Note 1208 — Chapter II · : THE THEORY OF RENT AND ITS APPLICATIONS

For the distinction between the legality of movable and immovable property see Mill, Principles, Book II, chap. 2, § 1, and Henry George, Progress and Poverty, Book VII, chap. 1. “The institution of private property,” says Mill in the above passage, “when limited to its essential elements, consists in the recognition, in each person, of a right to the exclusive disposal of what he or she have produced by their own efforts, or received either by gift or by fair agreement without force or fraud from those who produced it.” Such a definition at least implies that landed property is illegal. A house is distinguished from the land upon which it is built; whereas the former is legally held the latter is not.