ABSTRACT
‘Holy writ wells up from him unbidden, like petroleum in Oil City.’ Justice on 11 January 1884 was not unfair to the prophet of San Francisco: Henry George. His meetings were little Bethels and his Progress and Poverty (1879) was received in England (as William Morris said) ‘as a new gospel’. Over a hundred thousand copies were sold in the first decade of publication. When George came to England in 1881, he converted masters at Eton as well as unemployed in Manchester to his idea that the social value of the land should be restored to the people by a land tax. Societies were formed to promote his ideas. One of them, the English Land Restoration League, had H. H. Champion as its secretary. 522 Evacustes Phipson used a legacy of £16,000 to establish a single tax colony in Australia in 1881. It failed, so he joined another in Mexico called Topolobampo and then returned to England, still anxious to found a colony. 523
