tax according to ability. It also bears heavily upon the
enterprising young farmer whose capital is small, as compared with the
long-established farmer with accumulated capital. The man weak in capital
would bear as heavy a burden as the strong.

Again, it provides no system of taxation in newly settled communities
where land has practically no value except from improvements. Unless a
fictitious value be given to such land for purposes of taxation, as
sometimes happens with reference to non-resident land-holders, no
government could be maintained.

Finally, since under this system government assumes a control over landed
estates, from which it exempts all other forms of property, it tends
toward the nationalization of land, which would necessarily destroy the
system itself. For if government claims all increment from land
production, land ceases to be property and does not pass from owner to
owner at a market value: then government fixes arbitrarily the rental of
space, and taxation is distributed upon a new principle. If a new
principle were not to be assumed, there could hardly be a device conceived
more likely to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Farmers, of all
men, are best situated to realize the unequal workings of a single land
tax system.

_Government debts._--An important part of government machinery is connected
with its ability to make use of borrowed capital. Under the pressure of
heavy expenditures in case of war, or in undertaking permanent
improvements in a new country, or in carrying on various enterprises for
common welfare, the demand for means is greater than the supply from
ordinary modes of taxation. Not even the special devices of war taxes can
meet at once the burdens of a defensive war. The rightfulness of such
expenditures upon the credit of the government depends upon the object to
be secured. The expense of the war which defends and preserves the future
home of posterity may properly be borne in part, at least, by posterity.
The court house, the water works, or the electric plant, whose benefits
will be shared by the people for a hundred years, may properly be so
constructed that all the people benefited may share in the burden. Good
economy requires the foresight which builds beyond mere present need. The
danger is that expenditure made under expectation that others will pay may
be wasteful, and often other reasons than actual needs in the interest of
private speculation control.