395c 
 
 Burton 
 C(»imunism 
 
 iia
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 COMMUNISM. 
 
 FROM THE 
 
 EIQHTH EDITION 
 
 ENCYCLO]?iEDIA BPtlTANNICA. 
 
 JOHN HILL BURTON, 
 
 EDlNBUKaH : 
 PRINTED BY NKILL & COMPANY. 
 
 MDCCCLIV.
 
 HX 
 
 =>c 
 
 COMMUNISM. 
 
 CoJoruKTSM is one of the terms which have been applied to 
 the various classes of projects for re-organizing society, and 
 subjecting men to a more or less strict system of regulations 
 calculated, as their framers maintain, to promote human wel- 
 fare. It is impossible to give a scientific definition of the word 
 Communism, anymore than of Socialism or other miscellane- 
 ous terms, in which groups of varying theories and projects 
 are colloquially referred to. The influence which these pro- 
 jects have fi'om time to time exercised upon mankind, and 
 their late tragic connection with European history, render 
 it necessary that some notice of them should be found in a 
 work of general reference. It will be seen presently that 
 it is convenient to bring them all under one head ; and the 
 word Communism presents itself as preferable to any other, 
 because it applies generally to the highest developments 
 which artificial systems have aimed at. It thus includes 
 the minor within the greater projects, and admits of the 
 general re\iew of the whole question between artificial 
 systems and the natural laws of society. Under the head 
 of Communism it is usual to class those organizations which 
 propose to adjust the whole conduct of the human being, 
 and not only to regulate property, industry', and the sources 
 of livelihood, but also to revolutionize the domestic relations 
 and the social morals of mankind. The less unpopular term 
 
 891255
 
 4 COJOIUNISM. 
 
 of Socialism is generally applied to a revolution in the laws 
 of property and the organization of labour. But no such 
 distinction is fully established, and all the views and pro- 
 jects of the re-organizers run more or less into each other. 
 Investigation lays open an indefinite series of schemes, from 
 the vast projects for taking possession of the new-born infant, 
 and siibjecliMg him to a strict daily and hourly discipline 
 tlu'ough life, down through an indefinite gradation of organiz- 
 ing schemes, until we reach projects of pauper management 
 or of joint-stock partnership, which may be merely spoken 
 of as carrying in their nature a tinge of socialism. To 
 give under the head of each separate artificial system — as, 
 for instance, under Phalanstery, St-Simonianism, Fourier- 
 ism, or Owenism — a specific account of the minutiae of each 
 system thus propounded, after the manner in which an ac- 
 count is given of the several sciences and philosophical 
 systems, is the course which would naturally give most satis- 
 faction to the supporters of each scheme ; for, as there has 
 been little good understanding among the several projectors, 
 and each has generally attacked the others, an inquiry in 
 which their systems are mixed up with each other would be 
 received as a confusion of truth with falsehood, and of saga- 
 city with quackery. But if it were desirable to describe 
 each system to the satisfaction of its supporters, it would 
 be scarcely practicable. Fourier's alone might occupy years 
 of study; and he himself maintained to the last that none, 
 even of his most ardent disciples, rightly understood his 
 system in all its complexity ; there was always something 
 or other overlooked in its intricate machinery, which, like 
 the absence of some essential wheel in a complex piece of 
 clock-work, disorganized the whole. 
 
 Even, however, if each system could be satisfactorily pur- 
 sued through all its ramifications and laid distinctly before the 
 reader, it does not appear that the result would justify the 
 labour and space necessary for the object. A question an- 
 tecedent to any question as to the merits of the details of
 
 communism:. 6 
 
 each system is, whether a case is made out for artificial in- 
 tervention at all — whether nature has not established laws 
 which accomplish the object in view better than any pro- 
 jects which human ingenuity can devise. 
 
 It is to the social laws developed by the domestic rela- 
 tions, and to those wider and less rigid principles of action 
 which are indicated by the science of political economy, 
 that we go to find the system on which it has pleased the 
 Deity to provide that mankind should live. It is true that, 
 in investigating the true principles which rule the domestic 
 relations, inquirers may, as in scientific investigations of any 
 kind, make mistakes ; and they are perhaps still more liable 
 to err when they investigate the laws of pohtical economy, 
 and endeavour to distinguish what they are sufficient from 
 what they are insufficient to accomplish. But both systems 
 proceed upon the belief that there are laws of social and 
 economic development, as there are laws of mineral crystal- 
 lization, or of animal and vegetable physiology ; and to find 
 out these laws is the constant endeavour of all social and 
 political economists. 
 
