publications that we remember to have seen, what kind of toys, if any, the children brought up on the rational system are to be permitted to play with. Perhaps this may show our entire ignorance of the rational system, which must have so rational an influence on those born within the sphere of its operation, that they will have the same contempt for toys which quakers have for heraldic titles. Perhaps, on the other hand, their toys, and the proper rational adjustment of them, may be so important that its special direction may be the function of a cabinet minister, or of the sort of person who, under a rational system, is to hold a like position, if under a rational system there can be anything like a cabinet minister.

of insanity among mankind. Thus in the New Moral World there is an address by him, as President of the Social Congress, dated 4th March, 1844, which is hopefully devoted to a considération of "the increasing absurdity, insanity, and madness of the British and North American Governments and people." To quiz Robert Owen-to say of him, for instance, as Bentham said, "His mind is a maze of confusion, and he avoids coming to particulars-he is always the same-says the same things over and over again-he built some small houses, and people who had 'no houses of their own went to live in such houses,"-to speak thus would be an indication of moral disease in its rankest form. We are not sure, indeed, but that even the humble effusions of the present writer might entitle him to a cell in the hospital of the morally diseased. People who resist the general training system, and desire to keep the education and rearing of their children in their own hands, would of course be instantly swept into that receptacle. Nay, as one glances over Owen's projects, the necessary inhabitants of these moral madhouses expand in a most alarming manner. Thus, in his Report to the County of Lanark, in 1821, where he proposed to establish a set of model villages, it was to be part of the system

The punishment or other coercive means of enforcing it, is a vital part of every ordinary law. It is one of the promised results of the "rational" system, that punishment shall not be needed, since every one shall act rationally; but still there is to be something holding the same place apparently that punishment holds in other codes, which invites attention. In "the general constitution of government and universal code of laws" already cited-certainly, by the way, free of the legislative vice of longwindedness, since the whole might be comprised in about three sections of a modern statute-there is the" that the male children of the new villagers following provision:

"All individuals trained, educated, and placed in conformity to the laws of their nature, must of necessity at all times think and act rationally, except they shall become physically, intellectually, or morally diseased; in which case the Council shall remove them into the hospital for bodily, mental, or moral invalids, where they shall remain until they shall be recovered by the mildest treatment which can effect their cure."

This is widely suggestive. The idea appears to be an enlargement from that of the ingenious quaker who would not kick the dog that bit him, but hallooed out mad dog!" and sent him with the chances of that character through the street. Nobody is to be punished, but every one who differs in opinion with the authorities, which would be an inevitable type of moral disease, is to be counted mad, and treated accordingly. True, he is to be subjected to the "mildest treatment," but it must be sufficient" to effect his cure," and crush his stubborn, rebellious irrationality. When the topsy-turvy has been completed, we have an idea that the lunatic asylums would be large and full. Owen himself gives alarming indications of the quantity

should be clothed in a dress somewhat resembling the Roman and Highland garb, in order that the limbs may be free from ligatures, and the air circulate over every part of the body, and that they may be trained to become strong, active, well-limbed, and healthy." (p. 38.) Now suppose any man so lost to all rationality as to remain a devotee of small clothes or trousers; suppose some Celthating Pinkerton, madly resolute to clothe his limbs, of course he must be immediately removed, in the custody of a couple of rational barelegged policemen. The scenes in rationality-land would have some resemblance to those in Moscow under the sumptuary regulations of the Emperor Paul, where an English merchant was seized on the pavement by the police, and a pair of illegal and irrational boots peeled from his limbs.

