The Express.
London, England, 1858-11-19 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, FRIDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER 19, 1858.

THE LATE ROBERT OWEN.

Robert Owen died on Wednesday, in the 89th
year of his age, at Newtown, Wales, whither he had
gone on a visit to his native place.
Robert Owen must have been an extraor-
dinary child, judging by his own amusing
account of himself as a teacher in a school
from the age of seven. He was under-master
at nine. He maintained himself as a shopman for a
few years, being always treated with a considera-
tion and liberality which testify to there having been
something impressive about him. Arkwright's
machinery was then coming into use ; and at the
age of 18, Robert Owen became a partner in a
cotton-mill where forty men were employed. He
was prosperous, and rose from one lucrative concern
to another till he became the head of the New
Lanark establishment, which included a farm of
160 acres, and supported 2,000 inhabitants. The
ordinary notion of Robert Owen among those
who had not examined his operations is,
that be was that kind of " amiable enthu-
siast," who is always out at elbows, and making
his friends so • but nothing could be further from
the truth. He was a consummate man of bunions,
never wrong in concrete matters, however curiously
mistaken in his abstract views. He made many
fortunes, and enabled others to make them; and if
he had been selfish and worldly, might have died
the wealthiest of cotton lords, or a prodigious landed
proprietor. No one could go over any of his succes-
sive establishments, in Scotland, Americi, or Eng-
land, without being convinced, in the first place, of
the economy of association, and, in the next, of Mr.
Owen's remarkable ability in the ordination and
conduct of the machinery of living. His arrange-
ments for the ineal.h of an aggregate multitude, for
their comfortable feeding, clothing, leisure, and
amusement ; the methods of cooking, warming,
washing, lighting; the management of the mill
and the farm, the school and the ball-room,
everything requiring the exercise of the economic
and administrative faculties, was of a rare quality
of excellence under his hand. In ten years, while
all the world was expecting his ruin from his new-
fangled schemes, he bought out his partners at New
Lanark for 84,0001. His new partners and he
realised in four years more than 160,0001. profit;
and he bought them out for 114,0001. These are fasts
which ought to be known.
Those New Lanark mills were set up when Owen
was a boy, in 1784, by Arkwright, in conjunction
with the benevolent David Dale, of Glasgow, whose
daughter Demme Robert Owen's. wife. How they
were managed by Owen we have seen. In 1816 he
found himself et liberty to try his own methods with
his work-people ; and his social and educational sno-
etas was so striking that many of the great ones of
the earth rains to him to learn his method. In spite
of his liberalism emperors and kings and absolute
statesmen went to Lanark, or invited Mr. Owen to
their courts. In spite of his infidelity, I:relates and
their clergy, and all manner of dissenting leaders,
inspected his schools. In spite of the horror of old
bigots and new economists, territories were offered
to him in various parts of the world on which to try
his schemes on a large scale. Metternich invited
him to a succession of interviews, and employed
government clerks for many days in registering oon-
versations and copying documents; and there was
lees absurdity than some people supposed in Mr.
Owen's sanguine expectation that his "new system
of society would soon be established in Austria.
Though he did not see it, there was much in his
method of organisation which might be turned
to excellent purpose by an arbitrary government;
and whenever the Prussian system of education,
with its fine promisee, its sedulous administration,
and its heartless and hopeless results, is brought
under our notice, our remembrance travels back to
New Lanark, with its dogmas, its discipline, the
mild and beneficent solicitude which brooded over it,
sad its dependence for genuine liberty and free in. the personal character of the adminis-
trator. The discipline in the two oases might be
dilbrent, and the dogmas opposite; but the /dun-
denial system had strong resemblances. This ought
to be easily mmesivable when it is remembered that
Menorah& WM pupil of Owen's, and the Mexican
government his patron, and Southey his eulogist. In
1828 ear 01111 cabinet sanctioned and furthered his
going out te Mexico, to see about a district which
was eared kiln there. 150 miles broad, includ-
img the golden California of our day. There
isnot have been something in Mr. Owen's
doings to came such incidents as these. The
" amiable enthusiast" himself steadily believed
that it was the love of humankind which was the
bond between himself and all these potentates; but
wise men saw, and the event has proved, that the
temptation lay in the opportunity his mimes
afforded far training men to a subservient 7 which he
was very far from desiring.
Robert Owen was the founder of Infant Schools.
many had conceived the idea, but he was the first to
join the conception and the act. Da Felisabseg bad

