"When I first came to see what is the root of our social
difficulties and how this fundamental wrong might be
cured in the easiest way by concentrating taxes on land
values, I had worked out the whole thing for myself
without conscious aid that I can remember, unless it
might have been the light I got from Bissett's 'Strength
of Nations' as to the economic character of the feudal
system. When I published 'Our Land and Land Policy,'
I had not even heard of the Physiocrats and the impot
unique. But I knew that if it was really a star I had
seen, others must have seen it, too. And so with 'Pro-
gress and Poverty.' I said in that book that it would
come to many to whom it would seem like the echo of their
own thoughts. And beyond what I then knew, I was
certain that there must have been others before me who
saw the same essential truths. And as I have heard of
such men one after the other, I have felt that they gave
but additional evidences that we were indeed on the true
track, and still more clearly showed that though against
us were ignorance and power, yet behind us were hope
and faith and the wisdom of the ages -- the deepest and
clearest perceptions of man."

This ended the controversy.

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