the landowner prevent the enjoyment of that right. The primary duty of
every State is the increase of public happiness; and the happiest nation
is that which has the greatest number of free and independent
cultivators. But governments attend rather to the interest of the higher
classes, even while they hold out the protection of the common people as
the main pretext of their authority. The result is their maintenance of
land-monopoly even though it affects the prime material of all essential
industries, prevents the growth of population, and makes the rich
wealthier at the expense of the poor. It breeds oppression and
ignorance, and poisons improvement by preventing individual initiative.
He points out how a nation is dominated by its landlords, and how they
have consistently evaded the fiscal burdens they should bear. Only in a
return to a nation of freeholders can Ogilvie see the real source of an
increase in happiness.

Such criticism is revolutionary enough, though when he comes to speak of
actual changes, he had little more to propose than a system of peasant
proprietorship. What is striking in the book is its sense of great,
impending changes, its thorough grasp of the principle of utility, its
realization of the immense agricultural improvement that is possible if
the landed system can be so changed as to bring into play the impulses
of humble men. He sees clearly enough that wealth dominates the State;
and his interpretation of history is throughout economic. Ogilvie is
one of the first of those agrarian Socialists who, chiefly through
Spence and Paine, are responsible for a special current of their own in
the great tide of protest against the unjust situation of labor. Like
them, he builds his system upon natural rights; though, unlike them, his
natural rights are defended by expediency and in a style that is always
clear and logical. The book itself has rather a curious history. At its
appearance, it seems to have excited no notice of any kind. Mackintosh