Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/230

 214 ESSAYS AND LETTERS

When all the land in the country has been valued in this way, Henry George proposes that a law should be made by which, after a certain date in a certain year, the land should no longer belong to any one individual, but to the whole nation — the whole people ; and that everyone holding land should, therefore, pay to the nation (that is., to the whole people) the yearly value at which it has been assessed. This payment should be used to meet all public or national expenses, and should replace all other rates, taxes, or customs dues.

The result of this would be that a landed proprietor who now holds, say, 2,000 desyatina, might continue to hold them if he liked, but he would have to pay to the treasury — here in the Toula Government, for instance (as his holding would include both meadow- land and homestead)— 12,000 or 15,000 roubles a year; and, as no large land-owners could stand such a pay- ment, they would all abandon their land. But it would mean that a Toula peasant, in the same district, would pay a couple of roubles per desyatina less than he pays now, and could have plenty of available land near by, which he would take up at 5 or 6 roubles per desyatina. Besides, he Avould have no other rates or taxes to pay, and would be able to buy all the things he requires, foreign or Russian, free of duty. In towns, the owners of houses and manufactories might continue to own them, but would have to pay to the

f)ublic treasury the amount of the assessment on their and. Tlie advantages of such an arrangement would be :

1. That no one will be unable to get land for use.

2. That there will be no idle people owning land and making others work for them in return for per- mission to use that land.

3. That the land will be in the possession of those who use it, and not of those who do not use it.

4. That as the land will be available for people who wish to work on it, they will cease to enslave them- selves as hands in factories and works, or as servants in towns, and will settle in the country districts.