“I have been studying this matter—the increase of land-rents—for many years, and consider it is very much to blame for the present high prices of all land produce, and the distress amongst the poorest of our population, as well as being a great hindrance to the carrying out of any schemes that have for their object the application of more of our own labour to our own soil. In a letter to my son a few weeks ago, I ventured to say that the man who was the first to demonstrate by actual experiment that English soil could be made to double or quadruple its produce, would earn the name of a new Columbus, in that he had discovered another America at our own doors. This son, my oldest, having shown a turn for mathematics, I was induced to send to Cambridge, my hope being that a good education might fit him to solve some of the problems that are so pressing us for solution (and which I had been essaying myself in the pamphlet on ‘Labour and Capital’); and as he now, on the completion of his second term, holds the second place in his year at St. John’s, there is a hope that he may take a good place in the mathematical tripos for 1878; and yet, since we got introduced to your books—two years ago—both he and I think he had best, so soon as he completes his course, go into farming; and hence the reference to growing crops that appeared in his letter last week, and which I am most happy to find has met with your approbation.” (Yes;—and I trust with higher approbation than mine.) IV. The following paragraphs from a county paper gladden me exceedingly, by taking from me all merit of originality in any part of the design of the operations of St. George’s Company, while they prove to the most incredulous not only the practicability, but the assured good of such operations, already, as will be seen, carried to triumphant results on a private gentleman’s estate.