The Natural Plan

Clyde W. Silvernale

[Reprinted from Land & Liberty, September 1939]

"A man who limits his observation of life to the sphere in which there is no freedom - to the sphere of effects - does not live a true life. He only lives a true life who has transferred his life to the sphere in which freedom lies - into the domain of first causes." So said Leo Tolstoy in The Kingdom of God is Within You.

The domain of first causes, sources, the people and the earth, just you and the land - in nature there simply isn't anything else. That is what Henry George saw so clearly; that is what Henry George based all of his writings on.

How easy it is for anyone to observe effects and foster plans to deal with them, though all such activities merely conceal that which should remain exposed.

To trace effects back to first causes and deal with those causes, to analyze the maladjustments to be found at sources and formulate a scientific remedy, a remedy based on natural law, was the work and result of the life of Henry George.

Henry George saw that a natural relationship between the people as a whole and the land must be established, in order to eliminate injustice and parasitism. He saw that speculation in and capitalization of land and the taxation of production, exchange and consumption of the people produced the ill effects so evident in his time. Are they not even more evident in our time? Progress has deepened the poverty it should have abolished.

Henry George's great bequest to mankind was his clear explanation of the natural plan to return to natural order by abolishing all taxes on production, exchange and consumption, and collecting natural ground rent into public treasuries.

Injustice, poverty, parasitism and wars are inevitable until this proposal is adopted. In the meantime unnatural and arbitrary political systems such as Communism, Fascism and Naziism will be attempted with years of turmoil and oppression. Are not most of the nations in the midst of it at this very moment?

Henry George's life was spent in the sphere in which freedom lies - in the domain of first causes. Henry George lived a true life.