Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2359

Letter from Russell Kirk, Mecosta, Michigan, to Heath at 11 Waverly Place East, New York City

January 26, 1954

 

 

Dear Mr. Heath,

 

Very good it is to have your letter of two months ago. I have postponed answering it until now because I have been traveling, with little time to catch up with my correspondence, and because I wanted to send you a reprint of my two essays in recent numbers of the Southwest Review, which I am just now able to enclose. My apologies for being so tardy.

 Aye, conservatism greatly needs a positive program; and I am going to try to outline just that in a little book of mine which I shall write soon, and which Henry Regnery expects to publish in the fall.  I shall be grateful for all your suggestions regarding an enlightened and dynamic conservatism. Perhaps I shall be able to send you chapters of this book from time to time, since some portions may be published in periodicals before the book appears.

 The notions of Henry George crop up in the most surprising and inconsistent places, for much the same reason, I think, that Chesterton’s and Belloc’s distributism is popular — these concepts, only imperfectly understood, gratify the vague envy and longing of people who are too decent to be revolutionary radicals, and who, besides, know that nothing is likely to be done, really, about the single-tax or distributism. Your refutation of George’s fallacies is most closely reasoned; but I am afraid we shall never confute envy by reason. Isn’t it curious that even my old friend Albert Jay Nock was half-way taken in by the ideas of George? I am heartened by your arguments, and I hope they will have influence upon those “land reformers” who still are open to logical argument.

 

 As my friend Mr. W. T. Couch remarks, the true conservative should be in favor of local paternalism, true community, and ceaseless vigilance against the pretended generosity of the centralized state.  You will see from the enclosed piece on British society how thoroughly I agree with your view of united proprietary authority. The great English landed property was the finest example of this; and where the proprietors have not been ruined totally by the state, much of the old harmony and charm of existence still prevails. But that frame of society will be extinct within a generation, unless some profound reversal of government policy takes place. I have been making some close study of the English and Scottish landed interest, as my reprint suggests. Probably I shall deal at much greater length with all this in a future book of mine, which I hope to finish early next year: “The Unbought Grace of Life” (Burke’s phrase, and Cicero’s).

 Up here in my stump-country, Mecosta County, I am endeavoring to revive true community and prosperity. My great-grandfather and his uncle deforested all the land for miles round; now I am planting a great many thousands of trees, and I should like eventually to have five thousand acres in forest, or more, and to provide the economic sustenance and the leadership that my little old town of Mecosta needs. Most properties round about are patches of forty acres, or even twenty — wretched soil, sandy and dry, on which only potatoes or beans or cucumbers can be raised, at best. The system of small holdings never should have been allowed to spring up here; it has lowered dreadfully the whole tone of life, moral and intellectual and economic. I hope you may have an opportunity to see Mecosta some day. I am there about half the time, and I shall do a great deal of tree-planting this spring.

Again, my thanks for your kind words. More presently.

Respectfully,

/s/ Russell Kirk