instituted education in connexion with agricultural
industry, but had not particularly contemplated
infanta in his scheme. Others had in theirs : but it
was not till Hooey Brougham had reported to his
parliamentary 161 ether friends in London what
was sottadly done New lanark, and they had
consulted' with Mr. Owen, and borrowed his school-
master, that Brot4ham, Romilly, Ben. Smith,
Zachary Maculae and Lard Lansdowne set
up an infant school in Westminster. Tout was in
1819, when Owen's school had been in
operation three years. As usual, in swat cues, the
immediate benefit was obvious enough, before the at-
tendant mischiefs began to show ther.naelves. But his
own special schemes failed—one end all ; and if he
had lived two centuries, scheming at his own nimble
rate, his enterprises would never have succeeded,
because they were founded on an imperfect view of
the human being for whory.. benefit he lived and
would willingly have died. In 1824, he formed a
group_of communities in America, having purchased
the Harmony Estate, consisting of a village and
30,000 acres of land, from the Reppites, who were
emigrating westwarde.. The community, including
several thousand pervins, improved in mind,manners,
and fortunes; but there was still the something want.
big which was essential to permanence. Duke Ber-
nard of Saxe Weimar stayed there for • week or
two, and, amidst all his respect and admiration for
Mr. Owen, sa that it would not do; and in that
ohm the experiment was not a long one. The so-
count given oy the Duke of Mr. Owen's expecta-
tions is so precisely true, at all periods of his life,
that it may stand as a general description of the
phibuithrqpiat's state of mind for seventy years : " He
looks to nothing lees than to renovate the world, to
extirpate all evil, to banish all punishments, to
erects like rWitis and like wants, and to guard
against all conflicts and hostilities." And so he
went on to the end. At every moment, his " plans"
were going to be tried in some country or other,
which would bring over all other countries. Every-
body who treated him with respect and interest was
his disciple; and those who openly opposed or
quizzed him were regarded with a good-natured
smile, and spoken of as people who had very good
eyes, but who had accidentally got into a wood,
whene they could not see their way for the trees.
He was the same placid happy being into his old
age, believing and expecting whatever he wished ;
always gentlemanly and courteous in his manners;
always on the most endearing terms with hie chil-
dren, who loved to make him, u they said, " the
very happiest old man in the ;"world always a
gentle bore in regard to his dogmas and ila expecta-
tions; always palpably right in his descriptions of
human misery ; always thinking he had proved a
thing when be had asserted it, in the force of his own
conviction; and always realty meaning something
more rational than he had actually expressed. It
was said by way of mockery that " he might live in
parallelograms, but he argued in circles;' but this
Is rather too favourable a description of one who did
not argue at all, nor know what argument meant.
His mind never fairly met any other—though at
the close of his life he h id a strange ides that it did,
by means of spirit-rapping. He published sundry
conversations held in that way with Benjamin
i
Franklin and other people; and n the very same
breath in which he insisted on the reality of thane
conversations, he insisted that the new found power
Wee " all electricity."
It must be needle's to add that whatever reception
his doctrines and plans may deserve or meet with,
his life and conduct were virtuous and benign. No
censure attaches to him in his domestic relations, in
his personal habits, or in his ordioary social dealings.
He was a beloved and faithful husband and father,
pure and simple in his way of life, and upright in
his transactions. There was therefore no solid
ground for the horror expressed by the Quarterly
Reriiiw, in the name of its constituents, when they
heard of Robert Owen from a new place. When
they were expecting, as they declared, to hear of his
being in Bedlam, they heard of his being at court,
introduced to the young Queen by her Prime Minis-
ter' Lord Melbourne. Many have been introduced
there who were quite aa wide of the mark in
speculation, and quite as complacent in their mis-
takes; while there can hardly have been many so
self-governed, so tree to their convictions,
sad

so thoroughly superior to the world, so impartial s.
disinterested, and so devoted to the welfare of the
people, individually and collectively. As long as the
name of Robert Owen continues to be heard of there
will be some to laugh at it, but there will be more
to love and cherish it. The probability seems to be
that time will make his prodigious errors more pal-
pable and unquestionable, but that it will at least
in equal proportion exalt Lis name and fame, on so•
count of some great intuitive truths which are at
prevent about equally involved with his wildest
mistakes and his noblest virtues.

