absolute. Private ownership of land is the nether millstone.
Material progress is the upper millstone. Between them, with an
increasing pressure, the working classes are being ground. Historically,
as ethically, private property in land is robbery. It has everywhere had
its birth in war and conquest, and in the selfish use which the cunning
have made of superstition and law.

_IV.--The Remedy for Social Ills_

Private property in land is inconsistent with the best use of land. What
is necessary for that is security for improvements. Where land is
treated as public property it will be used and improved as soon as there
is need for its use and improvement, but, being treated as private
property, the individual owner is permitted to prevent others from
using, or improving, what he cannot, or will not, use or improve
himself. I do not propose to purchase or to confiscate private property
in land. The first would be needless, the second unjust. It is only
necessary to confiscate rent.

The sovereign remedy which will raise wages, increase the earnings of
capital, extirpate pauperism, abolish poverty, give remunerative
employment to whoever wishes it, afford free scope to human powers,
lessen crime, elevate morals and taste and intelligence, purify
government, and carry civilisation to yet nobler heights, is to
appropriate rent by taxation, and to abolish all taxation save that upon
land values. The great class of taxes from which revenue may be derived
without interference with production are those upon monopolies,
temporary or onerous. But all other monopolies are trivial in extent as
compared with the monopoly of land. Taxes on the value of land not only
do not check production but tend to increase it by destroying
speculative rent.

The whole value of land may be taken in taxation, and the only effect
will be to stimulate industry, to open new opportunities to capital, and
to increase the production of wealth. A tax on land values does not add
to prices, and is thus paid directly by the persons on whom it falls.
Land is not a thing of human production, and taxes upon rent cannot
check supply. On the contrary, by compelling those who hold land on
speculation to sell or let for what they can get, a tax on land values
tends to increase the competition between owners, and thus to reduce the
price of land.

A tax on land values, while the least arbitrary of taxes, possesses in
the highest degree the element of certaint