Page:The Complete Works of Henry George Volume 3.djvu/173

 THE "REDUCTION TO INIQUITY." 55

must see that the iniquity is not in abolishing an institu- tion which permits one man to plunder others, but in con- tinuing it. He must see that any claim of landowners to compensation is not a claim to payment for what they have previously taken, but to payment for what they might yet take, precisely as would be the claim of the slaveholder the true character of which appears in the fact that he would demand more compensation for a strong slave, out of whom he might yet get much work, than for a decrepit one, out of whom he had already forced nearly all the labor 'he could yield.

In assuming that denial of the justice of property in land is the prelude to an attack upon all rights of property, the Duke ignores the essential distinction between land and things rightfully property. The things which con- stitute wealth, or capital (which is wealth used in produc- tion), and to which the right of property justly attaches, are produced by human exertion. Their substance is matter, which existed before man, and which man can neither create nor destroy ; but their essence that which gives them the character of wealth is labor impressed upon or modifying the conditions of matter. Their exis- tence is due to the physical exertion of man, and, like his physical frame, they tend constantly to return again to Nature's reservoirs of matter and force. Land, on the contrary, is that part of the external universe on which and from which alone man can live; that reservoir of matter and force on which he must draw for all his needs. Its existence is not due to man, but is referable only to that Power from which man himself proceeds. It con- tinues while he comes and goes, and will continue, so far as we can see, after he and his works shall disappear. Both species of things have value, but the value of the one species depends upon the amount of labor required for their production; the value of the other upon the

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