 Likewise, Spencer’s declining enthusiasm for land nationalization (which Hillel Steiner has recently found so inspiring), coupled with growing doubts that it followed as a corollary from the principle of equal freedom, testify to his waning  radicalism.[20]  According to Spencer in Social Statics, denying every citizen the right to use of the earth equally was a “crime inferior only in wickedness to the crime of taking away their lives or personal liberties” (Spencer: 1970, 182.)  Private land ownership was incompatible with equal freedom because it denied most citizens equal access to the earth’s surface on which faculty exercise and happiness ultimately depended. However, by The Principles of Ethics, Spencer abandoned advocating comprehensive land nationalization, much to Henry George’s ire. George, an American, had previously regarded Spencer as a formidable ally in his crusade to abolish private land tenure.