‘Of course not,’ said Buxton. ‘In these days of boasted progress we know nothing of what has been. Radicals always ignore the past. You really need a little enlightenment. Shall I enlighten you?’ ‘By all means.’ ‘It was in 1775 Mr. Spence began his public career. Like most original thinkers, he commenced in the country. His political opinions were first pronounced in the form of a lecture read before the Newcastle Philosophical Society in 1775, and printed immediately afterwards, from which time, he says, he went on continually publishing them in some shape or other. They are fully explained in his “Constitution of Spensonia: a Country in Fairy Land Situated Somewhere between Utopia and Oceana.” According to his scheme, the land belongs to the people, and individuals should rent the land from their respective parishes, the rent constituting the national revenue, and the surplus, after all expenses were paid, was to be divided equally amongst all the parishioners. The larger estates were to be let for one-and-twenty years, and at the expiration of that term relet by public auction, the smaller ones by the year, and the larger ones sub-divided according to the increase of population. The legislative power was to be vested in an annual Parliament elected by universal suffrage, women voting as well as men. The executive was to be in the hands of a council of twenty-five, half of which was to be renewed annually. Every fifth day there was to be a Sabbatical rest, not a Sabbath, for no provision was made for public worship, and in the new world no mention was to be made of parsons, though the constitution was to be proclaimed in a more or less religious form. At the end of the pamphlet, as it was published, was an epilogue, intimating the flight of poverty and misery from this lower world, and there was an appeal: ‘“Let us all join heart and hand Through every town and city, Of every age and every sex, Young men and maidens pretty, To haste this golden age’s reign On every hill and valley, Then Paradise shall greet our eyes Through every street and alley.”’ ‘Ah,’ said Wentworth, ‘I see there is nothing new under the sun.’ ‘But the taxes?’ said Buxton. He continued: ‘This scheme was published long before the French Revolution broke out. Up in the north there had risen a solitary and original thinker who advocated female voting, universal suffrage, annual Parliaments, and had got hold of the idea—which has led many of our modern apostles to fame and fortune—that the land lay at the root of the Condition of England question, that all private property in land must be destroyed, and that it must be done at once.