The British Press; or, Morning Literary Advertiser.
London, England, 1820-07-03 00:00:00

Coneloo : fur J. 31.10.mau. 99, Ludtale-♦treel.

PORSONI ADV EUSA lA.
This day is published, vlegautly primed in oue %Warne
demy Bro. oruanseated with a hue Portrait of the Author,
...bloomed by Faller, from a !PI'S! I ham diAtely after
I. ue death, at Use reduced pi ic.. Of I. is bvnJs,
1111CAltD1 POIISO.\ I I)‘'EltSA RI/L.-
IEL Now et Emendationei in Poeta' Grieco', quas ea
Sch.-des Maanscrepies P.ratrui spud Culls giusa SS. Triuita-
t s Cautabrigire adwersalls deprompsetuut et ordioaruiet
wen ludicshus instriexerunt.
JACOBUS HENRICUS HONK, A.M.
CAROLUS JACOBUS BLOM FIELD, A M.
CaMebrigue Suroplibes Collette SS. Triartatis. Ettentlit
Josours Smith, AcaJtanisr Typographies.
Veweent Losichni spud J. aianman, 39, Laidgate.street.
si • A few Curies, beeetlfelty printed ow imperial paper,
ani Amt-pressed, with Proof Itnprvaaious of the Head, at
th• 'raison! price of 21.15. board., may be bad of the Pah-
I oiher.

•• If the t •seof a busk is to be estimated by the merit
ifai coateets, it is impossible to complain of dimness is.
lb • 'MIMI 81111i111/Ce. ne matter Su Possum's criticism* is
• s•celisigly a/id/eased. Ilul she ressArks and esseu.l.tioas
h•re pelslisbed bee* written by Porton as the same leirgth ay
the rlicaut and clsattised Preface Ist the Umitba, they would
hist umaipied at least lire limes titer pretest space; aud
had lbe poblicatio• iiieb a multitude of critical dainties
been Wrested Se soy of emir German brethren, story would
pubsbly Imre ban I.llrosol through seamy full-geese se•
lames $e lie great delight of all lovers of balky literature."
—;:eseb. Hewes" Criticism, Nu.l. p. 119.

MR. OWEN'S ItEPLY TO SRNEX.

TU THE EDITOR OF THE BRITISH PRESS.

Son—Your correspondent Setter, in your Paler
of the 149 h instant,iiiimencee his observations on
the letter which I lately, addiersed to the Esrl of
Liverpool, with she following paragraph
If your vialou• and well•m►aoiag corre.•pundest,
Mr. Owen, of New [Amok, will ;,lace before die public, in
plain and perspicuous propositions, the I eientasfs. or prin-
ciples of Ids ate'' science of the iunuences of eimumstaners,s
wtrich he Jrclares to Ire an invalnable moral science by
whose, grathud application' to lice' business of lir, the im-
mediate distresses of the country will be easily removed,'
the Ministers, both Homo, of Parliament, and all the pa-
triotic and needing men of the ihree kingdoms, will bare
ibis important and discovery before them, in a
mariner quite as effectual fur their gem rat information, av
by au examination of the projection at the • bar of hods
Iluusn'.^
l'he distresses of the country are already so severe,
that nisny will-disposed and intelligent persons are
of opinion, that if they are permitted to increase
for the next six months as they have done for the
last half year, the most seriuns public cal imities Err
to be sopprelsended, to say nothing of the actual
suffering that hundreds of thousands of the working
classes now experience.
Those who understand the real cause of the dis-
tress, know that while the cause shall remain unrr-
moved, the evil will increase from (toy to day,
and that eventual ruin mind ensue. But no one
appears to possess miree sufficient to look at, or even
to noose this subject. An imbecile moral cow-
ardice has paralyses' the powers and faculties or all
those whose duty ■wl whose interest it is to bring
this important business fairly before the public
mind. Views, too bruited for the time in which
they live, prevent them from seeing how greatly
their interest would be promoted by a flue of con-
duct different from that which they are non pursu-
ing. But if our country awl civilised society are to
he saved from confusion. there most be no for. :it r
delay. The cause of the evil most be looked at,
named, and fairly and fully discussed, or we shall .
continue to act the part of children, and expect
effects to ceases while the ceases which produce them
are in full activity.

To this crisis we are now come, and we cannot
escape from it. If those whose duty it is to per-
form the task, feel alarmed at the danger that pre-
judices may create, and therefore allow the national
suffering to continue and daily increase, some one
must step forward and risk whatever appertains to
the individual, that his country, that his fellow-men
may be rescued from impending ruin. Not for
fame, either present or future (for they are both of
no value in my estimation), but, if I know myself,
from a genuine unmixed desire to rilieve human
nature fruit the miser• with which it is unnecessarily
afflicted, I shall exert my best powers, althooKli
unaided, to perform this task, which coulil
beat much better mid far qior" easily executed by
others.

