the land. As population gathers about the house, and other houses are built up, every brick in the first one-yes, and every stroke of labor that went to make the brick, or put it in position-is raised in value. In other words, there is no such thing as value without society-two persons, at least-one who has something that the other wants. In this respect, therefore, a house, and even the labor that builds a house, is precisely like the land under it. Lands, houses, and the labor put upon them, all depend for their value on population, society, the commonwealth. Thus a house would be common property, by the same right as a piece of land, and the fruits of individual labor would be common property as rightfully as either the land or the house. The bounty of nature is a part of every one of them, and all increments of value depend on supply in proportion to population. In short, the natural and moral tenure to land differs in no way from the natural and moral tenure to any other kind of property. In 1882, the wealth of the United States was estimated thus: According to this table, our land value, in this country, is not much more than one-quarter of all values. Yet Mr. George would make this one-quarter of wealth bear all the public burdens of the other three-quarters, in addition to its own. Could a more unjust tax, or a much worse monopoly, be imagined? And now let us find, if we can, what has caused such a startling gap between Mr. George's premises and his conclusions. I believe the explanation is easy. With the world's greatest political economists, and more vividly than all the rest of them, Henry George sees that natural wealth, or rather what Jefferson called the "usufruct" of it, always belongs to mankind as a birthright—to society as a whole. At the same time, he is no socialist, no communist. He sees that individuals are rigidly entitled to the fruits of their labor, their economy, their industry, their capacity. Through his land tax, he honestly and earnestly tries to separate the people's natural share in wealth from the shares of individuals, according to their work. But when land (the bounty of nature) has been taken out of land (the ground) for thousands of years, and transformed into the varied wealth of all civilization, a land tax, in the sense of a mere ground tax, touches only about onequarter of the wealth it ought to reach. Yet Mr. George's" Progress and Poverty" is so superb a work, so persuasively constructed, and so full of great, needed truth, that he has almost overwhelmed the very elect with one of the most glaring and disjointed non-sequiturs that ever broke itself in two with its own logic. But is there no way, then, to separate the value of natural wealth-the people's heritage-from the value of improvements made on it by individuals ?-giving the whole people their due, and rendering also to every individual the exact compensation for his work, his enterprise, his ability and economy? I think there is a clear way to that end, and that the end can be reached by the collection and public use of a proper tax. In fact, I see very clearly that scientific taxation will yet be, not only the cure of economic wrongs and distresses, but the antidote, also, for socialism, communism, and the many economic poisons that are now held up as remedies. In the NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW of July last, I attempted to propound and explain such a tax. Something of the kind will come in due time. But let the public never forget that, if Henry George has made one great logical and prac tical mistake, he has inaugurated the correct tendency of a whole epoch. He has earned all his laurels, and more. III. EDWARD GORDON CLARK. ARE THE HEATHEN OUR INFERIORS ? It is no trouble for Gail Hamilton to make any subject interesting. Whatever she touches emits electric sparks. But even her charming pen rarely flames with such a volume of electric light as she pours into her contribution to the December REVIEW, entitled "Heathendom and Christendom Under Test." What a neat rebuke it is to that monstrosity-that "Frankenstein" of our English and American self-conceit—that we are the only people fit to be glorified, and all other peoples are only fit to be damnified. When young and innocent, I spent a good many years in the study of theology, not with the retainer of any sect in my pocket, and the implied promise never to move out of a given rut, but from the impulsion of intense necessity to know the truth. One conclusion that I came to, as the result of those years, was that there is no shadow of authority in the teachings of Jesus for the vulgar impression that any special division of humanity is God's cohort, or that any other special division has been expropriated of His love and light. Jesus was too busy establishing the general "fatherhood of God," and "brotherhood of man," and in dissecting the Scribes and Pharisees immediately around him, to think of the "Good Samaritan" as a "heathen." The "Son of Man" looked upon all other men as His brothers. Feeling full of God's truth, and believing that He truly represented the Father, Jesus did insist that all men and women must approach God in the spirit of love and self abnegation, of which He felt himself to be the incarnation and example. But that is all an erect, healthy mind can find in His actual inculcations. The rest has come from the cross-eyed, hump-backed, club-footed souls that have looked out at Jesus through their own deformities. The pious mirage that God looks upon one nation of His creatures to bless them, and another to curse them, has risen out of the egotism-the hard, narrow egotism alone-of theological crusaders who mistake themselves for the Good Shepherd's meek and gentle lambs. It has just the same foundation as the puerile exclusiveness which used to prompt the North-End boys of Calvinistic Boston, in the old