• John Locke stirred up the English Revolution of 1688, and in doing so he set a good example to the rest of the world, and raised his country to a glorious position among nations. We are only beginning to see this now. 
• William Ogilvie was neither an idle spectator of the French Revolution of 1789, nor of the American Revolution of 1776. The man who regarded Revolutions as “favourable opportunities” for restoring the natural rights of mankind was, like John Locke, a practical philosopher. 
• Mr. Henry George, as a political philosopher, is equally practical. He is a child of 1776, in spirit and in truth! He is a Lockist as regards the rights of labour - labour being the title and also the measure which alone can give to the individual an exclusive right of property in natural products. And he is an Ogilvist (which is only a logical development of the Lockist) as regards man's BIRTHRIGHT IN LAND - the basis of the SINGLE TAX *, and the door through which LABOUR may freely enter into possession, and enjoy, not a mere portion of its fruit, which some tyrant may set apart, but “its full produce and just reward”.

The benevolent and magnanimous Professor Ogilvie had this passage before him when he wrote the first section of his Essay. In a footnote he says: “It were unjust to censure the proprietors of land, however, for retaining and exercising, as they do, a right whose foundations have not been inquired into, and whose extent no one has yet controverted.” Then he goes on to explain that ignorance is the root of the evil. There were many cases to which the modified doctrine of Professor Ogilvie would apply, e.g., the “humane landlords of England” of his own time, and some of the princes of ancient times, “who lived for the happiness of their people.” The commercial landlord, who, he tells us in the same note, is “of all citizens the most pernicious,” who burkes all inquiry into the foundations of his right, and who with the aid of lawyers and priests, fills the eyes of mankind with the dust of ignorance, he would leave to be dealt with in accordance with the principles approbated by Locke. We should not degenerate from these principles, and it is to be hoped that few readers will grudge the references here made to the once famous, but now forgotten - strangely forgotten - writings of one of the best of men, and one of the greatest philosophers the world ever produced, namely, John Locke.

Professor Ogilvie, who came after Locke, devotes himself in this treatise to one subject - Birthright in land, it may be called. And the Author may be justly styled - The Euclid of Land Law Reform. He has left little or nothing unsolved in connection with the Land Question. He has given us a true base line -- man’s equal right to the raw material of the earth, to the air, to the water, to the rays of the sun, and all natural products -- from which we can work out any problem, and by which we can test the “title and measure” of every man’s property. Resting on this baseline -- man’s natural rights -- he represents to us the perpendicular line of man's right to labour, “with security of reaping its full produce and just reward.” Here we have the question in a nutshell. Take away the base line, and you have no right to labour, and no produce or reward, except what may be meted out by the usurper of your natural rights. You have to beg for leave to toil! We thus see clearly how the robbery of labour may be prevented, and how impossible it is to put a stop to such robbery while the industrial classes neglect to claim and exercise their natural right -- their right to an equal share in the earth, and all its natural products.

Strikes against low wages, high rents, unjust taxation, absurd conflicts between capital and labour, rebellions against this or that form of government, are futile skirmishes, and very frequently are of the suicidal cock-fighting order, at which the real enemy, elevated on a grand stand, simply laugh. To contend successfully with these evils, society must learn to begin at the source thereof. While labourers are content to remain deprived of their natural rights, they must pay whatever ransom the brigands who have seized these rights choose to demand. Not only is industry robbed, taxed, and crippled, but the brigand, as dog-in-the-manger, very often puts an entire stop to it, and thus the happiness and comfort of millions of mankind, who are willing to work, are curtailed or wholly sacrificed, and misery and starvation reign instead. I am somewhat afraid to say hard things against brigandage. An institution that is still propped up by Law and Order, and supported (or winked at) on almost every hand by the avowed servants of Jesus Christ, must be touched with a “gentle hand.” William Ogilvie has done so in the Essay now before us. Although a landlord himself, he did not disregard the truth, and it will be found that his pen was guided by an impartial and benevolent spirit.

It may be noted that the practical schemes propounded in the Essay, were intended only as “examples and beginnings of reformation,” to use the author's own cautious language, and should be read as such, and in the light of the circumstances of his own time. Let the reader then peruse once more the close of the Essay, and ponder over the contents of the work, comparing his own ideas with those of the author, before coming to a hasty decision, and let no scheme for the happiness of mankind be rejected without at least attempting to substitute and promote a better one. The reader, in applying the author's principles to the present time, and having regard to present and future circumstances, will find that these principles are not of the hard and fast kind, but that they are in accordance with Natural Law, and therefore may be accepted as eternal and universal in their application.

When a child is born, we recognise that it has a natural right to its mother's milk, and no one can deny that it has the same right to mother-earth. It is really its mother-earth, plus the dew and sunshine from heaven and a little labour, that supplies the milk and everything else required for its subsistence. The monster that would deprive a babe of its mother's milk, or would monopolise the breasts of several mothers, to the exclusion of several children, is not more deserving of being destroyed than the monster who seizes absolute possession of more than his share of the common mother of mankind, to the exclusion of his fellow-creatures.

Professor Ogilvie’s Essay is a pastoral prose poem, through which we can realise this beautiful world, with its ample provision for satisfying man's instinctive and rational faculties of enjoyment. The “Sovereign Power” from which all blessings flow is manifested as a wise, just, and impartial Creator, who invites us to make His laws our laws, and who in these latter days has delegated to us some wonderful powers, by which -- with equality of rights and freedom of labour -- the comforts of this life, and the products of the world, may be multiplied more than a thousand fold, purposely (shall we not say?) to increase the happiness and virtue of mankind.

The sun never sets, and when one group of workers are retiring to rest, on his “going down,” another group are rising with him. Light and labour thus go their incessant rounds; and so it is with the seasons of seed-time and harvest -- the eternal law of revolutions seems to regulate all things! Human speech, borne on the mysterious wings of thunder, revolves round the earth, and “man to man the world o'er” can hold instantaneous converse. Man himself revolves round the world, carried by his fire-souled amphibious steed from places where he lacks food, raiment, or enjoyment, to more hospitable regions. Or he can, with magic-like power, cause the superfluous granaries, larders, and wardrobes, to move from one side of the globe, to feed and clothe the hungry and naked on the other. Nature seems to have decreed -- “There shall be no more famines!” But although the sun shines ceaselessly, and man's labour follows him steadily in his course, the flow of blessings which such evolutions naturally produce is polluted and diverted by the influence of landlordism, which, like a upas tree, poisons the surrounding atmosphere, spreads desolation in the country, and crowds the town with vice, want, disease, misery, and crime, far beyond the power of churches, charities, hospitals, divorce courts, and police courts to cure. There is only one cure - “Cut it down: why cumbereth it the ground?”