Letters of yesterday by JW Author:James Wood Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SOME LETTERS TO A SON ABROAD 3rd Dec. '96. . . . To-day a friend looked in, and we got on Socialism — it was Evolution before — and I broached an idea whi... more »ch rather startled him, for we had never talked on Socialism before, and he did not know that I had any sympathy with the movement, little love as I have in general for the socialist class. The question I started was the right of any one to claim private property on the land of the globe, and I maintained that no man had any right to any of it except such as he could exploit and did exploit for the service of its inhabitants. The earth is the Lord's and the fulness of it, and none but His, and only such sons of His, as bring out of it such virtue as lies in it for the benefit of His creatures. That is a postulate of Socialism, and it is backed up by such justice-loving men as Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin. He acceded to my doctrine to some extent, but he challenged me to say how then I would dispose of the land ; my answer to which was, that the first thing in regard to any wrongwas to point out that it was wrong, otherwise no one would move a finger to put it right. The right adjustment is matter for long and deliberate consideration together of the wisest heads. The collective body of the class called socialists, I admitted, are unequal to the feat. n. '97. I confess to you I have always felt a great respect for Froude in connection with Carlyle, and have often been disposed to thank Heaven that Carlyle's manuscripts did not fall into other hands. He seems to me, according to my present lights, to have done his duty by Carlyle, and I am blind to anything he has written in trespass of the documents that lay by him. True, he is not a Carlylean as you and I may be, and he does not profess Carlylism; he is to a great ...« less