Note 1192 — Chapter II · : THE THEORY OF RENT AND ITS APPLICATIONS

“The land is the original heritage of the whole human race,” says Mill in his Dissertations and Discussions. In the Principles, Book II, chap. 2, § 5, he expresses his views thus: “The essential principle of property being to assure to all persons what they have produced by their labour and accumulated by their abstinence, this principle cannot apply to what is not the produce of labour, the raw material of the earth.” Walras, in his Théorie de la Propriété, in the Études d’Économie sociale, p. 218, says that the land by a kind of natural right is the property of the State. Henry George, in Progress and Poverty, Book VII, chap. 1, maintains that “the equal right of all men to the use of the land is as clear as their equal right to breathe the air—it is a right proclaimed by the fact of their existence.”