300 
SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND. 
benefits are remote and doubtful. Of course, this does not 
apply to the case of new countries making grants of land in the 
first instance. It certainly seems desirable that our colonies, 
for example, should not part with the fee simple of their lands, 
and the Land Nationalization movement, which is active in 
New Zealand and New South Wales, is more likely to succeed 
with them than with us. There is much to be said, too, in 
favour of the “ municipalization ” of lands in the neighbourhood 
of growing towns, where the unearned increment is often 
enormous, and where it is particularly important not to allow 
private rights to grow up which interfere with the good of the 
community. Into this question, however, I cannot now enter, 
but must pass on to the second socialistic movement which I 
propose to consider. 
Christian Socialism may be said to have originated in 
England in 1848, when Charles Kingsley, Frederick Denison 
Maurice, Tom Hughes, Mr. Ludlow, and some others started 
the Christian Socialist newspaper, issued a series of tracts, 
and formed a society for promoting co-operative associations. 
The leaders of the movement do not appear to have been 
influenced by the writings of Lammenais, who was one of the 
first Christian Socialists of modern times, and whose burning 
denunciations of the capitalistic system have never been sur 
passed ; still less can they be connected with the Utopian 
Reformers, such as Cabet and St. Simon. The idea of intro 
ducing Christianity as an active factor and guiding principle in 
business life, appears to have suggested itself spontaneously to 
an earnest band of noble-minded and unselfish churchmen, as 
a means of coping with the wide-spread distress and discontent 
which existed in England at the time, and which had raised a 
threatening voice in the Chartist agitation. They had no 
definite socialistic scheme in view, but they were profoundly 
impressed with the evils of unrestricted competition, and 
dreaded above all things the ascendency of the Manchester 
School with—to use Kingsley’s extravagant language—its 
“ narrow, conceited, hypocritical, anarchic, and atheistic 
scheme of the universe.” “ I do not see my way further than 
this,” said Maurice; “competition is put forth as the law of the