hands-especially of the young children-Mammon was too strong in the breasts of the cannie Scotchmen. Nothing daunted, he went to London, and communicated with the government on the subject. By his persistency, he got a bill introduced, which in 1819 received the royal assent; and which must be regarded as the first step in that onward march of improvement, in the condition of factory operatives, in which we are still advancing. So far, then, we must give Owen our heartiest approval.

6

Let us now trace that mental process which transmuted the energetic philanthropist into the dreaming communist and avowed atheist. We have already spoken of the high value he set on early education. He saw, too, that each man is born with a certain organization, and that it depends, in a great measure, on the education what the character will be. From these premises, he deduced the conclusion, that man is irresponsible for his character; that the blessings he may call down upon himself for his disinterested beneficence, and the enormities which may make his name a byword and a curse, are alike to be charged on his organization and his education; and, by consequence, to praise or to punish him is the most irrational thing the human mind. can perpetrate. Self-education, self-discipline, and self-sacrifice with him are positive absurdities. Nature, and surroundings,' are everything. And this is the fundamental truth in the gospel to regenerate mankind of which he was the self-constituted evangelist. He saw not, that, with such a creed, hope for man was effectually precluded. He believed in no heaven-sent breathing which could stir in the breast of a degraded one some trembling of tenderness, some pulsation of love. He had no explanation to offer of those words of the imperial Hebrew: 'I thought on my ways, and turned my feet into thy testimonies.' He flattered himself he had discovered a truth of which the world till then had been ignorant, when all he offered was a poor rationale of the old heathen doctrine of fatalism. All he could say was, that man was the miserable creature of a blind, omnipotent necessity; a saying which the consciousness of every intelligent being proves a lie.

How, then, can moral advancement be secured? He saw no hope but for the children. These were to be taken from their parents as early as possible: and as education is, to a great extent, the result of example, no inferior example must be seen. We, too, should be glad to see all inferior example disappear; but the question is, How is it to be done? If one part of Owen's teaching is to be taken as the exponent of another, his only hope must be dashed to the ground. Île was no optimist. His condemnation of human nature was most complete. In a small volume of essays published by him, entitled,The Book of the

New

His Views of Human Responsibility.

219

New Moral World,' he expressly states that a superior human being, or any one approaching a character deserving the name rational, has not yet been known among mankind. A man, intelligent and yet consistent, in his feelings, thoughts, and actions, does not now exist, in even the most civilized part of the world.' It is for him, then, to tell us whence we are to import these perfect teachers, who are to form perfect characters.

We cannot wonder, then, that, with such views as these, he renounced all faith in Christianity, and, in fact, all faith in God. For several years of his early popularity he maintained a judicious reserve on the expression of his religious views, and acted, as well as wrote, we must say it, a semi-hypocrisy. But at a meeting, on the 21st of August, 1817, held at the London Tavern, he publicly committed himself to atheism: and in the Book of the New Moral World,' to which we have referred, he thus expresses himself: The religions founded under the name of Jewish, Buddh, Jehovah, God or Christ, Mahomet or any other, are all composed of human laws in opposition to nature's eternal laws.' And then he goes on to trumpet the claims of the unfailing nostrum he was never tired of proclaiming that man is irresponsible for his character. Such views as these are too contemptible to merit discussion. A man who has no more-we will not say intellect, nor yet moral perception-good taste than to class the abominations of Buddhism, and the sensuality of Mahommedanism, with the transcendant beauty of Christian morality-a beauty winning reverence from its bitterest foes-and, in the face of the wisdom of ages, dare present in its stead a miserable figment of heathendom, is, in this respect, too low for enlightened criticism.

Having laid down the proposition we have already adverted to, that man is irresponsible for his character-that his character is his, despite his will-he does not hesitate to accept the necessary corollary-that to impose any check on the gratification of passion is altogether inhuman. To quote again from The Book of the New Moral World'

As Nature gives the organization to man, so will Nature best direct when any of the functions of the organization should be exercised. In fact, no other law can be acted upon without injury to the individual and to society. And in proportion as human laws and customs have interfered with the dictates of Nature, in the same proportion has man been forced to become a vicious and miserable animal, and to have the finest and highest qualities of his nature deteriorated.' Thus does he throw open the flood-gates for an unchecked licentiousness.

How such a doctrine as this must effectually loosen the marriage tie at once appears: and how Owen felt it, may be seen in the following statement: He [man in his irrational or present state] has decreed that men and women, whose natures, sympathies, and affections unite them at one time and repel each

Q 2

other

In

other at another, shall speak and act in opposition to these unavoidable feelings; and thus he has produced hypocrisy, crime, and misery beyond the power of language to express.' justice to Owen, we must say that he never advocated a community of wives as well as a community of goods, in this, unlike Plato and Campanella. Yet, although he scarcely merited the severe strictures passed on him by the Bishop of Exeter, in a speech delivered in the House of Lords denouncing his system as one of promiscuous intercourse; neither, on the other hand, ought he to be dealt with so leniently as he has been by Mr. Sargant. The facility of divorce, on the ground of any fancied incompatibility, requiring only six months' notice of intent by either party a system this, which he did really put forth-were it ever to become law, would be the death-blow of domestic purity and family life. The home-relationships, covenantal because types and pledges of things in the heavens,' once trodden under foot, the total rupture of society must inevitably follow. With domestic life, social distinctions must fall; and so, as Owen says: As soon as man shall be thus regenerated, he will discover that the present classification of society into the various grades of the aristocracy, professions, trades, and occupations, is fit only for man in his irrational or first state of existence.'