 The propounders of communistic or socialistic projects, 
 on the other hand, deny the existence of the whole or of a 
 great part of such a system — maintain that man is living in 
 chaos, and offer to regulate him and put him into shape as 
 so much inorganic matter. As a simple example, social 
 economy says that in the general case parents ought to have 
 the adjustment of their childrens' destiny left in their hands, 
 because a law of nature makes them love their offspring and 
 desire its welfare ; and though there may be exceptional 
 cases, yet the law of family affection is so general that a re- 
 liance on it affords a better chance of accomplishing the 
 desired object than any artificial arrangement. On the 
 other hand, a communist will maintain that children ought 
 to be immediately removed from their parents and brought 
 up by a committee of management, because, to use the 
 words of Robert Owen, " the affections of parents for their
 
 b COBrJTCNISM. 
 
 own childien are too stronj^ lor their judgments ever to do 
 justice to themselves, their children, or the public, in the 
 education of their own children, even if private i'amilies 
 possessed the machinery — which they never do — to well 
 manufacture character from birth." 
 
 To take another simple examj)le from political economy. 
 This science teaches us that the best means of supplying 
 mankind with the material objects of their desire is to leave 
 the function to the spirit of commercial competition, and to 
 secure an absolute property in the fruits of industry to those 
 who bring them into existence. On the other hand, Louis 
 IJIanc says that commercial competition is a source of misery 
 and degradation, while Prudhon says property is robbery, 
 and each desires to adjust the whole matter according to an 
 organization of his own. 
 
 Those therefore who believe in the truth of political eco- 
 nomy cannot admit that there is any need for the projects of 
 the socialists and communists, and consequently cannot admit 
 that there is any necessity for studying and developing the 
 ramifications of each system, and showing precisely where 
 they differ and agree, or wherein one is preferable to the other. 
 Hence it is that, [proceeding upon the basis that the princi- 
 ples of political economy express with more or less accuracy 
 certain natural laws which it is unnecessary to supersede, 
 it is not considered necessary to investigate the ultimate 
 arrangements of each projector's system ; and so it has been 
 deemed expedient to treat here merely of the primary ques- 
 tion between the natural system and the artificial systems. 
 
 For the whole matter receiving attention to this extent 
 in a work like the present, there are various reasons. In 
 the first place, late European events have made the projects 
 of the socialists and communists a part of the history of the 
 world. But further still, at the point where the plans of the 
 iirtificial projectors depart from the received doctrines of 
 political economy,' they are an important means of testing 
 the accuracy of these doctrines by the application of a sort
 
 COMMI NISM. 
 
 of experimentum crucis. Hence the readers of socialist 
 works often say that the system, as a system, is unsound, 
 yet there is some truth in its foundation ; while what they 
 really mean is, that there is some mistake or defect In the 
 received doctrines of political economy for which the in- 
 ventor is offering an artificial remedy. Wherever opinions 
 in favour of these artificial systems prevail — and in later 
 times they have occasionally prevailed to a sufficiently alarm- 
 ing extent — there must be something wrong in the condi- 
 tion of the people. There is some error in the political 
 economy which rules their actions, and either they are im- 
 properly interfered with, or they are so neglected that the 
 true laws of nature have not freedom to develop themselves. 
 One organic defect developed in nearly all the instances 
 where such projects become popular, is an extent of popular 
 ignorance, rendering the laws of political economy nugatory 
 among a people who cannot understand even their simplest 
 rudiments. From such causes, the social and communistic 
 movements with which the world has been occasionally 
 visited are, taken collectively, an interesting and valuable 
 object of inquiry. 
 
