The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-02-21 00:00:00

SOCIALISM

TO THE EDITOR OF THE LIVERPOOL MERCURY.
SlR,—}laving perused your leading article in last Friday's
Paper, (headed Socialism and Mr. Robert Owen,) I be.- leave
to offer a few remarks to you upon the subject. In the first
Place, after quoting the words .of the celebrated Charles
Fox, that " if opinions are absurd, they should be met with
contempt; if specious, by argument; and if seditious, by
Prosecution ;" and after having yourself stated that " this
niiapplies
with peculiar force to this country," I was
Inuch surprised to find you attempting to prove, through the
whole ra
of
your remarks, that the only sound policy to be
Pursued, in preventing the spread of the social tenets, is to
treat them with silence and contempt, as though they were
nothing more than a compound of absurdity and specious-
ness, and without the least tincture of sedition. You are,
Perhaps, sir, not aware that the fundamental principle of
socialism is, that " the mind of man iS made for him and not
L
him"—that he is a perfectly irresponsible being—that it is
unjust to punish him for any crime he may commit; and,
consequently, that it is an act of injustice to tolerate any go-
vernment or laws whateVer. These, sir, are the opinions
they have declared again and again in the face of the whole
world, and I think no rational man can doubt their being
seditious in the highest degree. If opinions such as these are
allowed to be openly promulgated without receiving any
check, where will safety be found for life or property ? or how
long would the present constitution of the country be allowed
~c!, stand ? It is an impossibility to reconcile two such oppo-
site principles as the necessity for a government, and the
to ersPonsibility of man. For what man, laying the least claim
consi can believe in the latter, and at the same time
der it an act of justice to tolerate the former ? A friend
leettnuine, some time ago, in my hearing, asked one of their
weutr?l'S (and that too before a crowded audience) if when he
Wife m),ole, supposing him to be a married man, he found his
orand children murdered ; and if he had it in his power to
or lush
the perpetrator of the deed, whether he would do so
not?, And he unequivocally and distinctly stated he
~h°ll,El not. For as a combination of external
forced the man into commission of the deed,
iL(not crime) lie should think it an act of the greatest injustice
to punish him for it. And this is not only the opinion of a
single individual of their community, but the opinion of all.
And what government, I would ask, is justified in tolera-
ting such opinions ? For think you, if they had but the
slightest prospect of success, by an appeal to physical force,
they would long remain quiescent? No, they would soon
embrace the views of Satan in his address to his fallen
angels—

peace is despaired.
For who can think submission ? War then, war
Open or understood must be resolved."
And acting upon them, they would hurl the Queen from the
throne of her ancestors, and trample the noble constitution
of England in the dust. Secondly, you have quoted a
paragraph from the Morning Chronicle, and by your manner
of quoting it, you give your sanction to it, stating that to
" commence a legal warfare against opinions," it would not
stop" with the Socialists, nor with the Unitarians, nor with
the Roman Catholics, nor with the Dissenting Voluntaries,
nor with the Methodists." I, for one; have yet to learn it
would ever begin with either Unitarians, Roman Catholics,
Dissenting Voluntaries, or Methodists. Nor am I aware
that either of the foregoing believe it unjust to punish an
aggressor of the laws, or that it is an act of injustice to
tolerate a government. It is not on account of their religious
-opinions, that legal proceedings ought to be instituted against
them, but because they exert themselves to the utmost in
propagating doctrines that endanger the safety of the state.
Again you state, that a stranger to read the Bishop of Ex-
eter's speech, would imagine socialism to be a heresy of re-
cent date, and that he would be surprised to find that the
system was publicly avowed by Mr. Owen, and put to the
test of practice considerably more than a quarter of a cen-
tury ago. Now, sir, you will find, if you take the trouble to
inquire, that at New Lanark in Scotland, for a number of
years after its establishment, the children. were educated in
the Christian belief. And, even it appears from your own
showing, that his opinions upon the subject of religion were
,not publicly known until the year 1823; and that I think
you will not deny is considerably less than a quarter of a
century ago. There are, sir, many infidels with whose
opinions government would not be justified in interfering
with, by any summary process whatever, and with whom,
perhaps, the arguments made use of by Dr. Watson in his
Apolont for the Bible, have more effect; but a man may not
be a believer in the inspired Scriptures, and yet be a sup-
porter of law and government ; for instance Hume, Gibbon,
and many others whose opinions respecting religion were
well known, but who nevertheless did not poison the minds
of others with sedition. Why you should, sir, as a finish to
your remarks, attack the ministers of the church, and pass
quietly over the ministers of that system, which declares
there is no moral difference between Burke the murderer
and Howard the philanthropist, (and who are, generally
speaking, interested individuals,) 1 am at a loss to deter-
mine, except it- is, as I should hope not, for party political
purposes.—l remain, sir, yours, J. C.

• ALTERATIONS IN THE NAMES OF DocsS.—On the day
of the Queen's marriage the Brunswick half-tide basin was
denominated the Coburg Dock, and the Brunswick half-tide
dock was called the Union Dock.