the taxes which their competitors evade, can not do business as cheaply or command as large a business. There are no such temptations to fraud or deceit connected with the land tax.

By interesting the tax payers in the economical administration of government, the land. tax will purify government. Those who pay the indirect taxes to the government are often opposed to their abolition. They diminish competition. The importer or the manufacturer makes a profit on them. No profit can be made on the land tax. No competition is avoided. It comes solely from the pocket of the land-owner. He will enquire earnestly into its necessity. He will object to paying more than is absolutely required. The landowners are in almost every country, and certainly in ours, the most influential class in the community. When their self-interest is bound up with an honest and economical administration, we may expect governmental purity.

Nature does more for the land-owner than it does for the laborer or the capitalist. She is good to all. She ripens the farmer's grain. She fattens his cattle. She turns, through steam, the manufacturer's wheels. In a thou

sand ways she helps all.

she helps all. But she is more generous to land. While labor grows old and feeble, land lying idle improves. While houses fall into ruins and wealth decays, the fertility of the soil increases. To whom much is given of them should much be required.

Society also does more for land. It, like nature, helps all, It increases the efficiency and the rewards of labor. It protects from robbery the wealth of the capitalist. It increases both wages and interest. But it increases rent

and the value of land more regularly and more persistently. Wages have unearned increments, as we have seen, and interest also has unearned increments; but the unearned increments of land value are more regular and persistent. Every new-born infant, every immigrant, every invention, every improvement in industry, every reform in government, every railroad, adds to the value of land. Where society gives much she may ask much.

The land is a gift, wealth is earned. Surely what is freely given ought to taxed, rather than what is earned. The land is God's, and the magistrates are his ministers; and it is proper that his servants should be paid out

of his estates, So were the Levites, who were the public servants of Israel, paid by the Lord's tithes. The land belongs to God, and paupers are the Lord's poor; should not his bounty supply their wants? The teachings of natural religion are plain. The land is never sick and never weary; can not childhood and womanhood be spared the burdens which the land is so well able to bear? Why should the text-books of the children, the tools of the workman, the medicines of the sick and the coffins of the dead, be made more expensive by indirect taxation or by the direct taxation of factories and machinery, in order that the owning of land may be made more profitable? Is this just, or right, or wise? Modern statecraft places the burdens of society on labor to relieve land. Moses makes land peculiarly subject to them. Perhaps the cause of the difference is that our laws have been influenced by the covetousness of man, while the Mosaic code was inspired by the wisdom, justice and goodness of the Creator.

CHAPTER IX.

THE LAW OF THE TITHE.

The New and True Social Science-The Law of the TitheThe Language of a Proprietor-Addressed to IndividualsMan's Title to Land is Conditional-Religious Wants of Humanity-The Tithe, therefore, Primeval-Founded on the Creation-The Analogy of the Sabbath-The State can not Enforce it. Note on the Poor Laws-The Glory and Shame of the Church-Will Always be Poverty-Justice Trying to Show Mercy-The Function of the Church is Mercy-An Argument for the Tithe.

The coming generation will build a truer and wider political economy and enact wiser and more just legislation about land. This better science and legislation will be founded on the principles of natural religion and justice which we have found in the Word of God. The first of these is that the land belongs to God. The second is that he gives land to men. And the third is that he grants land conditionally for the support of the race, for the supply of human wants. These principles are illustrated by the law of the tithe.

This law is first explicitly stated in Leviticus 27: 30, in the following words:

"And all the tithe of the land whether of the seed of the land or of the fruit of the tree, is the Lord's; it is holy unto the Lord."

As a moral or religious enactment the tithe does not fall into the plan of our discussion. Of the advantages that come of tithing to the one who tithes we say nothing. The paying of tithes does undoubtedly increase the faith and love of the one who pays them; but this branch of the subject we leave to those writing about the gospel. Our topic is the truths about land taught by natural religion,, reason and justice which are clearly exhibited in the Word of God. Because the tithe illustrates these truths we treat of it.

The law quoted above is the language of a proprietor. It is a landlord who is speaking. As a farmer renting his land might say to his tenant: "The fourth of the grain and the "third of the fruit shall be mine." So the Creator declares: "All the tithe of the land, "whether of the seed of the land or of the "fruit of the tree is the Lord's." The tithe is founded on God's ownership of the land. Because the land is his, the tithe is his. His