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

ties, was of a rare quality of excellence under his
hand. In ten years, while all the world was ex-
pecting his ruin from his new-fangled schemes, he
bought out his partners at New Lanark for
£84,000. His new partners and he realised in four
years more than £150,000 profit; and he bought
them out for £114,000. These are facts 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 became Robert Owen's wife. How they
were managed by Owen we have seen. In 1816 he
found himself at liberty to try his own methods
with his work-people, and his social and educational
success was so striking that many of the great ones
of the earth came 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, prelates 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 in-
vited him to a succession of interviews, and em-
ployed Government clerks for many days in
registering conversations and copying documents ;
and there was less absurdity than some people sup-
posed 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 Govern-
ment ; and whenever the Prussian system of edu-
cation, with its fine promises, its sedulous adminis-
tration, 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 whichl brooded
over it, and its dependence for genuine liberty and
free individuality on the personal character of the
'administrator. The discipline in the two cases
might be different, and the dogmas opposite ; but
the educational system had strong resemblances.
This ought to be easily conceivable when it is re-
membered that Metternich was a pupil of Owen's,
and the Mexican Government his patron, and
Southey his eulogist. In 1828 our own cabinet
sanctioned awl furthered his going out to Mexico,
to see about a district which was offered him there,
150 miles broad, including the golden California
of our day. There must have been something in
Mr. Owen.'s doings to cause 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 schemes
afforded for training men to a subserviency 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. De Fellenberg had
instituted education in connexion with agricultural
industry, but had not particularly contemplated
infants in his scheme. Others had in theirs ; but it
was not till Henry Brougham had reported to his
parliamentary and other friends in London what
was actually done at New Lanark, and they had
consulted with Mr. Owen, and borrowed his school-
master, that Brougham, Romilly, Ben. Smith,
Zachary Macaulay, and Lord Lansdowne set up an
infant school in Westminster. This WAS in 1819,

when Owen's school had been in operation three
years. As usual, in such cases, the immediate,

tenefit was obvious enough, before the attendant
mischiefs began to show themselves. Robert Owen
was extremely happy in having surrounded these
babes with " happy circumstances," amidst which
they could not but grow up all that he could wish ;
and less sanguine men than he gloried and rejoiced
in the prospect of the redemption of the infant
population of our towns. It did not occur to them
that the mortality among the children might be in
proportion to their removal from the natural influ-
ences of the family, and of a home where no two
members of the household are of the same age, or
at the same stage of mind. The fearful mortality
from brain disease which has since taken place in
infant schools was the dark side of the picture
which Owen did not see—the warning given out
by the experiment, which he did not hear. The
bright part of the result was the proof that educa-
tion could go on well—and better perhaps than ever
before—without rewards and punishments ; or, we
may rather say, as Mr. Owen's benign presence and
approbation were a constant reward, without any
arbitrary visitation whatever.
And what has come of all the noble promises held
out by a man so good, and in many respects so
capable, as Robert Owen ? He once made nearly
3,000 people an example of comfort, decent conduct,
and unusual cultivation, at a time when poverty,
crime, and ignorance made all good men's hearts
sad. What are the results ? The results lie in
the improved views and conduct of a very- large
number of descendants from Owen's pupils ; and
yet more in the impulse that
teote
Cheiiimanr
Socialists
co-operative principle. The hr
are his disciples, politically, though not religiously ;
and the Secularists are his disciples, philosophically,
though not as of course politically. He is, and
will sooner or later be admitted to be, the father of
the great social changes which are preparing, and
already going forward, as the evidence of the eco-
nomy of association becomes more clear. But his
own special schemes failed—one and 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 whose 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 Rappites, who were