Your Holiness will see from the explanation I have given that the
reform we propose, like all true reforms, has both an ethical and an economic
side. By ignoring the ethical side, and pushing our proposal merely as
a reform of taxation, we could avoid the objections that arise from confounding
ownership with possession and attributing to private property in land that
security of use and improvement that can be had even better without it. All that we seek practically is the legal abolition, as fast as possible,
of taxes on the products and processes of labor, and the consequent concentration
of taxation 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. ... read
the whole letter