Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/442

418 it should be spread and explained precisely as you are doing, in which work I sympathize with you with all my heart, and wish you success.

scheme of Henry George is as follows: The advantage and profit from the use of land is not everywhere the same; since the more fertile, convenient portions, adjoining populous districts, will always attract many who wish to possess them; and in proportion as these portions are better and more suitable they ought to be appraised more highly: the better, dearer; the worse, cheaper; the worst, cheapest of all.

So that the land which attracts but few should not be appraised at all, but left without payment to those who are willing to cultivate it by their own manual labor. According to such a valuation, good plowland in the government of Tula, for example, would be valued at about five or six rubles the desyatin; market garden land near villages at ten rubles; the same, but watered by spring floods, fifteen rubles, and so on. In towns the valuation would be from one hundred to five hundred rubles the desyatin; and in Moscow and Petersburg, in go-ahead places, and about the harbors of navigable rivers, several thousands or tens of thousands of rubles the desyatin.

When all the land in the country has been thus appraised, Henry George proposes to pass a law declaring that all the land, from such a year and date, shall belong no longer to any separate individual, but to the whole country, to the whole nation; and that thereafter every one who possesses land must pay to the State, that is, to the whole nation, the rent at which it has been appraised.

This payment must be expended on all the public needs of the State, so that it will take the place of every