|
In considering the best means of promoting
the production and distribution of wealth, we are naturally led to consider
the advantages of home markets and manufactures, and how we can best encourage
them without violating the right of free commerce, or putting any unnecessary
tax upon any portion of the community. For this purpose I propose the
Land Tax exclusively, and the repeal of all laws for the collection of
debts contracted after the passage of the repal.
Mr. Cobb says,
in his report as Secretary of the Treasury, for 1857, that the theory
of a protective tariff is, that it must be high enough to prevent importation
or diminish it, or the home manufacturer will not be benefited; and if
I the tariff is high enough to exclude foreign imports, then we get no
revenue, but every dollar Which the manufacturer gains the consumer loses,
and as the consumer must ~ay more for his goods he must buy less. But the
remedy which I he proposes is, what he calls a remunerative tariff, so that
while the consumer buys his goods cheap, he at the same I time pays the expenses
of Government. Now I think I can show a much clearer case with the land
tax for revenue than any remunerative or protective tariff whatever; for,
while all the taxes are on the land, not only does the land tax defray all
the cost of government, and diminish the cost of government, but the land
sells for the lowest price also, instead of the highest, thus keeping the
land Within the means of all, or at least he great majority of the people;
so that we can have the greatest number of land owning producers of food,
who having no rent to pay, can supply us with cheaper food minus the rent,
or divide what was hitherto paid in rent between the producer and the consumer.
And with land at the lowest price. rents would be the lowest also, and ultimately
cease; so that the rent hitherto paid by mechanics, labourers, merchants,
and manufacturers, would then be divided between the maker, the seller,
and the consumer.
For, with all
the taxes on the land, it would not pay to keep it idle, therefore speculation
in land would soon cease and be transferred to untaxed manufactures or
labour, which would increase the demand and raise the wages of labour and
reduce the profits of capital and speculation; and at the same time we should
create and sustain the most permanent and profitable home market for produce
and manufactures, and settle for ever that oft-mooted question of political
economists, how to realize the utmost economy in the production and distribution
of wealth; and in this way it could be done with the least possible cost
of government and with the protection of free commerce and free land instead
of the violation of both.
Then, when food
becomes cheap in the country, from cheap land and no tax on improvements,
mechanics, manufacturers, and merchants can go Where food is cheapest whenever
it will pay better than having the food transported to them, as they will
then have the increased means, which were hitherto paid in rents, with
which to ravel. And when farmers desire to settle near factories for the
benefit of market and exchange, they may be sure the land will never be
high nor manufactures either; because the tax is on the land, and not on
the manufactures, which keeps the landlord's rent, and the speculator's
profit from the land, and the robber tariff from the manufactures also.
But when all
the revenue is raised by a tariff on commerce, the land being comparatively
exempt from taxes, sells for a higher price ; then we have fewer landholding
producers and more land speculators and landlords, and thus the high tariff
on manufactures tends to destroy that very home market which it was intended
to create, by reducing the number of landowning producers, who are inevitably
the best customers of the manufacturers and mechanics, and by which their
means of living is rendered the most certain instead of the most precarious.
So that the tariff, high or low, for protection or revenue, proportionately
diminishes the home market for manufactures, while it robs us of our right
of free commerce, increases vastly the cost of government, and pauperises
and debases the community!
In England the
landowners and farmers claim protection against the cheap food of other
countries to sustain their high rents and high prices of land and food;
there the 25 lords have thousands of acres each in parks, pleasure grounds,
and game preserves, while the landless are comparatively destitute, and their
means of living exceedingly precarious; there land monopoly flourishes amazingly;
there, in 1824, the land tax was only £1,183,00, while the tax on
labour, or its product, was £49,432,000; there the land-monopolists,
the descendants of the Norman pirates, have been the law-makers and tax-makers,
and have for their exclusive interest put nearly all the taxes on labour;
there, for a small commutation, they can now redeem the land from nearly
all the little tax that is left on it forever, if the government of the
landocracy should last so long, and the valuation of the land for the redemption
of the tax is n01: its present valuation, but the small valuation at the
time the law was made. Obedience to wrong is treason to justice and to man.
Land is frequently
advertised for sale in England, "land tax and tithe redeemed,'" for these
tithes are commuted for in the same manner, and there God is still professedly
worshipped by priests sustained by public plunder; there the protection
demanded is more against cheap food than cheap manufactures. What an idea,
protection against cheap food, against the fertility of the earth and the
freedom to eat of it! But what is the remedy? I say put all the taxes on
the land, and repeal your stamp duties, your duties on imports, your inquisitorial
excise laws, your robbing legacy duties, which tax nothing for the inheritance
of land, because the land monopolists made the laws. Put all the taxes on
the land, and then the landlord's rent will pay the cost of government,
and keep the land at the lowest price forever; then cultivation, production,
and plenty, will prevail, and much of the manufactures which you are now
exporting will be needed at home; your home market will be vastly increased,
you will be prosperous and permanent customers to each other, your poor
laws will be diminished, your credit will not be needed; then poverty, beggary,
and a land robbing aristocracy, and a tithe-eating Church and State priesthood
will soon be among the things that were.
Then free trade,
by removing the necessity for standing armies and navies, would open the
reign of peace on earth and good will to all mankind; then arts, industry,
commerce, and morals, would progress with accelerated force; our whole
attention and energies would be devoted to the promotion of human good,
the supplying permanently and bountifully our wants, and elevating our
condition physically, mentally, morally, and socially; all nations would
become as one family, in which a wrong done to one would be resented by
all. The universal brotherhood of man would be realised, and the earth
in its fruitfulness, bloom, and beauty would become the Eden home of the
free, the noble, and the good.
|