and it becomes more secure year by year because it is gradually being more widely distributed.  The vital processes of civilisation require, and the combined interests of millions guarantee, the security of property.  A society in which property was insecure would speedily degenerate into barbarism; a society in which property was absolutely secure, irrespective of all conceptions of justice in regard to the manner of its acquisition, would degenerate, not to barbarism, but death.  No one claims that a Government should from time to time, according to its conceptions of justice, attempt fundamentally to recast the bases on which property is erected.  The process must be a gradual one; must be a social and a moral process, working steadily in the mind and in the body of the community; but we contend, when new burdens have to be apportioned, when new revenues have to be procured, when the necessary upkeep of the State requires further taxes to be imposed—­we contend that, in distributing the new burdens, a Government should have regard first of all to ability to pay and, secondly, that they should have regard to some extent, and so far as is practicable, to the means and the process by which different forms of wealth have been acquired; and that they should make a sensible difference between wealth which is the fruit of productive enterprise and industry or of individual skill, and wealth which represents the capture by individuals of socially created values.  We say that ought to be taken into consideration.  We are taking it into consideration now by the difference we have made in the income-tax between earned and unearned incomes, by the difference we make between the taxation which is imposed upon a fortune which a man makes himself and the fortune which he obtains from a relative or a stranger.  We are taking it into consideration in our tax on mining royalties, in our licence duties and in our taxes on the unearned increment in land.  The State, we contend, has a special claim upon the monopoly value of the liquor licence, which the State itself has created, and which the State 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.