The reader who has encountered these characteristics of intellect for the first time may naturally ask in amazement if we have been speaking of that Robert Owen whose name once filled the ear of Europe. We can easily imagine some future antiquary setting forth on his inquiries, in the belief that he will prove how there were two Robert Owens, as there were two Socrateses, two

Nor were these things the types of a mere vague reputation, which magnified the object by its distance. Corporations and committees, who are as little likely as valets to find a man a hero, and can express their opinion of his unheroic nature more honestly, were respectful to Owen, and reported on his projects as if they were things fit for this world, and for the respectable public bodies the reporters represented. A committee of the Commissioners of Supply and freeholders of the county of Lanark, prepared a report on “a plan for relieving public distress, and removing discontent, by giving permanent productive employment to the poor and workingclasses, under arrangements which will essentially improve their character, and ameliorate their condition, diminish the expenses of production and consumption, and create markets co-extensive with production." The committee did not entirely adopt the plan: had they done so, they would have provided a curious incident for the ridicule of posterity. They spoke, however, in a tone of high respect both of Owen and his project. They even suggested that it might be valuable to have a few comparative experiments, on however small a scale, attentively conducted, and reported by practical agriculturists in different parts of the country" but they did not show an inclination to make any pecuniary sacrifice or incur any pecuniary risk on the occasion. They at the same time applied to Owen the following remarks, in which it is pleasant for us to find, after having so often quoted himself against himself, that we can adduce a body of worshipful gentlemen speaking much in his favor. They say-

Catos, two Rousseaus, and two Burkes. We lar that it has been literally " used up." It is have spoken of the contrasts in his style, not to be found in libraries to which many his sudden leaps from the abstract to the con- people have access, for in them it has been crete; but these are faint contrasts in com- thumbed to annihilation. It is perhaps not parison to that which severs his past from his the least brilliant indication of Owen's emipresent position in the eye of the world. So nence, that in the volume of this series degreat a reverse of fame-so startling an in- dicated to Philanthropy, his portrait is prestance of the instability of human greatness, sented as that of the living head and repreit would be difficult to parallel in the history sentative of the doctrine that man should of eastern conquests and revolutions. He love his neighbor as himself. who is now held by nearly all the world to be a babbling old man, with a silly crotchet in his head, which he mumbles over and over while nobody listens, had once a name to conjure with. Many people believed him to be the most satanic, others believed him to be the most god-like man that trod the earth. The contests about him-about his character and his system-were as fierce and furious as any that the annals of politics or polemics can show. He could probably produce more laudatory letters, bearing illustrious signatures-some of them royal-than any other inhabitant of this island. Archbishops and crowned heads made pilgrimages to New Lanark to talk to the wonderful regenerator of the age, and see the palpable evidence of his beneficent wisdom. The Mexican Governmentoffered him a territory on which he might make what a doubting world called experiments; and where, as absolute ruler, he might begin his vast plan of "revolutionizing peaceably the minds and practice of the human race." It included the actual district of California; but though the diplomacy of Britain and the United States were embarked in the matter, it was not adjusted to Owen's satisfaction, for he was then a very fastidious person, expecting some day to stand rather nearer the command of the human race than Napoleon, and not inclined to make his experiment in corpore vili-whereby ho escaped becoming one of the richest monarchs, at least in the new world. The Duke of Kent at one time entertained the notion of spending some months with his daughter under the personal tuition of Owen, that she who is now our most gracious Queen might from infancy be imbued with his system. It is only on his own authority, certainly, that we have this curious port without expressing the supreme satisfaction fact; but we have great reliance on his which they experienced in visiting the highly intruthfulness, and do not doubt that he had teresting establishment under the more immediate good reason to believe that this was the ob- direction of Mr. Owen. There the benevolence ject of some complimentary letters from the of that individual and his partners is portrayed in Duke of Kent Middle-aged people may rethe most pleasing features; and an inspection of member in their youth having seen a series convince the most skeptical to how great an exthe splendid manufactory at New Lanark must of little volumes full of tattle called the tent the amelioration of the manufacturing popuPercy Anecdotes. This book was so population may be carried, when the views of the ma

VOL. XXI. NO. 1

"Your committee cannot conclude this brief re

34

nagers are governed by that spirit of philanthropy | plough may seem most trivial in the expression: which actuates the partners of the New Lanark | and to inexperienced and even to learned men-to works, whose means of control over their population are only exceeded by their desire to direct them to the most valuable purpose, that of promoting the comfort and independence of the parents, | and of training up the children, from their earliest infancy, by such a gentle, but at the same time, systematic course of education, as, in the opinion of your committee, cannot fail to render them very valuable members of society.-P. 64.

