“The rights of men to the use of land are not joint rights: they are equal rights.”

—  Henry George

Part I : Declaration, Ch. III : "Social Statics" — The Right of Property
A Perplexed Philosopher (1892)
Context: The rights of men to the use of land are not joint rights: they are equal rights.
Were there only one man on earth, he would have a right to the use of the whole earth or any part of the earth.
When there is more than one man on earth, the right to the use of land that any one of them would have, were he alone, is not abrogated: it is only limited. The right of each to the use of land is still a direct, original right, which he holds of himself, and not by the gift or consent of the others; but it has become limited by the similar rights of the others, and is therefore an equal right.

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American economist 1839–1897

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“The primary error of the advocates of land nationalization is in their confusion of equal rights with joint rights, and in their consequent failure to realize the nature and meaning of economic rent… In truth the right to the use of land is not a joint or common right, but an equal right; the joint or common right is to rent, in the economic sense of the term.”

Henry George (1839–1897) American economist

Part III : Recantation, Ch. XI Compensation
A Perplexed Philosopher (1892)
Context: The primary error of the advocates of land nationalization is in their confusion of equal rights with joint rights, and in their consequent failure to realize the nature and meaning of economic rent… In truth the right to the use of land is not a joint or common right, but an equal right; the joint or common right is to rent, in the economic sense of the term. Therefore it is not necessary for the state to take land, it is only necessary for it to take rent. This taking by the commonalty of what is of common right, would of itself secure equality in what is of equal right — for since the holding of land could be profitable only to the user, there would be no inducement for any one to hold land that he could not adequately use, and monopolization being ended no one who wanted to use land would have any difficulty in finding it.

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“The equal right of all men to the use of land is as clear as their equal right to breathe the air — it is a right proclaimed by the fact of their existence. For we cannot suppose that some men have a right to be in this world, and others no right.”

Henry George book Progress and Poverty

Book VII, Ch. 1
Progress and Poverty (1879)

Henry George photo

“Men must have rights before they can have equal rights. Each man has a right to use the world because he is here and wants to use the world. The equality of this right is merely a limitation arising from the presence of others with like rights. Society, in other words, does not grant, and cannot equitably withhold from any individual, the right to the use of land. That right exists before society and independently of society, belonging at birth to each individual, and ceasing only with his death.”

Henry George (1839–1897) American economist

Part I : Declaration, Ch. IV : Mr. Spencer's Confusion as to Rights
A Perplexed Philosopher (1892)
Context: Men must have rights before they can have equal rights. Each man has a right to use the world because he is here and wants to use the world. The equality of this right is merely a limitation arising from the presence of others with like rights. Society, in other words, does not grant, and cannot equitably withhold from any individual, the right to the use of land. That right exists before society and independently of society, belonging at birth to each individual, and ceasing only with his death. Society itself has no original right to the use of land. What right it has with regard to the use of land is simply that which is derived from and is necessary to the determination of the rights of the individuals who compose it. That is to say, the function of society with regard to the use of land only begins where individual rights clash, and is to secure equality between these clashing rights of individuals.

Cecil Rhodes photo

“Equal rights for all civilized men south of the Zambesi.”

Cecil Rhodes (1853–1902) British businessman, mining magnate and politician in South Africa

Gordon Le Sueur, Cecil Rhodes the Man and His Work http://books.google.com/books?id=96AYdAqncoYC&pg=PA76&lpg=PA76&dq=%22equal+rights+for+all+civilized+men%22&source=bl&ots=m1cSqKQE0h&sig=r1b3XeSqYuVKlAfdmkBZ32mP3ps&hl=en&ei=97xgS6r1CJTatgO2u8XGCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CCMQ6AEwCDgK#v=onepage&q=%22equal%20rights%20for%20all%20civilized%20men%22&f=false (2009), pg. 76
Le Sueur states that Rhodes originally said, c. 1893: "Equal rights every white man south of the Zambesi", as reported in the press, and he later "clarified" it.

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“In securing the equal rights of these we shall secure the equal rights of all.”

Henry George (1839–1897) American economist

Source: Social Problems (1883), Ch. 21 : Conclusion
Context: Those who are most to be considered, those for whose help the struggle must be made, if labor is to be enfranchised, and social justice won, are those least able to help or struggle for themselves, those who have no advantage of property or skill or intelligence, — the men and women who are at the very bottom of the social scale. In securing the equal rights of these we shall secure the equal rights of all.
Hence it is, as Mazzini said, that it is around the standard of duty rather than around the standard of self-interest that men must rally to win the rights of man. And herein may we see the deep philosophy of Him who bade men love their neighbors as themselves.
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“How, then, can the rights of three men exceed the rights of two men? In what possible way can the rights of three men absorb the rights of two men, and make them as if they had never existed. Rights are not things which grow by using the multiplication table. here are two men. If there are such things as rights, these two men must evidently start with equal rights. How shall you, then, by multiplying one of the two, even a thousand times over, give him larger rights than the other, since each new unit that appears only brings with him his own rights; or how, by multiplying one of the units up to the point of exhausting the powers of the said multiplication table, shall you take from the other the rights with which he started?”

Auberon Herbert (1838–1906) British politician

The Contemporary Review

Ho Chi Minh photo

“All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness".
This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples on the Earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and to be free.
The Declaration of the French Revolution made in 1791 on the Rights of Man and the Citizen also states: "All men are born free and with equal rights, and must always remain free and have equal rights.”

Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969) Vietnamese communist leader and first president of Vietnam

Those are undeniable truths.
Vietnamese Proclamation of Independence (2 September 1945), Ho Chi Minh, Selected Works (1960-1962), Vol. 3, pp. 17-21

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“The natural equality of all men I believe in, as far as rights are concerned.”

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Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

Article 24
"Declaration of Rights" http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/PShelley/declarat.html (1812)

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“All beings are ends; no creatures are means. All beings have not equal rights, neither have all men; but all have rights.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

The Life Process is the End—not man, nor any other animal temporarily privileged to weave a world's philosophy. Non-human beings were not made for human beings any more than human beings were made for non-human beings. Just as the sidereal spheres were once supposed by the childish mind of man to be unsubstantial satellites of the earth, but are known by man's riper understanding to be worlds with missions and materialities of their own, and of such magnitude and number as to render terrestrial insignificance frightful, so the billions that dwell in the seas, fields, and atmospheres of the earth were in like manner imagined by the illiterate children of the race to be the mere trinkets of men, but are now known by all who can interpret the new revelation to be beings with substantially the same origin, the same natures, structures, and occupations, and the same general rights to life and happiness, as we ourselves.
Source: The Universal Kinship (1906), The Ethical Kinship, "Conclusion", p. 324

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