousand  families  of
Boston  at  this  rate  of  more  than  $2,000  each,  amounting
to  a  total  of  more  than  $240,000,000  a  year,  would  be
an  undreamed  of  union  of  Church  and  State.
The  object  of  this  illustration  is  not  to  cast  any
invidious  reflection  upon  St.  Paul’s  Church,  but  rather
to  impress  upon  your  minds  the  enormous  dimensions
of  the  reservoir  from  which  the  single  tax  proposes  to
draw  all  public  revenue.
The  proprietors  of  St.  Paul’s  are  a  body  of  Christian
gentlemen  of  discernment  and  philanthropy;  none  are
more  likely  than  they  to  see  the  inconsistency  of  their
situation;  none  more  likely  to  welcome  its  correcting; ­
  none  more  likely  to  see  that  they  will  get  a  full
share  of  betterment  from  a  new  and  improved  order  of