In the year 1820, when this Lanarkshire committee made their report, Owen's name was so great, that they acquired a kind of European publicity from having come into actual contact and controversy with him, and many attacks were made on them for their bigoted short-sightedness in not at once embracing the offer of the man who undertook to abolish crime and misery at so small a rate. Now the popular opinion regarding this leader is so completely the reverse of what it then was, that to prevent the good-natured but dubious commendations of the committee and the existence of the committee itself, from being considered as a myth or joke, we give the names of its members, viz., "Norman Lockhart, Esq., convener of the committee; Robert Hamilton, Esq., Sheriff-Depute of

my respected friends the Edinburgh Reviewers, for instance, who cannot be supposed to have much useful practical knowledge-will appear to indicate a change equally simple and unimportant in practice. It generally happens, however, that when a great calamity overwhelms a country, relief is obtained from practical men, and not from mere theorists, however acute, learned, and eloquent. In the present case, simple as appears to be the alteration proposed, yet when the mind of the practical agriculturist, of the commercial man, of the statesman, and of the philosopher, shall be of the man of science, of the political economist, directed to the subject as its importance demands, the change will be found to be one of the deepest interest to society, involving consequences of much higher concernment to the well-being of mankind, than the change from the hunting to the pastoral state, or from the pastoralstate to the plough cultivation."-P. 18.

And yet, with all its plausibility of tone, one would have thought that there must be enough in this document to have created ridicule. alarm, and excited animosity, tinged with

It must have been surely difficult to suppress that oh! oh! so effective in nipping the buds of precocious visions in St. cal purposes were addressed in this fashion— Stephens, when a committee met for practi

Lanarkshire; Sir James Stewart Denholm of Coltness, Bart.; Sir William Honeyman of "These new Associations can scarcely be formArmadale, Bart.; Sir Henry Steuart of Allan-ed before it will be discovered, that by the most ton, Bart.; Col. Gordon of Harperfield; simple and easy regulations all the natural wants Hugh Mossman of Auchtyfardle, Esq." of human nature may be abundantly supplied; and the principle of selfishness (in the sense in which that term is here used) will cease to exist for want of an adequate motive to produce it. It will be quite evident to all, that wealth of that kind which will alone be held in any estimation amongst them may be so easily created to exceed all their wants, that every desire for individual accumulation will be extinguished. To them individual accumulation of wealth will appear as irrational there is more of this invaluable fluid than all can as to bottle up in store water in situations where

The reception of this project, indeed, is one of the fixed points by which, on looking back, we can trace the progress of opinion. No committee of supply, town-council, or quarter sessions would now listen for five minutes to such a communication. True, it does not develop the full-blown preposterousness which its author was able to exhibit twenty years later. Its style is ingeniously adjusted to a solemn tone of pompous wisdom. As it is one of the phases of insanity to believe all men at large insane, so it is one of the regular devices of Utopianists to speak of themselves as practical and experienced persons, and of the rest of mankind as mere theorists. Louis Blanc does this in a very grand way; and certainly he who brought into existence the committee of the Luxembourg, and produced the Battle of Paris, was entitled in some senses of the term to consider himself a practical man. Owen assumes the position very gracefully in his report to the county of Lanark :—

"To substitute," he says, "the spade for the

consume.

which will arise from it, the existing thousand With this knowledge, and the feelings counteractions to the creation of new wealth will

also cease, as well as those innumerable motives to deception which now pervade all ranks of society."-P. 50.

