he principles which have hitherto dominated
civilised society.

Even at the risk of that accusation we on this side of the House have
always taken and will always assert an entirely different position in
regard to the taxation of land and of liquor licences from that of the
taxation of other classes of property. The immemorial custom of nearly
every modern State, the mature conclusions of many of the greatest
thinkers, have placed the tenure, transfer, and obligations of land in
a wholly different category from other classes of property. The mere
obvious physical distinction between land, which is a vital necessity
of every human being and which at the same time is strictly limited
in extent, and other property is in itself sufficient to justify a
clear differentiation in its treatment, and in the view taken by the
State of the conditions which should govern the tenure of land from
that which should regulate traffic in other forms of property. When
the right hon. gentleman seeks by comparisons to show that the same
reasoning which has been applied to land ought also in logic and by
every argument of symmetry to be applied to the unearned increment
derived from other processes which are at work in our modern
civilisation, he only shows by each example he takes how different are
the conditions which attach to the possession of land and speculation
in the value of land from those which attach to other forms of
business speculation.

"If," he inquires, "you tax the unearned increment on land, why don't
you tax the unearned increment from a large block of stocks? I buy a
piece of land; the value rises; I buy stocks; their value rises." But
the operations are entirely dissimilar. In the first speculation the
unearned increment derived from land arises from a wholly sterile
process, from the mere withholding of a commodity which is needed by
the community. In the second case, the investor in a block of shares
does not withhold from the community what the community needs. The one
operation is in restraint of trade and in conflict with the general
interest, and the other is part of a natural and healthy process, by
which the economic plant of the world is nourished and from year to
year successfully and notably increased.

Then the right hon. gentleman instanced the case of a new railway and
a country district enriched by that railway. The railway, he
explained, is built to open up a new district; and the farmers and
landown