Major Melchior, of the Imperial French Artillery,
who was charged with the preseatetion of the IMb. howitser
L'Alliance to the Queen, at Windsor, yesterday visited the
military establishment. at Woolwich. The meter was so-
compenied by Major Andrew., who has recently been
honoured by the Emperor with the distinction of the ribald
and mom of the Legion el Hower. The major'. appearance
on the ground attracted considerable atteatlos, not only
from the circumstance of his being the envoy of oar 'mast
ally, but also from the evident loot of hie having borne an
ample share in the hardships and dangers of the Crime,,
having soared the lam of his right arm at the memorable
siege of the Malakoff.

A letter from Rome, of the 10th says :—" In the
memory of the oldest Roman such weather ham not beat seen
here in November ea for the last 10 days has afflicted us.
We have had rain, hall, snow, and frost. In many year so
severe • temperature is not experienced in the depth of
winter mm we have had In this first third of November. The
malls have come in of a morning with their roofs white with
frost. This morniog the rain came down in torrents, con-
vening the streets into rivers, and for some time the snow
Oakes fell thickly and heavily. Such weather is the more
a:oam ea this is in general the period of the short fine
noon karma ea St. Martin's summer."

The Hon. Robert Dale Owen, resident minister
her the United States to the Court of Naples, who hap-
pened m be on a visit to hie dither et the time of the lures
dame, writes to a friend It Is ell over. My dear father
peeled away this morning (the 17th). at • quarter before 7,
sad pared awe) es gently and quietly as if he bad bee
dare Weep. There wee not the least struggle—not a °mi-
norities of • limb or • muscle, nor an expression of pain on
his free. His breathing gradually became slower and slower,
until at lest it ceased so imperceptibly, that even as I held
his bend, I could scarcely tell the moment when he mo
lease breathed. His last worde, distinctly pronounced
sheet twenty minutes before his death, were IWldf hem
seer' About half an hour before he said, ' Very may and
seenfortable: His greet object appeared to be to convince
im that he did not suffer, and that he wee Winded with our
senseless to his. He is to be burled on Hestia, next, fa
the same family settle in which his hither and mother 16.
The rector, Mr. John Edward*, who has kindly sailed ups
his five or six these slue he has been here, will officiate."
KOSSUTH lit SCOTLAND.—The first of two lec-
tures on Homier, and Austria was delivered at Glasgow on
11`wisesday night by M. Kossuth, in the Olty gap; Walter
Beetesaria, Req., DIP., in the chair. • ewenpeadent of
the IldritittryA &prose writes :—"The inhabilegis of Burnt-
island bre sejoyed the opportunity el ealserialeg and
berg entertained in return by this weedestal err me.
He erred from Edinburgh on the abeam el Tuesday,
where be had been lecturing the periens erre& and
was received on landing by a sere el the airs el island. The The instrumental brd wee le elardeess. end with
waving banners, on which heilliinKreleme ' Weisser* to
Kossuth, the Illustrious Exile I' sad ail invigorating strains
that cheered the heart of the far werbeer, het as ealesai
ate the OCOSSiOn. His reception SISS tpdasentheeislis; and
wa hie proceeding to the Uric Hall in the mei( her the
the
was peareded by the bead, eel inereadel
by the med. heartily. The hell wee the
try •
easel rempeserie who showed forreeka.
die ir the brae end the lecturer by their sad well-
eapremed preles. Provost Anderson he chair
while • aware of the • influentiaerr on
ohs plelhiea 1L Kommth's subject—, Chweeterma dif.
ei=min satiate, illustrated by puallels'—was
• ere see, and brought out all his parts to
perddlen. Ea sme in this 'abject most at boar, meet to
advertsgs—drees IM nabs led striking purges so elo-
quer* espereed, der he at Erin for illaseretien so
*sly treisessd sad enured, sea trim its wry strokes of
lbe gash! Inisr se gristly leteiderd. The sescharre
was rite en corks—the 111111111111. sad long. I
The Rev. lb. &mild the Iserwer, mod, ft a few
remarks,for the s
ly the sysepery of hared/ end et the
audience strisew adle, eel ter freedierfe err.
Three Marty rein was then eriedell, led the teediag
esperstet"