Page:James Ramsay MacDonald - The Socialist Movement.pdf/64

something which neither his labour nor his skill created; if it goes to the farmer on the long-cultivated fields, he is receiving a benefit which he has not earned. Its origin lies in the nature of things; even when it arises in consequence of the expenditure of capital on, say, a street improvement or on a tram-line, it is much more than interest on capital. When Moses struck the rock, the water that gushed forth and the streams which followed his people through the wilderness in consequence, being far more than the reward of his labour, could not justly be subject to the economic laws of private property. When a London Railway Company laid its lines through Buckingham and opened out wide fields upon which part of the population of London might spread itself, it put fortune after fortune into the pockets of landowners and speculators. That was not done by the expenditure of the Railway Company's capital, because the company might have tunnelled Ben Nevis instead of the Finchley Hills and no new values would have been created. It was caused by the fact that there was a community ready to use the capital in the form of a railway and put itself in the power of the landowners who lay in wait for the exodus beyond Finchley and Harrow. The only just repository for such values is the communal exchequer. They are the natural source from which the cost of government and the development of communal action ought to be met. Every valid reason that can be urged in favour of personal