Of which peace, the nature is not to be without war, but undisturbed in the midst of war; and not without enemies, but without fear of them. It is a peace without pain, because desiring only what is holy; without anxiety, because it thinks only what is right; without disappointment, because a just work is always successful; without [[273]]sorrow, because ‘great peace have they which love Thy Law, and nothing shall offend them;’ and without terror, because the God of all battles is its Guard.

So far as any living souls in the England of this day can use, understandingly, the words of this collect, they are already, consciously or not, companions of all good labourers in the vineyard of God. For those who use it reverently, yet have never set themselves to find out what the commandments of God are, nor how loveable they are, nor how far, instead of those commandments, the laws of the world are the only code they care for, nor how far they still think their own thoughts and speak their own words, it is assuredly time to search out these things. And I believe that, after having searched them out, no sincerely good and religious person would find, whatever his own particular form of belief might be, anything which he could reasonably refuse, or which he ought in anywise to fear to profess before all men, in the following statement of creed and resolution, which must be written with their own hand, and signed, with the solemnity of a vow, by every person received into the St. George’s Company.

I will not enter in the present letter on any notice of the terms of this creed and vow; nor of the grounds which many persons whose help I sincerely desire, may perceive for hesitation in signing it—further definitions of its meaning will be given as occasion comes; nor shall I ever ask any one to sign it whom I do not know to be capable of understanding and holding it in the sense in which it is meant I proceed at once to define more explicitly those laws of the Company of St. George to which it refers, and which must, at least in their power, be known before they can be vowed fealty to.

The object of the Society, it has been stated again and again, is to buy land in England; and thereon to [[276]]train into the healthiest and most refined life possible, as many Englishmen, Englishwomen, and English children, as the land we possess can maintain in comfort; to establish, for them and their descendants, a national store of continually augmenting wealth; and to organize the government of the persons, and administration of the properties, under laws which shall be just to all, and Secure in their inviolable foundation on the Law of God.

“To buy land,” I repeat, or beg it; but by no means to steal it, or trespass on it, as I perceive the present holders of the most part of it are too ready to do, finding any bits of road or common which they can pilfer unobserved. Are they quite mad, then; and do they think the monster mob, gaining every day in force and knowledge, will let their park walls stand much longer, on those dishonest terms? Doubtful enough their standing is, even on any terms!

But our St. George’s walls will be more securely founded, on this wise. The rents of our lands, though they will be required from the tenantry as strictly as those of any other estates, will differ from common rents primarily in being lowered, instead of raised, in proportion to every improvement made by the tenant; secondly, in that they will be entirely used for the benefit of the tenantry themselves, or better culture of the estates, no money being ever taken by the landlords unless they earn it by their own personal labour.

For the benefit of the tenantry, I say; but by no [[277]]means, always, for benefit of which they can be immediately conscious. The rents of any particular farmer will seldom be returned to him in work on his own fields, or investment in undertakings which promote his interest. The rents of a rich estate in one shire of England may be spent on a poor one in another, or in the purchase of wild ground, anywhere, on which years of labour must be sunk before it can yield return; or in minerals, or Greek vases, for the parish school. Therefore with the use made of the rents paid, the tenantry will have no practical concern whatever; they will only recognise gradually that the use has been wise, in finding the prices of all serviceable articles diminishing, and all the terms and circumstances of their, lives indicative of increased abundance. They will have no more right, or disposition, to ask their landlord what he is doing with the rents, than they have now to ask him how many race-horses he keeps—or how much he has lost on them. But the difference between landlords who live in Piccadilly, and spend their rents at Epsom and Ascot, and landlords who live on the grounds they are lords of, and spend their rents in bettering it, will not be long in manifesting itself to the simplest minded tenantry; nor, I believe, to the outside and antagonist world.

Sundry questions lately asked me by intelligent correspondents as to the intended relations of the tenantry to the Society, may best be answered by saying simply [[278]]what I shall do, if ever the collected wealth of the Company enables me to buy an estate for it as large as I could have bought for myself, if I had been a railroad contractor.

Of course I could not touch the terms of the existing leases. The only immediate difference would be, the definitely serviceable application of all the rents, as above stated. But as the leases fell in, I should offer renewal of them to the farmers I liked, on the single condition of their complying with the great vital law of the St. George’s Company,—“no use of steam power, nor of any machines where arms will serve;” allowing such reduction of rent as should fully compensate them for any disadvantage or loss which they could prove they incurred under these conditions. I should give strict orders for the preservation of the existing timber; see that the streams were not wantonly polluted, and interfere in nothing else.