e itself maintains from year to year by its sole authority. If
that claim has not previously been made good, that is only because the
liquor interest have had the power, by using one branch of the
Legislature, to keep the nation out of its rights. All the more reason
to make our claim good now.

Again we say that the unearned increment in land is reaped in
proportion to the disservice done to the community, is a mere toll
levied upon the community, is an actual burden and imposition upon
them, and an appropriation by an individual, under existing law, no
doubt, of socially created wealth. For the principle of a special
charge being levied on this class of wealth we can cite economic
authority as high us Adam Smith, and political authority as
respectable as Lord Rosebery; and for its application we need not
merely cite authority, but we can point to the successful practice of
great civilised neighbouring States.

Is it really the contention of the Conservative Party that the State
is bound to view all processes of wealth-getting with an equal eye,
provided they do not come under the criminal codes? Is that their
contention? Are we really to be bound to impose the same burden upon
the hardly won income of the professional man and the extraordinary
profits of the land monopolist? Are we really to recognise the liquor
licence which the State created, which the law says is for one year
only--as if it were as much the brewers' or the publicans' property
_for ever_ as the coat on his back? No; it is absurd. Of the waste and
sorrow and ruin which are caused by the liquor traffic, of the injury
to national health and national wealth which follows from it, which
attends its ill-omened footsteps, I say nothing more in my argument
this afternoon. The State is entitled to reclaim its own, and they
shall at least render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's.

The money must be found, and we hold that Parliament, in imposing the
inevitable taxes, is entitled not only to lay a heavier proportionate
burden upon the rich than on the poor, but also to lay a special
burden upon certain forms of wealth which are clearly social in their
origin, and have not at any point been derived from a useful or
productive process on the part of their possessors. But it may be
said, "Your plans include other expenditure besides the Navy and
Old-age Pensions. What about Insurance, Labour Exchanges, and economic
development?" Those objects, at least