What Winstanley discovered and proclaimed in the
Seventeenth Century, Henry George rediscovered and again proclaimed in
the Nineteenth Century, and that in tones which are still reverberating
and producing their effects on social thought throughout the length and
breadth of the civilised world, promising ultimately to produce a change
in social conditions compared with which the abolition of slavery sinks
into comparative insignificance. It is no longer a question of the
emancipation of a few chattel slaves, but of the whole human race.
Fundamental social laws and institutions, based upon inequality of
rights, must necessarily produce inequality of conditions. And all who
impartially consider the question will be forced to admit that both
Winstanley and Henry George trace the prevailing social inequality, the
debauching wealth of the few and the degrading poverty of the many, to
its true cause. Nor can there be any doubt but that if Winstanley's
practical and efficacious remedy had been adopted, if the use of the
Common Land had been secured to the Common People on equitable terms,
the economic condition of the masses of the generations which succeeded
him, the whole subsequent economic, social and political history of the
English People, would have been very different; and they would not now,
in the Twentieth Century, be fighting for, or more often whispering with
bated breath concerning, those very reforms he so strenuously advocated
over two hundred and fifty years ago.
Pages:
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339