OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XHI. . 53
tion be made on the score of morals when it is proposed that the state shall abolish it altogether, but insomuch as it is a violation of natural right, its existence involving a gross injustice on the part of the state, an " impious violation of the benevolent intention of the Creator," it is a moral duty that the state so abolishiljf
So far from there being anything unjust in taking the full value of landownership for the use of the community, the real injustice is in leaving it in private hands an injustice that amounts to robbery and murder.
And when your Holiness shall see this I have no fear that you will listen for one moment to the impudent plea that before the community can take what God intended it to take before men who have been disinherited of their natural rights can be restored to them, the present owners of land shall first be compensated.
For not only will you see that the single tax will directly and largely benefit small landowners, whose interests as laborers and capitalists are much greater than their inter- ests as landowners, and that though the great landowners or rather the propertied class in general among whom the profits of landownership are really divided through mortgages, rent-charges, etc. would relatively lose, they too would be absolute gainers in the increased prosperity and improved morals ; but more quickly, more strongly, more peremptorily than from any calculation of gains or losses would your duty as a man, your faith as a Chris- tian, forbid you to listen for one moment to any such paltering with right and wrong.
Where the state takes some land for public uses it is only just that those whose land is taken should be com- pensated, otherwise some landowners would be treated more harshly than others. But where, by a measure affecting all alike, rent is appropriated for the benefit of all, there can be no claim to compensation. Compensa- tion in such case would be a continuance of the same
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