It defines also the real issue of to-day between the Church speaking through the Papal Decree of April 20, 1888, and the National League of Ireland acting through the "Plan of Campaign." No heed having been paid by Dr.M'Glynn to several successive intimations summoning him to go to Rome and explain his attitude, he finally, on the 20th of December 1886, wrote a letter in which, with a single skilful turn of his wrist, he took out the core of Henry George's doctrine as to land, which really is the core also of the Irish Plan of Campaign, and thus laid it before the Archbishop of New York:-- "My doctrine about land has been made clear in speeches, in reports of interviews, and in published articles, and I repeat it here.

I have taught, and I shall continue to teach in speeches and writings, as long as I live, that land is rightfully the property of the people in common, and that private ownership of land is against natural justice, no matter by what civil or ecclesiastical laws it may be sanctioned; and I would bring about instantly, if I could, such change of laws all over the world as would confiscate private property in land without one penny of compensation to the miscalled owners." There is no shuffling here.

With logical precision Dr.M'Glynn strips Mr.George's doctrine of its technical disguise as a form of taxation, and presents it to the world as a simple Confiscation of Rents.

Many acute critics of _Progress and Poverty_ have failed to see that when Mr.George calls upon the State to take over to itself, and to its own uses, the whole annual rental value of the bare land of a country, the land, that is, irrespectively of improvements put upon it by man, he proposes not "a single tax upon land" at all, but an actual confiscation of the rental of the land--which for practical purposes is the land--to the uses of the State, without a levy, and without compensation to "the miscalled owners." When a tax is levied, the need by the State levying it of a certain sum of money must first be ascertained by competent authority, legislative or executive, as the case may be, and the law-making power must then, according to a prescribed form, enact that to raise such a sum a certain tax shall be levied on designated property or occupations.

If the exigencies of the State are held to require it, a tax may be levied upon property of more than its value, as in the case, for example, of the customs duty which was imposed in one of our "tariff revisions" upon plate glass imported into the United States by way of "protecting" a single plate-glass factory then existing in the United States.