 The literature of this department of inquiry is indefinite, 
 since it blends itself with theology, ethics, politics, poUtical 
 economy, and history. Every, one who proposes anything 
 for the improvement of mankind is liable to come within the 
 category, if, instead of aiding nature, his project should pro- 
 jx)se to supersede her laws. Hence communistic literature 
 covers all the range from such vast plans of reconstruction 
 as Fourier's or St Simon's, down to the pamphlet on Pauper 
 Management, which may become liable to the suspicion of 
 communism. The great conceptions or plans of govern- 
 ment which have from time to time appeared, generally 
 mix up an artificial organization with that which is in actual 
 operation ; and sometimes the former character so entirely 
 preponderates, and carries the whole project so far out of 
 the course of actual practice and probability, that it is set
 
 8 COMMUNISM. 
 
 down as a fiincii'ul dream, of which the author never antici- 
 pated the realization. Such is the Uto])ia of Sir Thomas 
 More, vvhieli lias alforded a term for characterizing impos- 
 sible or i)reposterous schemes. Some of the Frencli writers 
 are proud of saying, that the great dispute between social- 
 ism and political economy — between the world as it should 
 he made, and the Morld as it is — began when Plato wrote 
 his licimblic, and Aristotle in his Politics bent his power- 
 ful practical mind to the examination of the actual con- 
 »htion and political organization of mankind. The Re- 
 public of Cicero, from which the world expected important 
 views on govermnent, supplied from the practice of Rome, 
 embodied the Platonic vagueness ; and the same spirit has 
 pervaded the works of a multitude of writers on political 
 philosophy. It has to be observed, that before it can give 
 expression to a distinct theory of communism, the press 
 nnist be free, or in a state of defiance, because in proposing 
 a new plan of organization, it proposes to supersede the 
 government of the day. Hence it was in the midst of the 
 great contest in England in the seventeenth century, that 
 the boldest practical opinions were expressed in such works 
 as the Leviathan of Hobbes and the Oceana of Harrington. 
 When works like Rousseau's Social Contract were popular, 
 it may be said that the French press was in a state of licensed 
 rebellion, since under despotic rule, opinions of the most an- 
 archical and revolutionary character were promulgated with 
 such systematic calmness, as if the possibility of their being 
 adopted and carried into practice were not to be enter- 
 tained. In France, since the first revolution, while the 
 press has sometimes been controlled, yet opportunities have 
 been afforded from time to time for issuing such works as 
 have to be presently noticed. In 1848, not only in France, 
 but throughout Germany, a current of socialistic literature 
 broke out. It has now been forced back again, and there 
 is no freedom on the Continent to publish communistic 
 doctrines. In Britain the whole question has been left
 
 COMMUNISM. 9 
 
 freely to develop itself, with what effect we shall presently 
 see. 
 
 Communistic arrangements have been from time to time 
 in partial practical operation among isolated bodies of men, 
 and the character of this partiality of operation is peculiarly 
 instructive. The most illustrious example is that of the 
 Spartan discipline. From his cradle to his grave, the La- 
 cedaemonian citizen was regulated in all his movements by 
 the state. He had no home or family. When the state 
 permitted him to marry, it adjusted his conjugal intercourse, 
 and might temporarily or permanently transfer his rights to 
 another person. Everything was adjusted to the produc- 
 tion and training of healthy and strong men fit for the war- 
 like service of the state. The men living in separate bar- 
 racks were, if possible, not to be acquainted with their child- 
 ren by sight, lest, according to the view resuscitated by Mr 
 Owen, paternal weakness might interfere with the rigid cha- 
 racter of public discipline. At the sysitia or public mess, 
 there was a meal renowned for its frugality distributed with 
 impartial uniformity to rich and poor. Competition in trade 
 was rendered impossible, since no commercial or productive 
 pursuits could be followed by free citizens ; and, in reality, 
 there was no money or circulating medium, the celebrated 
 iron coin being rather a practical sarcasm on the gold and 
 silver of other states, than a substitute for them. With all 
 their elaborate and stern enforcement of equality. Spartan 
 citizens had however in some way the command of wealth, 
 and they were divided like the rest of mankind into the rich 
 and the poor. But their great inequality which carried off all 
 the social difficulties of their complicated organization was 
 their vast system of slavery. As not only servile drudgery, 
 but productive commerce, and, it might be said, all the arts of 
 peace, were committed to the helot class, their numbers and 
 capacity made them powerful, and only a ceaseless watchful- 
 ness and severity interspersed with some acts of ferocious 
 cruelty kept them from reversing the social order. In fact,
 
