[‘It is now not safe to take a newspaper paragraph report’: Frederic Harrison, English historian and positivist.] Autograph Letter Signed, declining to enter into an argument on property, as his views have been misrepresented.

See his long but strangely-cagey entry in the Oxford DNB. 2pp, 12mo. On a bifolium. In good condition, lightly aged. Folded once. Signed ‘Frederic Harrison.’ The recipient is not named. The letter begins: ‘Madam, I am obliged to you for your interesting letter[.] I do not enter an argument because it is founded on a few sentences which give a very imperfect idea of what I said on Sunday last.’ He does not dispute many of her assertions and, as for ‘the usefulness of larger landlords’, he has ‘repeatedly urged it in my addresses’. He refers her to his paper ‘Report of the Industrial Remuneration Conference 1885. Cassells. 2s/6d’. He ends with the observation that ‘it is now not safe to take a newspaper paragraph report of the speeches of any public man’. In pencil in another hand at foot of second page: ‘Written in reply to mother’.