"This all-embracing system of land-robbery," again he writes, "for which nothing is too great or too small; which has absorbed meadow and forest, moor and mountain, which has appropriated most of our rivers and lakes and the fish that live in them; making the agriculturist pay for his seaweed manure and the fisherman for his bait of shell-fish; which has desolated whole counties to replace men by sheep or cattle, and has destroyed fields and cottages to make a wilderness for deer and grouse; which has stolen the commons and filched the roadside wastes; which has driven the labouring poor into the cities, and thus been the chief cause of the misery, disease, and early death of thousands ... it is the advocates of this inhuman system who, when a partial restitution of their unholy gains is proposed, are the loudest in their cries of 'robbery'! "But all the robbery, all the spoliation, all the legal and illegal filching, has been on _their_ side.... They made the laws to legalise their actions, and, some day, we, the people, will make laws which will not only legalise but justify our process of restitution. It will justify it, because, unlike their laws, which always took from the poor to give to the rich--to the very class which made the laws--ours will only take from the superfluity of the rich, _not_ to give to the poor or to any individuals, but to so administer as to enable every man to live by honest work, to restore to the whole people their birthright in their native soil, and to relieve all alike from a heavy burden of unnecessary and unjust taxation. _This_ will be the true statesmanship of the future, and it will be justified alike by equity, by ethics, and by religion." These, then, are the facts and reasons upon which Dr. Wallace based his strenuous advocacy of Land Nationalisation.[48] It was only by slow degrees that he arrived at some of the conclusions propounded in his later years, but once having grasped their full importance to the social and moral well-being of the community, he held them to the last. The first book which tended to fasten his attention upon these matters was "Social Statics," by Herbert Spencer, but in 1870 the publication of his "Malay Archipelago" brought him into personal contact with John Stuart Mill, through whose invitation he became a member of the General Committee of the Land Tenure Reform Association. On the formation of the Land Nationalisation Society in 1880 he retired from the Association, and devoted himself to the larger issues which the new Society embraced. Soon after the latter Society was started, Henry George, the American author of "Progress and Poverty," came to England, and Wallace had many opportunities of hearing him speak in public and of discussing matters of common interest in private. In spite of the ridicule poured upon Henry George's book by many eminent social reformers, Wallace consistently upheld its general principles.