for high gifts and special aptitudes
displayed or for faithful labour done, then property will be honoured.
When it is associated with processes which are beneficial, or which at
the worst are not actually injurious to the commonwealth, then
property will be unmolested; but when it is associated with ideas of
wrong and of unfairness, with processes of restriction and monopoly,
and other forms of injury to the community, then I think that you will
find that property will be assailed and will be endangered.

A year ago I was fighting an election in Dundee. In the course of that
election I attempted to draw a fundamental distinction between the
principles of Liberalism and of Socialism, and I said "Socialism
attacks capital; Liberalism attacks monopoly." And it is from that
fundamental distinction that I come directly to the land proposals of
the present Budget.

It is quite true that the land monopoly is not the only monopoly which
exists, but it is by far the greatest of monopolies; it is a perpetual
monopoly, and it is the mother of all other forms of monopoly. It is
quite true that unearned increments in land are not the only form of
unearned or undeserved profit which individuals are able to secure;
but it is the principal form of unearned increment, derived from
processes, which are not merely not beneficial, but which are
positively detrimental to the general public. Land, which is a
necessity of human existence, which is the original source of all
wealth, which is strictly limited in extent, which is fixed in
geographical position--land, I say, differs from all other forms of
property in these primary and fundamental conditions.

Nothing is more amusing than to watch the efforts of our monopolist
opponents to prove that other forms of property and increment are
exactly the same and are similar in all respects to the unearned
increment in land. They talk to us of the increased profits of a
doctor or a lawyer from the growth of population in the towns in which
they live. They talk to us of the profits of a railway through a
greater degree of wealth and activity in the districts through which
it runs. They tell us of the profits which are derived from a rise in
stocks and shares, and even of those which are sometimes derived from
the sale of pictures and works of art, and they ask us--as if it were
their only complaint--"Ought not all these other forms to be taxed
too?"

But see how misleading and false all these