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As the reader acquaints himself with the contents of the Volume, he will perceive how moderate and how just are the views which are advocated in it. There is nothing to alarm intelligent owners of land; there is no support given to any of the wild propositions which some speculative writers have put forth, and which ignorant and illogical men have adopted or favoured.

The Author is always just; he seeks to give that freedom to the soil which our laws have given to its produce, and which they give to personal property of every kind; he would leave to their free action the natural forces which tend to the accumulation of landed property on the one hand, as well as those which tend to its dispersion on the other; he would so change our laws as to give to every present generation an absolute control over the soil, free from the paralysing influences which afflict it now from the ignorance, the folly, the obstinacy, or the pride of the generations which have passed away.

He shows, by abundant evidence, how great is the gain to the humbler classes of society, to the labourers, and peasants, and small farmers of the countries in which the reforms he advocates have been effected, and he pleads urgently on behalf of the suffering and helpless population of our country, bound to the land by a tie which is more that of serfdom than one of ownership and of independent enjoyment and possession.

I venture to recommend this Volume to owners of estates, to tenant farmers, to the labourers on their farms, and to the crowded populations of our large villages and towns.

There is no class of our people which has not a great and direct interest in the reforms it explains and advocates. It may prove a legacy of much good from one who is now withdrawn from amongst us, if it hasten the time when, in addition to the many gains of freedom of which we justly boast, we may boast also of the freedom of our soil.

JOHN BRIGHT.

March 26, 1879.

PREFACE BY THE EDITOR.

MR. KAY intended to publish the contents of the following Letters as soon as he had completed the series. He wished to re-arrange them in Chapters, and divest them of the repetitions incidental to their original form, that of a series of Letters published in the "Manchester Examiner and Times."

My husband, however, died while engaged in the composition of No. XV., the concluding portion of which would have contained an account of the Land Laws of Germany. There would have been one more Letter only, in which he would have summed up the results he had arrived at, and which he had already indicated in the earlier Letters.

Since it is beyond my power to carry out precisely what my husband intended, I have decided to publish the Letters as they were written, with only such slight alterations as the writer himself indicated while the work was in hand.

These alterations occur in Letters II. and VII., which have been slightly recast in accordance with wishes he had expressed to me.

In a few cases paragraphs have been inserted as they were written by my husband after the publication of the Letters, and with a view to their final arrangement.

18 HYDE PARK Gardens,

March 29, 1879.

MARY E. KAY.

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