“My doctrine about land has been made clear in speeches, in reports of interviews, and in published articles, and I repeat it here.  I have taught, and I shall continue to teach in speeches and writings, as long as I live, that land is rightfully the property of the people in common, and that private ownership of land is against natural justice, no matter by what civil or ecclesiastical laws it may be sanctioned; and I would bring about instantly, if I could, such change of laws all over the world as would confiscate private property in land without one penny of compensation to the miscalled owners.”

There is no shuffling here.  With logical precision Dr. M’Glynn strips Mr. George’s doctrine of its technical disguise as a form of taxation, and presents it to the world as a simple Confiscation of Rents.  Many acute critics of Progress and Poverty have failed to see that when Mr. George calls upon the State to take over to itself, and to its own uses, the whole annual rental value of the bare land of a country, the land, that is, irrespectively of improvements put upon it by man, he proposes not “a single tax upon land” at all, but an actual confiscation of the rental of the land—­which for practical purposes is the land—­to the uses of the State, without a levy, and without compensation to “the miscalled owners.”

When a tax is levied, the need by the State levying it of a certain sum of money must first be ascertained by competent authority, legislative or executive, as the case may be, and the law-making power must then, according to a prescribed form, enact that to raise such a sum a certain tax shall be levied on designated property or occupations.  If the exigencies of the State are held to require it, a tax may be levied upon property of more than its value, as in the case, for example, of the customs duty which was imposed in one of our “tariff revisions” upon plate glass imported into the United States by way of “protecting” a single plate-glass factory then existing in the United States.  This was an abominable abuse of a constitutional power, but it was not “confiscation.”  What Henry George proposes is confiscation, as Dr. M’Glynn plainly sees and courageously says.  What he proposes is that the State shall compel the annual rental value of all land to be paid into the public treasury, without regard to the question whether the State does or does not need such a sum of money.  That is confiscation pure and simple, the State, in the assumed interest of the State, proceeding against the private owners of land, or the “miscalled owners,” to use Dr. M’Glynn’s significant phrase, precisely as under the feudal system the State proceeded against the private property of rebels and traitors.  No good reason can be shown why the process should not be applied to personalty and to debts as well as to land.