Gentlemen,—You wish, I understand, to get some advice as to how you should set about studying the Social Question. I do not know how to meet your wishes better than by telling how I have myself proceeded ; though this, of course, exposes me to the risk of seeming to pose not only as an expert but as a model. Hence I must begin by saying that I know very little of the question on its economic side. There is, however, another side, the ethical, to which I have given some attention ; and as it is this alone which you are called on to study, perhaps it may help you to know how one who lays no claim to very special knowledge has proceeded in his investigations.

I began, like yourselves, with the treatise on Justice, as set forth in the class-book of this College ; which, in my time, was Gury. I do not know of any better way of beginning, except, perhaps, to devote more attention than we did to the title of Occupation ; which I now regard as the key to much of the question at issue between extreme Socialists and ourselves.

Well, three years after the close of my College course, the Land League was started ; and it was not very long till we heard it argued that there could be no private property in land, as “the exertion of labour in production is the only title to exclusive possession.”