22 THE CONDITION OF LABOR.
on land values irrespective of improvements. To put our proposals in this way would be to urge them merely as a matter of wise public expediency.
There are indeed many single-tax men who do put our proposals in this way; who seeing the beauty of our plan from a fiscal standpoint do not concern themselves further. But to those who think as I do, the ethical is the more important side. Not only do we not wish to evade the question of private property in land, but to us it seems that the beneficent and far-reaching revolution we aim at is too great a thing to be accomplished by " intelligent self-interest," and can be carried by nothing less than the religious conscience.
Hence we earnestly seek the judgment of religion. This is the tribunal of which your Holiness as the head of the largest body of Christians is the most august representative.
It therefore behooves us to examine the reasons you urge in support of private property in land if they be sound to accept them, and if they be not sound respect- fully to point out to you wherein is their error.
To your proposition that "Our first and most funda- mental principle when we undertake to alleviate the con- dition of the masses must be the inviolability of private property" we would joyfully agree if we could only understand you to have in mind the moral element, and to mean rightful private property, as when you speak of marriage as ordained by God's authority we may understand an implied exclusion of improper marriages. Unfortunately, however, other expressions show that you mean private property in general and have expressly in mind private property in land. This confusion of thought, this non-distribution of terms, runs through your whole argument, leading you to conclusions so unwarranted by your premises as to be utterly repugnant
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