The practical answer to the “George” or “taxing-out scheme” is that it is not possible to separate the value of the land from the value of the improvements on it. Anything which mankind has added to the natural land is capital and should, according to the George view, be inviolate. In proposing, as “the George scheme” does, only to allow for “the value of the clearly distinguishable improvements made within a moderate time,” capital is being confiscated. That is, something is being confiscated which was not stolen. If one form of capital may be confiscated, why not all forms? The Land Nationalization Society has formulated many objections to the “George” or “taxing-out scheme” apart from its injustice. They say it would be an interminable process, that it would not be effective—witness the failure of the heavy land taxation in Canada, New Zealand or Australia, to cheapen land or eliminate landlords—that the public would not accept it. So many persons are owners of small pieces of land, it would tend to increase the number of landlords instead of reducing them. The way in which the advocates of State purchase try to make out their case is very simple, and they do it with great ingenuity. They first endeavour to prove their basic axiom of “the right to live” by appeal to the great English common lawyers, writers on Sociology and authorities on Political Economy. Having done that to their own satisfaction, they proceed to give at length illustrations of alleged despotic and churlish action on the part of landowners. The favourites are the Highland Clearances and landlordism in Ireland. Then in the same vein they bring forward a great collection of cases of alleged refusal of land by landowners for works of public importance, or exaction by landowners of what is said to be (without any evidence) a wholly unreasonable price for land for public purposes (see, for instance, Chapter V, “The Extortion of High Prices for Land” in _The Case for Land Nationalization_, by Joseph Hyder, Simpkin, Marshall & Co.). All these evils are said to be directly due to private ownership in land. These cases, if they ever existed, are amply remedied by recent Acts facilitating the acquisition of land.[7] Having got so far, every hardship or evil to which a farmer or agricultural labourer is subject is likewise under the same chain of reasoning ascribed (without proof) to private ownership in land. If, therefore, the basic axiom is to be vindicated, private ownership must be done away with. There is no logic in such reasoning, even assuming that the basic axiom in its widest extension is sound—as a matter of fact it is not. All these illustrations show is that the present land system may, in certain respects, require reform, not that it ought to be abolished. The argument makes out no case for the complete eradication of the whole landlord system, still less for State purchase. The fallacy lies in the