ttitude, he
finally, on the 20th of December 1886, wrote a letter in which, with a
single skilful turn of his wrist, he took out the core of Henry George's
doctrine as to land, which really is the core also of the Irish Plan of
Campaign, and thus laid it before the Archbishop of New York:--

"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.