Nevertheless, it is into these incidental intricacies and uncertainties, that Henry George's now famous theory of landed rents and the taxation of them, strikes its roots. Instead of building his structure upon firm and open ground, so that thoughtful men can see that his basis is solid and scientific, Mr. George dashes at once into a thicket and lays his foundations with quickness and assurance where all is dark and doubtful, or at best where all is rather incidental than fundamental and demonstrable, and pretty soon displays a superstructure that appears attractive both without and within, through whose airy halls he knows how to conduct to their delight the credulous and discontented, and on whose walls hang plausible pictures calculated to invite and hold the attention of the masses. Let the perfect integrity and rhetorical ability of Mr. George be freely conceded; let it be freely conceded also, that he teaches in his books and lectures a great deal of vastly important industrial truth in a popular way so as to accomplish great good, such, for example, as the imperative need of greater simplicity in taxation, and the indisputable right of the people to their liberty in buying and selling; yet it must at the same time be owned, that he has never yet found out exactly what _Value_ is in general, consequently what are the causes of value in lands, and what are the nature and grounds of Rent. Something more of patient and radical analysis at the outset, and of logical and scientific unfolding afterwards, would have made Henry George one of the chief benefactors of his age.