After the decline of the Owen agitation and of the Christian Socialist movement in 1850, socialism could hardly be said to exist in England, and where it attracted any attention at all, it was generally regarded as a revolutionary curiosity peculiar to the Continent, with little practical interest for a free and normal country like our own. As we have seen, the English workmen took a considerable share in the founding of the International in 1864 and subsequently. But on the fuller development of the revolutionary tendencies of that movement, and especially after the great disaster of the Commune at Paris, socialism lost the not very serious hold which it had found among the English working class. There had indeed always been a group of men who were influenced by personal intercourse with Karl Marx and Engels during their long residence in this country, but they were mostly of foreign extraction, and had no wide relations with the English workmen. About 1883 English socialism took a fresh start, indirectly through the influence of Henry George, and directly through the teaching of Karl Marx. By his vigorous and sympathetic eloquence Henry George gained a hearing for opinions which were not distinctly socialistic, but certainly tended to disturb the existing modes of thought. Though it led to little positive result, the agitation connected with his name was really the beginning of a radical change in English economics. A variety of causes, among which we may mention the agrarian agitation in Ireland, and the legislation which was designed to meet it, had contributed to shake the confidence of the English public in the finality of the accepted economic doctrines. The recent English socialism had, in 1884, a definite beginning with the Social Democratic Federation, which, with great fervour, denounced the existing system and proclaimed the views of Marx. Most active and prominent in this movement was Mr. Hyndman; the most eminent was the robust and genial figure of William Morris, widely known as the author of the _Earthly Paradise_, and one of the foremost of living poets. The chief literary product of the movement at this early stage was Hyndman’s _Historical Basis of Socialism in England_. The organ of the Federation was, and continues to be, _Justice_. About the end of the year 1885 the Socialist League diverged from the Federation on grounds of difference, which were partly personal, partly of principle, for the League showed a decided sympathy with the anarchist theory of socialism. Morris himself, its leading member, had anarchist leanings, which come out clearly in _News from Nowhere_ and other works. Belfort Bax, another prominent member of the League, has published _Ethics of Socialism_ and other works, which represent the extreme and uncompromising side of the movement. The _Commonweal_ was the organ of the League. The League and its organ, however, did not survive many years.