The great features of the plan were the substitution of spade husbandry for the plough, and the classification of the population in parallelograms, where every act and function of human existence should proceed according to regulation. The virtue of the change in husbandry arises from the astounding fact that the knowledge of agriculturist has hitherto gone no farther than to under

to

stand the characters and resources of beasts, while he is to make them understand those of men, so that they may finally come improve the breed of men more than men have yet improved the breed of domestic animals."-p. 40. Here is, perhaps, the first leading indication of that morbid contempt of mankind at large, in which the writings of Owen himself and of the whole school of Socialists and Communists are steeped. They never treat the human being as endowed with internal light, capable ever of brightening within him as he trims and feeds it by intellectual exertion, and destined to carry him on from stage to stage in a broadening civilization. Such are mankind to those who

-"Doubt not through the ages one increasing

purpose runs,

human being freedom for the development of his best faculties, there is a strong desire; but, on the other hand, toward all plans for depriving him of self-liberty, and converting him into a trained and parallelogrammed machine, there is a growing and a just suspicion. This change in the public mind-not so much a change of opinion as an acquisition of healthy strength-arises in a great measure from what has been seen, and learned, and wisely thought of during the past few years of our history. Our social system has been tried, and not in vain, since it has enabled us to reap the fruits of earnest and serious investigation. See how much the writers of Horace Walpole's day spoke or thought about the people-see how their interests, their progress, their prospects, are now considered by the best minds of the day-and we observe the main source from which our social knowledge has sprung. The patient investigations But to the Communist man is a blind bared themselves round questions connected on the inductive system, which have expandbarian, who must be led, housed, fed, and with poor-laws, with population, with emiclothed, and driven to his task and to his gration, with labor and capital, with crime food. He may be divested of individual cha- and education, have, with the aid of the press, racter, aims, and pursuits, and drilled into diffused so much of sound knowledge, that a parallelogram uniformity, until it impart to proposal such as Owen's would never be restless humanity Wordsworth's characteris- listened to by any miscellaneous body of tic of the still monotony of the pasture, ordinarily educated men. We have, doubtless, yet much to learn; and indeed, when we look back and see the opinions that sometimes took the ear of the public twenty or thirty years ago, and were dignified with the name of philanthropy, one almost shudderingly reflects on the possibility that the eggs of many dangerous fallacies may still be hidden and hatching in some of our most cherished projects of benevolence.

And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns."

where

"The cattle are grazing,

Their heads never raising;

There are forty feeding like one." They may be disciplined to apply the spade uniformly and unvaryingly, as the ox or the horse drags the plough-their "breed may be improved" for agricultural purposes. Such is to be the rational perfection of man, the noble in reason, the infinite in faculties, "in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a God!" But, in truth, it would be difficult to find a better and more cheering indication of the onward progress of opinion and knowledge in this country, than the glance back at Owen's project, and its reception in 1821, as a sort of fixed point. Although the Socialists, looking round their own cell, are ever proclaiming that their opinions are gaining ground, the reverse is the truth. A few have been strengthened in their absurdities by the outward pressure of opinion against them, but the public at large never were less inclined to adopt the views of these preachers. For education, for sanatary reform, for everything that tends to remove barbarism or impurity, and give the

A

In this education of the public mind, so far as it has gone, Owen and Socialism have had their share. They have stirred up investigation and discussion. Nothing is so dangerous to the cause of truth as an arid apathy that neither vegetates into weeds nor fruit. Next in value as a developer of truth to the earnest search after it, is the hardy and flagrant proclamation of fallacies. domineering bishop called on the Government to shut Owen's mouth. The Tories became frantic because the Prime Minister presented him at Court. Vain outcries and baseless fears! Owenism lectured itself down by its strong efforts of propagandism. Nothing has better shown the blessedness of open free public discussion than the influence that the missionaries of Communism, who by some momentary impulse flooded the country about five years ago, have had in