[1]1
3, Stroud Green Road2
Finsbury Park Buildings
London, N.
May 13th 1884
Dear honoured Sir,
As a feeble token of the admiration I feel for your conduct as Organiser of the Nationalisation of the Land Society3, I beg to send you my book of du Peuple4 where I advocate the same principles.
Mons[?] Eugène Simon5, to whom I communicated your appreciation of his Essay as it appears in Mr Smith's pamphlet, felt gratified by your notification, & I am sure you will feel gratified also in learning that he in common with some friends is about founding for France a Society on the same basis as yours.
[2]6 A same conviction on this all-important subject seems to spread to[?] conquer all serious philosophers & as they will have a host[?] of settled[?] powerful interests to contend with during [1 word illeg.] their long struggle, it is good, I think, that they know a little of each other in every land, & should be enabled to send to one another the warm greetings of a co-religionist[?]
This I do towards you honoured Sir in my name as in the name of the future "Nationalisation of the Land French Society."
Yours very truly | R. Delaune [signature]
P.S.
I have just seen Thomas Spence's Lecture of 17757. Allow me to point to you another 18th century English book whose total or partial reprint would [1 word illeg.] the views of your Society. "Wm Ogilvie's Essay on the Right of Property in Land London 178."8 (I forget the date)[.] The British Museum possesses several copies (one of which bears Ge Washington's9 autograph signature on 1st page). Why was he not convinced? (R.D.).
A Eugène Simon helped organise a conference on land reform in 1889. A Biographical History of the Georgist Movement, France. <www.cooperative-individualism.org.>.
Could this be the Eugène Louis Simon (1848-1924) French naturalist and Chairman of the Zoological Society in Paris? Wikipedia. Or the French diplomat, Eugène Simon (1829-96), who published his book La Cité Cinoise in 1885, arguing that the Chinese were enjoying political and other freedoms and discussing poverty and land use. Gosset, David, Knowing Fuzhou. In: The World Post, 13 April 2014. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-gosset/knowing-fuzhou_b_4755181.html> [accessed 20 May 2015].
Text in another hand in the top right corner reads "90".
7.
Ogilvie, William (1736-1819). Classical scholar and advocate of common property in land. In 1781 he published anonymously An Essay on the Right of Property in Land in which he asserted the birthright of every citizen to an equal share of property in land and outlined the means by which this could be achieved. ODNB.
Ogilvie, William (1781). An Essay on the Right of Property in Land. Walter, London, i-xii, 1-232.
Status: Draft transcription [Letter (WCP2659.2549)]
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Please cite as “WCP2659,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 28 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP2659