other half way. The rich man sold his possessions, and equal
distribution was made to the poor.

'All that I contend for is that, seeing the fearful deterioration,
and no less fearful extravagance, of a civilised country, the evil is
one which calls loudly for careful investigation. Thousands of
artisans and labourers who contribute nothing to the substantial
wealth of the country, and nothing towards the production of its
means of subsistence, would be thrown out of employment, and
therefore that plan would be wrong. Jewellers, &c., &c., all kinds
of fellows who simply manufacture vanities, are just as honest and
good men as others, and it is not their fault, but the fault (if it
be one at all) of civilisation that they exist. But I don't see why,
the evil being recognised, some comprehensive scheme of colonisation
might not be adopted by the rulers of a Christian land, to empty our
poor-houses, and draft off the surplus population, giving to the
utterly destitute the prospect of health, and renewed hopes of
success in another thinly-inhabited country, and securing for those
who remain behind a more liberal remuneration for their work by the
comparative absence of competition.

'I hardly know what to write to you, my dear Father, about this new
symptom of illness. I suppose, from what you say, that at your time
of life the disease being so mild in its form now, will hardly prove
dangerous to you, especially as you submit at once to a strictness of
diet which must be pretty hard to follow out--just the habit of a
whole life to be given up; and I know that to forego anything that I
like, in matters of eating and drinking, wants an effort that I feel
ashamed of being obliged to make. I don't, therefore, make myself
unnecessarily anxious, though I can't help feeling that such a