WCP4305

[1]

Frith Hill, Godalming

May 23^rd. 1883

M. Emile de Laveleye

Dear Sir

My friend Mr. Swinton¹ has given me your post card in which you ask me to let you know the address of the gentleman at Edinburgh who has offered £4000 to be devoted to prizes for Essays on Poverty & Wealth &c. &c..

I received one of those circulars but mine was entirely without name and address! I had vainly tried to find out who it came from, and it was your naming "Edinburgh" as the place which had at length enabled me to do so. The gentleman is [2] Mr. Robert Miller, 6 Chester Street, Edinburgh. I have just now written to him stating my opinions that the time for "Essays" is past, and pointing out to him that the coincidence of views, on essentials, of such works as Agathon de Potter’s "Economic Sociale"— Henry George’s "Progress & Poverty", and my "Land Nationalisation"— proves that the problem is solved, & that which is now needed is an energetic propaganda to make known this solution to the [3] educated classes and the masses of the people in whom the power rests to carry this ^it into practice.

As I believe you agree with us in our main view I venture to hope that you will write to Mr. Miller in the same sense. The weight of your opinion is deservedly great, while I am looked upon as an ignoramus in politics, who has no business to go out of what has hitherto been my ^his line of study— natural history. If Mr. Miller would devote his £4000 to endowing [4] the Land Nationalisation Society with a literature & lecture fund we could in a few years get up an agitation in England comparable to that of ^against the Corn Laws and with the same result,— & this agitation would react on the more advanced & liberal Continental Governments in a way nothing else can do.

I have just read the greater part of your "Primitive Property" with great interest & instruction. Unfortunately it affords an argument to the "developmental" school in the opposite sense to what we desire. I venture to think that my more direct mode of treatment of the question is the more practical one, & that the really remedy I propose, though drastic, is really quite as easy of attainment as the milder palliatives you & others suggest.

[5] The Annual Meeting of our "Land Nationalisation Society" is fixed for June 27^th. If it would be possible for you to be in London at that time we should esteem your presence a great honour and an augury of success to our cause. I believe Prof. W. F. ^W Newman² will be at the meeting.

I have been for many months suffering from inflamed eyes or should before this have written to M. Agathon de Potter on some points of difference [6] in our views. The chief is his separation of property into "foncière" & "mobilière", which seems to me an unnatural & useless division, & renders the interference ^{and supervision} of the State necessary if it takes the land with the improvements on it as he proposes. I maintain that the true division is into property created by ^{due to} individual labour or capital, on the one hand, & property due to nature and society, on the other. The one is property private, the other [7] as property public property. The division is practically by no means difficult, & it leads to the important result that [that] the State can own the public property— the land, without needing to exercise any supervision over its use, because its value is practically indestructible & incapable even of deterioration by individuals. This is the only important point of difference between my views & those of the Belgian "Social Economists."

I think however that the Nationalisation of the land is the first step. When [8] that is obtained all the rest will come in due time & much more easily.

With great esteem & respect | I remain Dear Sir | Yours faithfully Alfred R. Wallace [signed]