THE SINGLE TAX 
163 
that the burden of a land tax cannot be made to survive 
a change of ownership has in turn this corollary of its 
own, viz., that a new tax burden if imposed to-day 
would in one generation, by sale or by inheritance, 
cease to be a burden. If all taxes are finally collected 
from the landowner, he will then be the only man 
taxed. If another generation serves to let his successor 
out from under the burden, who will remain under it? 
Ground rent, economic rent, being an equivalent for 
value received, is not a burden, and if all taxes are 
ultimately taken from rent, it follows that in the course 
of two or three generations taxation may cease entirely 
from being a burden upon any one. 
If professional economists and taxation experts 
will at once, to use a nautical phrase, quit their dead 
reckoning and steer their craft by the single tax pole- 
star, time and tide will do the rest.