The following short essay on the land question has already appeared, as a series of articles, in the National Reformer for May and June, 1862. I have thought it advisable to reprint them in a collected form, on account of the extreme importance of the subject, and, more especially, in the hope of contributing in any degree, however slight, to the abolition of the present laws of primogeniture and entail. As Mr. J. S. Mill, the most eminent social philosopher of the ago, shows in his work on Political Economy, the two great remedies for poverty and low wages are, in the first place, a careful restraint on population; and secondly, a change from the present system of hired labour to that of independent and co-operative industry, both in agriculture and manufactures. In order to effect the latter object, it is evidently of the utmost importance that every legal facility should be given to enable the working classes, by fair competition, to obtain possession of the land and the capital. Facilities for the formation of co-operative societies and also, to a certain extent, for the sale of land, have already been afforded under the "Limited Liability" and the "Land Transfer" Acts; and the great obstacle still to be overcome—the obstacle which almost entirely excludes the people from the possession of the land, and keeps the whole soil of the country in the hands of a few thousand proprietors—is the laws of primogeniture and entail. If these laws wore abolished, the land would be thrown open to free competition, the over-grown estates would soon be broken down, and a great portion of the soil would gradually come into the possession of the working classes. Such a reform would be in itself a revolution; and it seems to me that scarcely any measure could be mentioned which is more worthy of attention and combined effort on the part of all true friends of the people.