 10 COMMUNISM. 
 
 this instance goes with otliers of minor moment, to show 
 that to the extent to which there is artificial organization, 
 there must be a corresponding amount of slavery or coer- 
 cion, since men must be forced to do that which it is not 
 lawful to bribe them by competitive pecuniary recompense 
 to do. The philosophy of the Spartan example was in the 
 mind of a Scottish workman, who, when a brilliant commu- 
 nist lecturer had iinisheil his description of the uniformity 
 and happiness of his parallelogram, stood up and said, " but 
 whae's to dee the durty wark." The lecturer ingeniously 
 pointed to the mmiber of primarily disagreeable occupa- 
 tions which men may be induced to undertake without pay- 
 ment — as when the anatomist handles macerating garbage, 
 and the sportsman pursues the chase of the unprofitable wild 
 beast through cold and heat, wet and hunger. But whatever 
 speculators may anticipate as to the future of human nature, it 
 is a fact as to the past and present visible every day, that 
 there are services, and these important to human happiness, 
 that nothing but coercion or pecuniary inducement will 
 extract. 
 
 Among the practical instances of artificial organization in 
 later times, we may cite the guilds and other associations of 
 traders and artificers whose peculiar privileges have scarcely 
 yet entirely disappeared, while they are in some measut-e 
 virtually revived by trade-unions and combinations. Their 
 object was to suppress competition and freedom of action ; 
 but it was so far different from such views as those of Owen 
 and Louis Blanc, that, instead of providing some substitute 
 for competition of which all were to reap the advantage, the 
 object was to confine all the benefits of trade or productive 
 industry to a chosen few, exclusive of the rest of the world. 
 Thus, so long as they were sufficiently powerful to retain 
 their privileges and suppress external competition, they pos- 
 sessed a compactness which enabled them to enforce their 
 internal restrictions and obligations as the price paid for the 
 possession of lucrative privileges. In other words, as it was
 
 COJDIUNISJr. 11 
 
 more profitable for a man to belong to a corporation, though 
 it restricted him from competing with its other members, 
 than it would be for him to compete with the world at large, 
 he assented to restrictions ; and submission to them in these 
 instances does not show that the world at large will ever 
 consent to accept and obey them. 
 
 The power of religion has in many instances acted as that 
 force which will keep men in associative action on principles 
 contrary to the natural laws of society. It is not difficult 
 to imagine the early Christians in small clusters, with the 
 firmest reliance in each other and in the continual fear of 
 persecution, enjoying all things in common. The monastic -■) 
 establishments were communistic institutions, and they in- 
 fused a tinge of their character into the early universities. 
 Relics of its tone may still be found even lingering in such 
 uncongenial ground as Cambridge and Oxford. The mo- 
 nastic communities, however, attempted by their organization 
 to supply only a portion of that which nature does by social 
 laws. They cut off entirely those relations of husband and 
 wife, and of parent and child, which, as they are in them- 
 selves the most complex and powerful portion of the natural 
 organization, are of course the least easily accomplished by 
 the artificial. There are some small communities at pre- 
 sent in America, such as the Shakers, who, exacting the 
 same observance of celibacy, manage, through a system of 
 communism, to supply within the limited sphere of opera- 
 tion left to it the natural laws of society. Their orderly 
 habits, and the success with which their agricultural opera- 
 tions have been pursued, have often been cited in support 
 of communistic principles. It was chiefly by religious in- 
 fluence that the Jesuits established their empire in Para- 
 guay, where their authority was not merely that of a govern- 
 ment, but extended over the social direction and organiza- 
 tion of the peculiar people among whom they established 
 their mission. The classes of religious societies scattered 
 through central Europe, and known as Moravians, Bohc-
 
