A 
ETHICS OF THE SINGLE TAX, ITS BREADTH AND CATHOLICITY* 
The appeal to reason contained in the doctrine of Henry 
George, whether as a moral philosophy, or as a system of tax 
ation, is as universal as is the natural tax (ground rent), which 
has been in automatic and irresistible operation for centuries, 
in every civilised country under the sun. A response to this 
universal appeal only awaits the precipitation of a mass of 
relative ignorance and error now held in solution in the public 
mind regarding the author and his doctrine. 
This single tax of Henry George is broad and catholic like 
the air, the sunshine, and all other bounties that heaven 
sends alike upon the just and the unjust. It knows no dis 
tinction of race, denomination, party, sect, or creed. It 
knows no socialism, individualism, communism, anarchism, 
Greek, barbarian, bond, or free. The land question is under 
all these. Where it leaves off, these begin. A single taxer may 
be any of these. All of these should be single taxers. 
There is in the single tax, or natural taxation, nothing of 
technical socialism, which means the assumption by society 
of functions that are primarily individual. It is rather a 
re-socialisation of that which by its own nature, in Its incep 
tion and in its growth, can be nothing but socialised, but which 
has been artificially de-socialised. There is in natural tax 
ation no communism, if by communism is meant the com 
pulsory pooling of the products of human labour. Such 
taxation is, however, the divine communism of the common 
enjoyment of a natural bounty bestowed upon all in common. 
There is in natural taxation no taint of the anarchism of dis 
order. It is the recognition of the ideal anarchism of law, so 
perfect, self-adjusting, self-operating, that no external force 
is needed to carry it into execution. 
♦Published in the Arena of January, 1899. 
167