Page:The Complete Works of Henry George Volume 3.djvu/156

 38 PROPERTY IN LAND.

hand, the State did not exempt that increased value from any taxation which might be levied also and equally from all the rest of the community. In this way we reconciled and established two great principles which to short-sighted theorists may seem antagonistic. One of these principles is that it is the interest of every community to give equal and absolute security to every one of its members in his pursuit of wealth ; the other is that when the public inter- ests demand a public revenue all forms of wealth should be equally accessible to taxation.

It would have saved us all, both in London and in Calcutta, much anxious and careful reasoning if we could only have persuaded ourselves that the Government of 1793 could not possibly bind the Government of 1870. It would have given us a still wider margin if we had been able to believe that no faith can be pledged to landowners, and that we had a divine right to seize not only all the wealth of the Zemindars of Bengal, but also all the property derived from, the same source which had grown up since 1793, and has now become distributed and absorbed among a great number of intermediate sharers, standing between the actual cultivator and the representa- tives of those to whom the promise was originally given. But one doctrine has been tenaciously held by the " stupid English people" in the government of their Eastern Empire, and that is, that our honor is the greatest of our possessions, and that absolute trust in that honor is one of the strongest foundations of our power.

In this paper it has not been my aim to argue. A simple record and exposure of a few of the results arrived at by Mr. Henry George, has been all that I intended to accomplish. To see what are the practical consequences of any train of reasoning is so much gained. And there are cases in which this gain is everything. In mathe- matical reasoning the " reduction to absurdity " is one of

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