 12 COMJIUNISM. 
 
 niian Brethren, or Ilerrnhuters, in a similar manner derive 
 tlie power ol' soeial or<fanization, so efFectively exercised by 
 tlieni, iiom a religious source. Tlie })ressin-e of persecution 
 has imparted to them a species of social compactness often 
 exemi)lilied in isolated religious bodies. The Huguenots 
 of France, for instance, the Vendeans of the revolution, the 
 Waldenses of the seventeenth centurj', and the Covenan- 
 ters of Scotland, submitted to an amount of moral discipline 
 from their proscribed and hmited jn-iesthood, to which the 
 followers of an established or protected clergy will rarely 
 submit ; for there are none to whom censure or the depriva- 
 tion of privileges is so formidable as to those who brave per- 
 secution for the sake of belonging to a religious communion. 
 A very remarkable instance of the organizing power of re- 
 ligious authority, especially when strengthened by persecu- 
 tion, has been exhibited in the late history of the American 
 Mormons ; and, to make it the more emphatic, its potency 
 has exhibited itself in direct and immediate contrast with ' 
 the feebleness of pure communism as an artificial system of 
 temporal organization. Through the spiritual power which 
 they had established, the leaders of the sect, Joseph Smith 
 and Brigham Young, exacted so ready and implicit an obe- 
 dience, that they were really able to accomplish that distri- 
 bution of functions which the social organizers strive after 
 in vain. The man whose assigned function it was to dig 
 this drain, or plough yonder field, or weed, or make a fence, 
 went to his duty unresisting, and did it with all his heart. 
 It was thus that, when they set their foot on the desert, they 
 surrounded themselves with the fruits of skilled industry, 
 and assumed the character of an old and permanently or- 
 ganized community with almost miraculous celerity. But 
 when they were driven from their possessions in Nauvoo, 
 and a body of French communists took their place, these, far 
 from rivalling the industrial organization of their predeces- 
 sors, had not even enough of that quality to preserve the 
 fruit of their predecessors' labours ; and, in the hands of
 
 COMMUNISM. 13 
 
 die new-comers, the cultivated fields of the Mormons lapsed 
 again into a wilderness. 
 
 The communists, whose failure proved so signal a con- 
 trast to the practical ability of the most preposterous fa- 
 natics of the day, were led to form a settlement in America 
 by the bold persuasions of M, Cabet, who was afterwards 
 tried and punished for the sufferings he had occasioned to 
 them. Icaria, the place selected for the great experiment, 
 was on the Red River, a tributary of the Mississippi, dividing 
 Arkansas fi-om the newly annexed state of Texas. He pro- 
 fessed to have there purchased a million of aci-es of land ; 
 and the most alluring descriptions were given of its beauty 
 and fertility, and its capability not only of providing for all 
 the sordid wants of ordinary mankind, but of ministering af- 
 fluently to the enjoyment both of the senses and of the in- 
 tellect. The classes who are usually attracted by emigra- 
 tion schemes, as offering them a life in contrast with their 
 uneasy struggle at home, were charmed with the prospect. 
 Soon after a small body had put themselves into M. Cabet's 
 hands, the colony was represented as in ^tive existence, 
 and in the fiiU enjoyment of all the promised elements of 
 subsistence and luxury. It had its organ called La Popu- 
 laire, and was trumpeted both in France and by the socialist 
 organs in Britain. While the scheme had as yet a scarcely 
 defined existence, the revolution of February 1848 swept 
 past The hurricane would have obliterated any ordinary 
 social scheme in the hands of ordinary social reformers, but 
 the Icarians seized the tide of socialism, and made their pro- 
 ject so prominent that 500 eligible emigrants were obtained. 
 The first condition of adoption into the new republic was a 
 startling one — the emigrant required to give up all his pro- 
 perty into the hands of M. Cabet the president. Some en- 
 tertained misgivings as to their position, but did not act on 
 them until it was too late to retreat, for the author of the 
 scheme had furnished himself with the means for compul- 
 sory enforcement. After a miserable voyage, the emi-
 
 14 COMMUNISM. 
 
 <jraiits, in extreme wretchedness, arrived at New Orleans, 
 where they expected to find their jiromised land. Instead 
 of it, they met with a few of their wretched fellow-conntry- 
 men, portions of the advanced party, who could find no 
 Icaria, or any other place where they were permitted to oc- 
 cupy land without paying a high price for it. A portion of 
 the 500 proceeded on the voyage up the Mississippi with 
 their president. They had a land journey of between two 
 and three hundred miles, which but a small portion of thera 
 accomplished, several dying by the way, while others made 
 their escape to France. Those who reached Icaria found 
 only a desert, with a few ruined huts, and an abundance of 
 graves. 
 
 Finding that the land, such as it was, did not belong to 
 M. Cabet, and that its owners demanded for it a price far 
 beyond their means, the unhappy remnant of the expedi- 
 tion adopted the idea of taking possession of the still warm 
 nest whence the Mormons had been driven by the wrath of 
 their neighbours ; but at Nauvoo their failure was so imme- 
 diate that they scarcely left behind them a trace of their oc- 
 cupancy, and the fields on which the Mormons were be- 
 coming rich reverted almost to a state of nature in their 
 hands. 
 
