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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 48

Preface

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Preface.

As Will perhaps be surmised from the style in which it is written, it was the intention of the author to offer this essay to some magazine or review, but before it was quite finished it occurred to him that it would be more likely to reach the class for whose benefit it was intended if issued in its present form. When this thought first occurred to him, it also seemed that it would be desirous to re-write it in a style more in character with a popular address, but, on mature consideration, he does not deem it needful to do so, as there is nothing in it that will not come homo to the commonest understanding. For many of the facts, and for some of the ideas, it contains, the author is indebted to Mr. George Jacob Holyoake's History of Co-operation; and as Mr. Holyoake is the greatest living authority on the subject, and has been for the last thirty years its chief moving spirit in England, no better source could possibly be found. In offering the essay to the public, the author is actuated by no other desire than to benefit his fellow-creatures by disseminating a knowledge of what he knows to be the most powerful agent yet discovered in softening and alleviating the social grievances and injustices which are now the lot of the poorer classes; and he will be more than rewarded if he is in any way instrumental in the recognition of this fact by some of those in New South Wales whoso fate it is to be ranked among those classes.

Sydney,
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