"A very valuable, though rather heterogeneous book.... This is, we
believe, the only book that has fully, honestly, and in a scientific
spirit recognised all the elements in the problem--How are mankind to
triumph over poverty, with its train of attendant evils?--and fearlessly
endeavored to find a practical solution."
The _British Journal of Homæopathy_ wrote:
"Though quite out of the province of our journal, we cannot refrain from
stating that this work is unquestionably the most remarkable one, in many
respects, we have ever met with. Though we differ _toto coelo_ from the
author in his views of religion and morality, and hold some of his
remedies to tend rather to a dissolution than a reconstruction of
society, yet we are bound to admit the benevolence and philanthropy of
his motives. The scope of the work is nothing less than the whole field
of political economy."
Ernest Jones and others wrote yet more strongly, but out of all these
Charles Bradlaugh alone has been selected for reproach, and has had the
peculiar views of the anonymous author fathered on himself. Why? The
reason is not far to seek. None of the other writers are active Radical
politicians, dangerous to the luxurious idleness of the non-producing but
all-consuming "upper classes" of society. These know how easy it is to
raise social prejudice against a man by setting afloat the idea that he
desires to "abolish marriage and the home". It is the most convenient
poniard and the one most certain to wound. Therefore those whose
profligacy is notorious, who welcome into their society the Blandfords,
Aylesburys, and St. Leonards, rave against a man as a "destroyer of
marriage" whose life is pure, and whose theories on this, as it happens,
are "orthodox", merely because his honest Atheism shames their
hypocritical professions, and his sturdy Republicanism menaces their
corrupt and rotting society.