 From the incidental communism to be found scattered 
 throughout general literature, or exemplified here and there 
 in the manner in w hich we have just seen it on a small and 
 isolated scale, it is a great step to go to the consideration of 
 those vast systems which have been designed in our own 
 (lay for the complete reconstruction of society. France is, 
 as the world has had too nmch reason to know, their great 
 productive emporium. The two patriarchs of these systems 
 are Fourier and St Simon, two men of whom each enter- 
 tained towards the other and his opinions that unmitigated 
 contempt which it is the peculiar character of social organ- 
 izers to entertain for the works of each other. They were 
 men of totally different habits and character, and though at
 
 COMMUNISM. 1 5 
 
 a distance their systems might appear to be so much ahke 
 that they would naturally have blended with each other, 
 they took their separate courses with their respective clus- 
 ters of disciples, as distinctly as two rivers from the same 
 mountain chain pursue theh" courses to opposite coasts. 
 
 Of Fourier and his system it is difficult to speak, since, as 
 already has been observed, it is so complex that he never 
 admitted that even his most ardent disciples understood it, 
 and to the last he would sanction nothing as an announce- 
 ment of his views which he had not himself written. It 
 may suffice to say, that those who have glanced at his writ- 
 ings have been astonished to find how far they have differed 
 from all anticipation of their contents, and from all other 
 systems of artificial human organization. Instead of the dry 
 details of industrial training and household economy, the 
 reader finds himself in a gorgeous imaginative world, over- 
 loaded with an exuberance of sensual and intellectual joys, 
 such as an oriental sage might picture in his opium dreams. 
 
 His theories were almost in wider contrast with the real- 
 ities of his own life than with the writings of the other 
 communists. He spent the greater part of his days as a 
 humble drudge in a commercial office, living fi-ugally on a 
 small income, and writing books which startled the few who 
 could be prevailed on to read them, by their vast theories 
 and the rich and ingenious imagination which peopled them 
 with wonderful and captivating analogies. They were of the 
 kind of writing which, once admitted at all, is accepted im- 
 plicitly like a revelation ; and though those who gave ear to 
 him were but few, yet among these few were some zealous 
 and fanatical believers. 
 
 Fourier was born in the year 1 772, and it was about the 
 year 1 825, when he was upwards of fifty years old, that he 
 appears to have enrolled his earliest disciples. The revolu- 
 tion of 1 830 afforded a hearing in France for all who had 
 startling social novelties to proclaim ; and Fourier then be- 
 gan to gather a popular audience. Out of comparative ob-
 
 16 COMMUNISM. 
 
 sfiirity he thus rose to an extent of popularity and power 
 which astonished men more conversant with the ordinary 
 world, and induced them to look to theories of social or- 
 ganization as a more promising field of enterprise, than it 
 had seemed to be in a country so entirely under the subjec- 
 tion ol' innnediate practical influence as France. Fourier 
 foimd, however, that there were rivals to his popularity, and 
 his system, founded on calculations which he maintained to 
 be the counterpart of Newton's physical system, was in his 
 eyes the true science which admitted of no contradiction or 
 divergence. Hence he thought it necessary to warn the 
 world against the efforts of fools and impostors, by the pub- 
 lication in 1831 of his Pieges et Charlatanisme des deux 
 sectes, St Simon et Owen. He received soon afterwards 
 more effective opposition in an attempt to put his theories 
 into practice. Nothing, indeed, could be better fitted to dis- 
 pel the gorgeous visions which he created in his studious 
 retirement, than the vulgar exigencies of a set of people 
 brought together to struggle with the difficulties of a new 
 method of living ; and thus, when his friends collected a 
 considerable sum of money to begin the system of phalanges 
 with which he promised to celestialize the human race, his 
 instinct made him deprecate the attempt, and discounte- 
 nance it as premature. The experiment of a practical em- 
 bodiment of Fourierism failed according to the universal 
 expectation of those not engaged in it ; Fourier himself 
 expecting that it would fail from deficiency of Fourierism, 
 and the rest of the world anticipating its fall fi"om a super- 
 fluity of that quality. The experiment was made in the 
 neighbourhood of the small town of Rambouillet, easily ap- 
 proached from Paris. The sum expended on it has been 
 calculated at L.20,000. Fourier was pretty far advanced 
 in life when the attempt was made, and he died soon after- 
 wards, in the autumn of 1837. 
 