These were the doctrines of his new religion, doctrines which, once preached to the world, were to work its moral regeneration, abolish ignorance, vice, and misery; 'enable all to live in superior habitations, surrounded by gardens, pleasure-grounds, and scenery, far better designed and executed than any yet possessed by the monarchs of the most powerful, wealthy, and extended empires;' and establish a state where 'money would no longer be required to carry on the business of life,' and where the character of all women would, by a superior, yet natural training, be elevated to become lovely, good, and intellectual.' That this glorious consummation might be wrought out, he lectured in London and in the provinces. He discussed with savans at Frankfort, at Paris, at Aix-la-Chapelle. He sent his tracts and essays to all the courts of Europe. Indeed, his popularity was very great on the Continent; but the friends in England, who had joyfully worked together with him as a philanthropist, now sadly were compelled to leave him. His partners ceased to sympathise with him, and in 1829 he finally retired from New Lanark. It had been a great success, and will always be an honour to his name.

We will not stop to discuss his views on spade husbandry, currency, competition, and machinery. They are all fundamentally wrong, although in the latter particular he has the powerful advocacy of M. de Sismondi in his Nouveau Principes d'Economie Politique.' It was evident, that for the actual realization of such a

scheme,

Colony of New Harmony.

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scheme, embodying so many particulars, the unostentatious philanthropy of infant schools was quite insufficient; a larger field must be sought. The cotton-spinner had become a state-modeller. We have seen the great particulars of his system, let us look at them in a unity, such a unity, at least, as they were ever able to attain, the unity of an Owenite community.

In dealing with such a community, the contrast at once presents itself between the ideal states of the past, and the Socialist schemes of more modern times; between the Republic of Plato and kindred systems of government of which it may be taken as the type, such as the Civitas Solis of Campanella, the Utopia of More, the Oceana of Harington, on the one hand, and, on the other, the model states of St. Simon, Fourier, and Robert Owen. Their origin is antipodal. The ancient thought of the state as anterior to the individual, and to plan a perfect polity was his aim. The modern, whilst decrying individualism as the remote cause of all the wrongs of humanity, makes it the foundation of his system, by building upon it a communistic paradisaical community. The ancient sought after symmetry rather than possibility. He modelled his ideal State, regardless of its adaptability to the actual. He rejoiced in it as a philosophic harmony. He was no innovator. The modern, with an exaggerated view of the evils of social inequality, and generally ignorant of economical science, proceeds to apply crude theories to existing society, and, whilst intending the possible, is as far from it as the former. He is essentially an innovator.

For the latter, then, a country where society is not deeply rooted, and where revolution is not inseparable from change, is the absolute requisite; and this Owen obtained. He purchased in 1824 an estate, consisting of thirty thousand acres of fertile land, in Indiana, on the Wabash. His colony was styled New Harmony. It was started on thoroughly communistic principles; but these were soon abandoned. An equal distribution of produce in a mixed community is impossible. The industrious and persevering will not share the fruits of his labour with the idle and wayward. Socialism without communism was attempted. But this was only putting off the day of dissolution. The crash came; and Owen returned to England, having lost a considerable amount of his property, but as to his projects, expectant as ever. He again attempted to found a communistic society at Orbiston, on the Clyde. This was to be a village, with the requisite enclosures for agriculture; and buildings for habitations and manufactures erected upon it, in the shape of a parallelogram. In a short time this also failed; the land was sold, and the buildings, which had been put up at a considerable expense, were pulled down and carted away.

We need not follow him in all his smaller schemes. He had only one thought, and to tell that became the business of his life.

For

For many years his world was a little one; the greater one had forgotten him. It would be painful to trace out the ravages of atheism, and failing powers in the mind of a man who had done so much good. Let us only say, that the determined unbeliever was duped by spirit-rapping, and gave heed to a medium. In 1857, he attended the first meeting of the Association for the Promotion of Social Science, held at Birmingham, and in 1858 at that held in Liverpool. Soon after the latter he died, at the town of his birth, aged eighty-seven.

We have said that his half-education, as well as his early success, may be seen in all his projects. Had his mind been well disciplined by systematic study, it could never have cherished the erude theories, nor believed in the heterogeneous jumble, which it loved and ever enunciated. Had his reading been extensive, he would never have asserted, as original discoveries, the old exploded notions of a bygone day. The tone of his mind was French rather than English, and when his popularity was over in his own country, he was reverenced as a prophet by our restless neighbours. His error was the error of his school, of Fourier, of Emile de Girardin, and of Louis Blanc. His American failure finds a parallel in that of M. Cabet. It was in attempting to regenerate mankind, by trying to destroy that which God had made indestructible, human individuality. Social chaos can never be changed to order and beauty by a social earthquake. Social disease is the aggregate of individual sickness; and it is only by individual cure that the State can be healed. Let pure water, pure air, and the free light of heaven be equally enjoyed by all; let Mammon be prevented from building for the poor the wretched over-crowded tenements which foster a physical and moral malaria; let a sound, not showy, education be provided for the very lowest; let each man be taught to fear God and work righteousness;' and then, without the reconstruction of the social organism, without anarchy, and without revolution, the chaos, as at the end of the six days, shall glow in primeval beauty, and the Maker, well pleased, shall say, Behold, it is very good.'

ART. IV. THE FOUNT OF TRUE POETIC INSPIRATION.

"Apiotov μèv vòwp.-PINDAR, Olymp. I. 1.

HE various advantages of water-drinking have been repeatedly discussed and debated in various ways. The physical, medical, and social requirements of man have been reviewed; and while some have contended for the virtues of the pure stream, others have as stoutly maintained the necessity and enjoyment of a stronger and more stimulating beverage.

But