times, to sling stones at the South-Enders, and which still arrays the children of one block in Brooklyn, "the City of Churches," against the children of the next block. But I wish that Gail Hamilton would go a little farther with her brilliant and caustic analysis. "Mrs. S. L. Baldwin, a missionary of the Methodist Board in China," petitions our United States Congress to let her import a Chinese servant, because Christian servants are so much inferior to the heathen. Gail Hamilton naturally feels that the heathen servants ought not to be damned hereafter, for being better than the Christian servants here. But, looking at matters in her practical way, are the Christian nations of the world, to-day, superior to the heathen nations anyhow, except in force of intellect, enterprise, and wickedness ? "Chinatown," in San Francisco, is commonly depicted as concentrating all the depravity of Joss-house civilization. But is not every vice of Chinatown duplicated, two to one, in New York? In point of actual, not hypocritical morality, for instance, in the ordinary sense, is London better than Constantinople, and is Washington any better than Salt Lake City? Gail Hamilton's analysis and criticism are capable of extension. JOSEPH HEWES. IV. ARTHUR RICHMOND AND THE PRESIDENT. WHILE recognizing the propriety of the REVIEW giving space to personal criticisms upon public characters, I must say that when such essays degenerate into mere vituperative assaults, without justifiable cause, on distinguished public functionaries, I am not only surprised, but somewhat disgusted. Of this sort is the latest letter of Arthur Richmond, where President Cleveland is attacked. It reads as if some one had been employed for this especial service, and found difficulty in getting, I will not say just ground, but recognized ground of attack. There is no justification. Arthur Richmond has discovered what the press of the United States has failed to find. And he must remember that the press is Republican. Time was in the now half-forgotten past when the press lived exclusively upon circulation, and the noble editor tried, then, to please by putting on record the opinions of his subscribers. That day no longer exists. Advertising is the life blood of the press, and the editor edits to please his patrons. They are the business men of the country, and the business men are republicans. Therefore is it that if President Cleveland were open to the strictures indulged in by Arthur Richmond the abuse would find echo throughout the land. This is not the fact, and, therefore, the invectives of this home-made Junius fall harmless. Now, while President Cleveland is not a great man, makes no pretensions to statesmanship, he has won the liking of the masses and conquered the respect of his political enemies by a sturdy, almost obstinate, adhesion to what he holds to be good. He has in healthy operation a brain power that gives the best results of what is known as strong common sense, and his motive power is a conscientious desire to do his duty. He comes nearer to what is known under that thread-bare phrase of a man of the people, than any prominent figure since the days of Andrew Jackson. That he will not enact so brilliant a rôle as did Old Hickory we can well know, because Cleveland has no such party at his back. Our President, indeed, may be said, in this respect, to stand alone. The Democracy did not even elect him, and although half the people of the United States respond to-day to this designation, it is not a party in the sense of that name when President Jackson vetoed the bill perpetuating the United States bank, ruined the depositors and drove nullification into silence by threatening to hang Calhoun. The solid South is solid, not because of its Democracy, but because of its negroes. This mass of brutal ignorance was suddenly lifted into citizenship and made the governing element by republican carpet-baggers and bayonets. It was forced into a deadly antagonism by a sense of self-protection. And so it stands to-day, actually in favor of a personal government that would give heavy appropriations under the flag, with about as much Democracy in it as that possessed by the Czar of Russia. The Ohio Democracy is clamorous for a protection to wool, and Pennsylvania Randallism wants the earth in that direction. The political condition of affairs is enough to make the old leaders in the time of Jackson turn in their graves. President Cleveland then, so far as a party is concerned, stands alone. He cannot even conciliate the leaders of the so-called Democracy, and gratify his followers by giving them freely what they won in the late Presidential election ; and that is the offices. Through a lot of comical statesmanship indulged in by the Hon. George Pendleton, and cunningly carried out by the republicans, the democrats are denied the offices. No man can be turned out except for cause, and no man can be appointed until after a so-called competitive examination that will show, whether the applicant is honest or not, he must be educated. This is hard on our Democracy. To hold President Cleveland responsible, as Arthur Richmond seeks to do, for 110 tical earn sony hard. The Senate is in Randall element in it, is Ta's "erned, the President is ir Richmond's labored sure tred. An honest, un as a clean administra DONN PIATT. EVERYTHING THAT IS NEW *IN SEEDS, RARE *IN** PLANTS, offered and described in our CATALOGUE No. 49, which this year we send out in an uminated cover. The Catalogue is replete with new engravings of the choicest flowers and getables, many of which can only be obtained from us; and contains, besides, 2 beautiful lored plates, and very full instructions on all garden work. Altogether it is the best ever fered by us, and, we believe, is the most complete publication of its kind ever issued. 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