 If his writings had been less elaborate and diffuse than 
 they were found to be, the socialist impulse connected with
 
 COMMDNISM. 17 
 
 the French revolution of 1848 might have made them very 
 popular. Many interpretations and digests of them were 
 then published, a i'ew of them finding their way into British 
 periodical literature. It is understood, however, that the 
 greater part of his works still remain in manuscript, as they 
 were deposited in the Phalansterian Academy at Paris. 
 
 Fourier professed to be a believer in revelation ; but he 
 practically dispensed with another world, since his system 
 accomplished the perfection of happiness in this. When it 
 was fully developed it was to be the third dispensation — 
 counting the establishment of Christianity as the second. 
 In one of his own expressive analogies, mankind was when 
 he wrote (and W'ould be still held by him to be) in the first 
 or chrysalis state, which he expresses by the term civilizee ; 
 but when the system of harmony is accomplished, his de- 
 velopment will be perfected vvith a metempsychosis as striking 
 and beautiful as the metamorphosis of the caterpillar into the 
 butterfly. He had a peculiar method of bringing out his 
 grand results, by multiplying the passions and their grati- 
 fications by each other, so as to produce square or cubical 
 quantities of felicity rational and sensual, while he was able 
 entirely to dispense with all elements of frailty or reaction. 
 In contrasting the state of man " in harmony" with his 
 civilizte condition, he certainly drew the imperfections and 
 fi*ailties which protrude through modern civilization with a 
 potent pen ; and there are few such vivid pictures of the 
 eiFects of filthy and careless living, bad air, and degrading 
 habits, as those drawn by Fourier. Yet man's escape from 
 them is not to be in a purification of the soul from the pas- 
 sions and propensities of the body, but in a compound 
 nmltiplication of their intensity and fiuition ; so that the 
 earth is to be a sensual paradise of unceasing enjoyment. 
 
 To accomplish this consummation, the rapid perfecti- 
 bility of mankind was to be accomplished by cosmical de- 
 velopments, of such a startling kind as we would expect to 
 have excited an incredulous smile in the most devoted fol- 
 
 li
 
 18 com:»iunism. 
 
 lower. His system of full enjoyment seems to have re- 
 quired the creation of new natural elements, and especially 
 the existence of animals capable of conveying mankind with 
 increased Heetness from place to place — and here his follow- 
 ers have given him credit for having anticipated results, 
 though he was not quite precise as to the means, since ra- 
 pid transit has been accomplished by railways and steam- 
 shi])s, instead of the new animals of the lion and the whale 
 kind, \\ho were in " Harmony" to be subjected to the \\ ill o1 
 man. Some of liis other cosmical views are so extraordi- 
 nary, tliat we shall only venture to give them in a quota- 
 tion from the curious introductory essay of his chief English 
 exponent, who speaks rather as an admirer than a believer. 
 " The planets procreate their own species, but their func- 
 tions of creative industry consist in furnishing each other with 
 the various types of animal and vegetable life, which live 
 and gi-ow upon the surface of each globe respectively 
 Thus all the moons and planets of our solar system have 
 contributed to the creations of our globe, in the mineral, 
 the vegetable, and the animal kingdoms. The elephant 
 the oak, and the diamond, were created by the sun ; the 
 horse, the lily, and the ruby, were created by Saturn ; the 
 cow, the jonquil, and the topaz, were created by Jupiter 
 the dog, the violet, and opal stones, were created by oui 
 earth itself; and all the moons and planets have createc 
 special series, classes, orders, and varieties of animals, vege- 
 tables, and minerals u])on our globe, and also on each moor 
 and planet of our solar system." (Doherty's Introductior 
 to Tlie Passions of the Human Soul, by Charles Fourier 
 p. 14.) The system of phalanges or phalansteries formed 
 as it were, the Jacob's ladder which connected such cloudj 
 speculations with the sublunary earth. Reserving these a< 
 esoteric revelations to the initiated, he plied the ordinary 
 public of France with seductive descriptions of the economic 
 influence of his primary organization — an organization whici 
 would, he maintained, if once begun, prove itself so benefi-
 
 COMlVinNISM. 19 
 
 cent that it could never lose its hold on mankind, but must 
 be can-ied out indefinitely until the gi-eat system of " Har- 
 mony" was completed over the earth. 
 