It is not, then, any particular part or parts of
the existing system that create the evils now to he
removed: it is the system itself shut is the cause of
:hens. The finiudotion on which it rests is unsound :
it is n principle of evil, and until it shall be remov-
ed, it ran only generate reds that will increase per-
petually. Those. in power, if they will set them-
. st Ives honestly to the task, may now, in peace and
quietness, accomplish the necessary change, and
rataldish* new order of things that will permanent.
If secure the relief required, with far more ease
than, under the existing conflicting interests, they
can alter any part of the old arrangements, so as to
give even a temporary and partial relief sufficient
to satisfy any of the parties who now so loudly
complain.

The present is a.sptein said to rest substantially
on individual rewards and poniehments. But who
have yet received the rewards? Von, fiaopers or
your Sovereigns ? I see and dearly comprehend
the punishments which thi. system has ever it Hid-
ed upon rill, from the highest to the lowest, for at is
'Float admirably calculated to torment the whole /m-
-ount race; but I have yet, after a hing and moat
extended sea►ch. failed to discover any who have
been benefited by its rewards. ll•d it not darken-
ed all our perceptionv, rind deadened all our facul.
ties. and made us incapable of distinguishing good
from e►il, we should long since have .li•coverrd that
the choicest gifts of this system were severe punish.
meats ; and that it was directly opposed to nature's
moat beneficial laws. have any been indeed re.
warded by crowns and mitres ? A•k their prossesiossa
sod in the secretly of their hearts they will say, we
have found them prickles mud sharp thorns.

It it, this system. then. *hick I mean now pub-
licly to attack ; and to wove that its supposed beat
principles are gross and injurious errors, inflicting
tniarry upon all without exception ; and that so long
es they stir permitted to operate. they must ISt Cflk,
sully preclude unsokiiiil nut only from erjeying
hipplueu, but even from knowir•' what It sully is.
1 would now ask your Correspotideut if a subject
of thi. magnitude, on which the snippier's or misery •
of the human race depend., unlit to be placed be.
lore the publie through sly other medium than by
au examination at the bar of the two Houses or Poi!
liatueut ? They are tilluwed to lie the most
gent public bodies ono to existence, the most ca.
wade of defending the existing system, and the
most iutereated iu Its .defeoice.
Inn the views which I entertain I am either greatly

ri4ht or greatly wrong ; th• re can be no medium.
The principles which I sin about nrudvoc•ite, if
true, will be productive of the greatest po,.ihle
goo;1 ; if false, of the grentett possible evil ; mid in
this.case they ought not to remain nueontradicted
for one hour. I urn as scritptileusly anxious th.ss
error oil 1:1 have no place iii the mind. as
the head of ally church evt r w•iv or can be : it is,
therefore, I propose, that the system wfucli I menu
to recommend to supersede the pi eseut should be
sifted to the uttermost, and that whatever of error
it may contain, should on the slues thy that it is
made public, be dttected boil exposed. I; of,
dreadfully had, as the existing system, in theory
unit practice, appears to me, it iv IDOL distaitt from
my wish to take any adrintage iti my uttemp's to
replace it by u better. On the COM r:11y, 11l (NW-
cderation of the natural ell't eta of 11411g..,taldistied
habits mod notions on lininiltl nature, aid from a
desire, as far 1:s in me 11,4, to prevent cavil, I would
treat it with all the delicacy entisistetit with the
speed) removal of the Severe miseries which it now
inflicts upon society.

Such ary my motives for offering to be examined
on this subject at the bar of both (louses of Par-
liament ; where, from every int-rest in the state,
the existing system %sould have the most strenuous
support ; and where an opposing system could and
would be most power:oily combated by as parties,
sod puticalarly by those acute minds who advo-
cate favourite theories, and who recommend other
plans of relief.
Under the hourly accumulating pressure of dis-
tress, and the causequent increasing tbmger which
arise from the contionance of the present system,
what other means are left to me, by which my urea-
so-es c:iii be placed before the public mind, so as
to produce the practical good in time to meet the
existing evils, and to ward off the greater calami-
ties: with which we are menaced ?

