The daily crescent. [volume] ([New Orleans, La.]) 1848-1851, 1848-05-30
r,s,eh ps,,tics-Comnuussin

habit of looking at every thing relating to Cont-
nental Europe through English spectaces, and con-
seo,,entIy receive their impressions of men and
,binos distorted and discolored to the last degree.
The English public have proper idea of the state
of philosophy, social political economy, or the
tendencies of human opinion out of Eng land. They
imagine that the Germans are fit only to write
dreamy romances that the Italians simply very
good sculptors, fddlers and singers, and that the
French are adopts at cutting pigeon wings, and
building barbados. OF the vast development of
mind, of the new theories of social existence, and
political rights and dutes which have been brought
to light and gained strength and influence for the
last thirty years, the English wtully and stub
bory ignorant, or if few may understand they
will not risk their fame subsistence by enlghten-
ing their countrymen upon such very Unpopular
topics Under these circumstances 1t Is not sur
prising that crude and false notions should prevail
in England and in this country where we take
English opinions at second hand, on the subject OF
the great movement of the age-the social regener-
alton of the people Communism is the mighty bug
hear which thew have invested with every thlflg
horrible in appearance and dreadful III intent, and
with which they labor to frghten all the grown up
children who shall have the bad taste or temeflty
to look favoraby upon the progress OF liberal prln
cipes 1t is something, in their apprehension, par
tcularlv dreadful- proposes to give food, clothing,
education, and comfort to the whole people; even
to the moor and the laborng man. To an English
understanding, this can only be done by universal
snoliaton of the rich, and forthwith they proclaim
that there is large party in France that advocate
the general plumber of all property! And absurd as
is the notion, they find all Cockneydom, and not
tn boli
ciaiism, St. Simonism, Fourierism, Communism,
Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity may all be
erroneous in theory, may all be inapplicable to the
real wants man and to the improvement OF socle-
ty-they may all be impracticable, whether put In
operation by the consent Of portion of the people,
or by the political power Of the country but to in
innate that any all of them are systems OF rob-
berry, plumber, or outrage upon the rights OF any
person or class of persons is grossly to SANDER the
best meaning men who ever lived for the mere pur-
pose of checking inquiry into existing abuses. All
these systems may be wrong, but the fact that they
have suddenly assumed a strength and Importance
all over Europe; that they have in one form or
other enlisted the sympahes and support OF the best
and wisest men of the age; that they have over
turned the throne of Louis Philippe, and made their
watchwords of Liberty Equality, and Fraternity
the motto of the leading Continental nation, prove
that they are founded in some deep teeling-that
they are the utterance of some great human want
The laboring classes throughout Europe, and partl-
cuarly in France and the British Islands, are yearly
increasing in numbers and in msery-constant TOLL
restitution and starvation is the lot of the greater
number of the people To relieve this mass of suf-
fering humanity-to give themfor their subsistence
and comfort some portion of that wealth which their
soil produces, to elevate them in the scale Of phys
cali intellectual and moral being, is the object OF all
the systems which have been broached--of all the
revolutions past and to come, The particular mea-
sures advocated by the different phanthfopists and
reformers may be, and doubtless are inadequate to
the end proposed-but in charity let us examine
them; by reasoning ascertain what they have OF
good or i'll, and endeayor to whether something
for the general welfare may not be educed even
from the widest most fanciu 1t is neither just
nor reasonable to denounce them in a body as
schemes of fraud and plumber, and those who advo-
cate them as robbers, disorganzers and enemies Of
society. Yet the latter is the course which the
English press universally pursues, and the one in
which it is generally followed by our own. To re-
NEEDY in some degree this wholesale injustice, we
shall, during the course of few days, give gene
raj, but sufficiently detailed view of the different
systems of social economy which have beenstarted
upon the Continent during the last thirty years. and
we can promise readers that if they derive no
other advantage from it, they learn at least how
little dependence is to be placed upon those who
write with an interest to pervert the truth, and
upon that other and larger class, who write about
what they have never taken the pains and labor to
understand.