ngs, and more
important truths than all of them put together, this violent reprobation
of them by the _Cornhill_ public set me still more gravely thinking;
and, after turning the matter hither and thither in my mind for two
years more, I resolved to make it the central work of my life to write
an exhaustive treatise on Political Economy. It would not have been
begun, at that time, however, had not the editor of _Fraser's Magazine_
written to me, saying that he believed there was something in my
theories, and would risk the admission of what I chose to write on this
dangerous subject; whereupon, cautiously, and at intervals, during the
winter of 1862-63, I sent him, and he ventured to print, the preface of
the intended work, divided into four chapters. Then, though the Editor
had not wholly lost courage, the Publisher indignantly interfered; and
the readers of _Fraser_, as those of the _Cornhill_, were protected, for
that time, from farther disturbance on my part. Subsequently, loss of
health, family distress, and various untoward chances, prevented my
proceeding with the body of the book;--seven years have passed
ineffectually; and I am now fain to reprint the Preface by itself, under
the title which I intended for the whole.

Not discontentedly; being, at this time of life, resigned to the sense
of failure; and also, because the preface is complete in itself as a
body of definitions, which I now require for reference in the course of
my _Letters to Workmen_; by which also, in time, I trust less formally
to accomplish the chief purpose of _Munera Pulveris_, practically summed
in the two paragraphs 27 and 28: namely, to examine the moral results
and possible rectifications of the laws of distribution of wealth, which
have prevailed hitherto without debate among men. Laws which ordinary
economists assume to be inviolable, and which ordinary socialists
imagine to be on the eve of total abrogation. But they are both alike
deceived. The laws which at present regulate the possession of wealth
are unjust, because the motives which provoke to its attainment are
impure; but no socialism can effect their abrogation, unless it can
abrogate also covetousness and pride, which it is by no means yet in the
way of doing. Nor can the change be, in any case, to the extent that has
been imagined. Extremes of luxury may be forbidden, and agony of penury
relieved; but nature intends, and the utmost efforts of socialism will
not hinder the f