If t zin not deceived, and I have really been
anxitou4 not to he in error on this momentous sub-
jtco, we shown] in all tloe means requisite to give
in less than six months, full, beneficial, permanent
employment to all who now seek or may rerpsire
it ; and to pay the labour of these individual►,
most iodvantot;;eously for the landholder and the
capitalist, at no average rate of five shillings per
day of the present value of money : And further,
by the application of the science of the influ-
ence of circumstances over human nature" the
wretched iiiotives of individual rewards, punish-
memo., and eiontaiion, may he speedily withdrawn,
and others introduced that wculd with we effect
that which the former must ever fail to stE corn-
plish. By the aid of this science, the eluting
adult populatilo will be evientially improved and
benefited, whit. the rising generations Might be
easily into what they ought to br..
t 113.-, just now finished a pretty full de►elope-
ment of the whole subject, prepared in the form of
reports, for a Committee of country Gentlemen, ap-
pointed by a geueral county meeting, to report
upon them. These reports w ere read to the Com-
mittee yesterday, said they are now under their con-
sideration. The Committeot is composed of Gr.
tlemen of great respectabilit•l in the comity, who, I
believe, are sincerely desirous of doing their duty;
hut can it be expected that they wilt grapple with a
subject that combines every cotasideratiou connected
with the science of political economy, and which
even the present Administration is afraid openly to
meat

My views on this subject nre founded on princi-
ples directly opposed to those advocated by Adam
Smith, by Messrs. Malthus, Ricardo, and Baring,
and br he Edinburgh Reviewers. Each of these
celebrated authorities appears to me to have
mis-
taken a very smell part of fae science of political
economy for the whole of it; and their views co•ise.
qoently are not only defective in theory, but, when
applied to practice, productive of great misery to
society. If I can nrove other principles to be right,
their theories will speedily cease to give an erro.
aeons direction to popider opinion ; but those cor-
rect principles must of necessity change the whole
social system.
It is a change of this decisive - -ire that is
now required. Yet if iomiglit anti f.. -nee shall
govern the councils of thii nation, the 'ge may
be epeedily, effected throughout civilized society,
without confusion or any evil during its whole pro-
gots,. t

Thu. would an examination at the bar of the
kern Houses of Parliament put an end to my errors
it once. if I am wrong; and, if I am right, the bene-
fits of this system would rapidly spread far and wide,
and in left than a month its practical advantages
would be felt over England, Ireland, and Scotland.
Your Correspondent naturally rnongh conjec-
tures that 111 Cotton-spinner, " by long obrooding
over the power of 'neck:laird direction," might
hare his mind so warped as to expect to govern the
world by Kittle analogous influence. Ile cannot
know that in my particular care the power of ph?.
sical mechanirin has always been made subservient
to the ecquirement of the Ititilieledge of mental'
mechanism, mill dim instead of " broodiug" over
ally one'set of partial local notions. peculiar to any
tine arc% party. clans, or country. I have ardently
endeavoured, by personal ermfidential communica-
tion, perhaps the tnno.t varied that has yet fallen to
sin•bialiAdstal. to seek nut all the real knowledge to
kw %lad in each of there little localities; and by
salting the truths to be met with in each of them,

leaving out the prejudices of all, a new, consistent,
and beautiful s)sient has been the resnit.
Ilad his lute Roval Iloglnnis, the ever.to-be la-
mented Duke of Kent, lived, this system would
have been fortnight forward in a manner the least
likely to create alatus. lie had thoroughly studied
the .principles on which it is founded. He had
commissioned a eery intelligent proorea,lnnol
is. sake tip his residence here for a short time.
that he might examine. without restraint. every
part ofthe practice, and report to his Royal flighness
cont.:drubs:ly respecting it. So thoroughly was he
cenviiiced of the incalculable unmixed good which
it would secure for all ranks in society, that lie was
ileternmed to give it sill the support lir his lower;
acid for this purpose he had, it short petted before
his death, made taraisgtinetals for visiting the estu-
blishmetst this spring, to examine pirminally the
whole detailF, that he might be estable.l, oti his re-
turn to town, to advocate the cause iu the elitist dr.
ci'ive manner, from his personal knowledge of the
prinrical benefits which a mere approximation to
the priiicirlei• of the system had produced. By
the de.tth of this highly reptctril personage, the
lost all invaluable advocate, and the
%solid a Prince who was determined to be a real
patriot. Gy this unlocked-for dispensation, which
has deprived charity of her best support. I have
been compelled to adopt hew measures ; and k
seems now that the " System" is destined to make
its way solely by the irresistible truth of its princi.
Wes, against all oppositiun, and every disadvantage
of birth. fortune, and education, on the part of
its advocate. 1 am, Sir,
Your obedient Servant,
ItoaLaT OWEN.
IVew Lanark, enth June, 1920.