The writer of this utopia was an Austrian economist, Theodor Hertzka; and he first published his view in considerable detail, with reference to current economic doctrines, in a book called Freeland: A Social Anticipation. He condensed these doctrines in another book called A Visit to Freeland, or the new Paradise Regained, an attempt to picture his freeman’s commonwealth in action. These books formed the center of a whirlwind of agitation; a magazine sprang up; societies were organized in various cities in Europe and America; and a definite attempt was made to colonize a certain section of Africa, selected by Hertzka; an attempt which, alas! met with speedy failure as a result of the obtuseness and international jealousy of various colonial officials. The first book was published in 1889; and all this happened in the early nineties. Perhaps the only practical effect of it was--and this is mere conjecture--to turn the thoughts of certain Zionists, like Israel Zangwill, from establishing Zion in Jerusalem to building it up again in some more suitable region in the heart of Africa. Freeland may be described as an individualist Utopia on a social foundation. Hertzka was filled with sympathy and admiration for the doctrines that Adam Smith set forth in The Wealth of Nations; and he desired to realize a society in which the maximum amount of individual freedom and initiative would prevail, especially in industrial enterprises. This leads to a paradox; namely, that in order to ensure freedom it is impossible to practise laissez faire; for the effect of laissez faire is to permit accidental aggregations of wealth and power to threaten the freedom that less fortunate individuals seek to enjoy. So far from being an anarchist utopia, Freeland is a co-operative commonwealth in which the State acts as an interested party in the production and distribution of goods. This differs from socialism in name; and it differed from the practical socialist agitation of the time in that it relied, not upon turning over established institutions in Europe, but in turning over a new leaf in the Kenia Highlands of Africa; but Hertzka’s “individualism” comes to almost the same thing. 4 A visit to Freeland teaches us little about the arts of social life or the constitution of a good society. What we can learn is one of the methods by which--on hypothesis anyway--the industrial mechanism might be controlled. In Freeland there are five fundamental laws; and of these the first is the most important; namely, that: Every inhabitant has an equal right to the common land and to the means of production which are furnished by the state.