 Each phalange or phalanstery was to consist of 400 
 families, or 1800 persons; this estimate rested on minute 
 and certain calculations, which, like Newton's, were inca- 
 pable of deceiving. Each was to be held in 1128 shares — 
 a number derived from equally certain calculations. Of 
 these, five-twelfths were to go to labour, four-twelfths to 
 capital, and three-twelfths to skill or talent. The phalange 
 was to include everything in structure and character which 
 could gratify the highest taste and sense of enjoyment. In 
 the meantime, however, before the whole earth was covered 
 with phalanges, each multiplying the enjoyment-creating 
 potency of the others, the efficacy of the system was to be 
 established by its subsidation of the human passions to its 
 service. The pursuits and functions of the members of the 
 phalange were to be infallibly adjusted through a distribu- 
 tion, by which each person was to be set precisely to that 
 function in life to which his passions and propensities directed 
 him. Life at the phalange was thus to be perpetual enjoy- 
 ment, and everything tending to supply the comforts, 
 luxuries, and felicities of life was to be ceaselessly pro- 
 duced by men who, instead of labouring with the sweat of 
 the brow, were to be all the time as fully indulging their 
 own passions and pleasures as the hunter when he hears the 
 view halloo, or the gambler when he is gaining a fortune, or 
 the philosopher when he is achieving some great discovery. 
 
 When the principles of an existence of supreme and in- 
 exhaustible enjoyment were applied to the intercourse of 
 the sexes, and " the condition of woman in Harmony," they 
 naturally assumed a character calculated to create astonish- 
 ment and indignation. The vindication put forth by the 
 pupils of the system was, that in harmony man is to be di- 
 vested of the vice and grossness which attend on the un- 
 limited indulgence of his passions in his present state, and that
 
 20 COMMUNISM. 
 
 tlicn the same wretched precautions by wliich our imperfect 
 luoraUty is now fenced round will no longer be necessary. 
 In attestation of his sincerity they refer to his ojjinion that 
 some three or four generations would require to live under 
 sonuthing like the existing restraints, until mankind had 
 acquired the proper development liar full and at the same 
 time pure enjoyment. 
 
 Persons taking a glance at the great French schemers at 
 a distance, and without any prejudice in favour of one over 
 the other, will find a rival to Fourier in one whom his disci- 
 ples would have hooted from any claim to equality as loudly 
 as the St-Simonians would have scorned the Fourierists. 
 
 St Simon, born in the year 1760, was descended of one 
 ot" the most illustrious houses of the old noblesse of France, 
 and his system was pervaded by the aristocratic tendencies 
 of his birth and education. His family claimed descent 
 from Charlemagne, and he said that the emperor had ap- 
 peared to him in a dream, and told him that his race having 
 produced a grand monarque-, was also to produce a grand 
 philosophe. When a young cavalry officer, his servant was 
 instructed to awaken him in the morning with the injunction, 
 "Arise, Sir Count, you have great things to do — Levez vous. 
 Monsieur Le Comte, vous avez de grandes choses a faire." 
 Na[)oleon's celebrated demand from the Institute, of an esti- 
 mate of the progress of science, seems to have fired his 
 ambition to be the lord of the intellectual, as his master 
 desired to be lord of the physical world. He established 
 at his house assemblages of scientific men, and of the 
 leaders in every de[)artment of intellectual exertion, as- 
 suming the position of the great philosophic generalizer, 
 who employed them as his workers in the several details, 
 and reserved for himself the higher task of bringing to- 
 gether in systematic array the results of their several labours. 
 By his profuse hosjjitality he reduced himself to penury. 
 But this change did not seem to give him much concern, as 
 it was jjart of his project to experimentalize in his own per-
 
 COMMUNISM. 2 1 
 
 son on all the conditions of humanity. For this purpose he 
 practised all the vices, alternating them in proper scientific 
 rotation with all the virtues, and his experience of poverty 
 came at the right time to aiford a contrast with the luxury 
 and profusion in which he had been indulging. Among his 
 other eccentricities, he attempted on one occasion to commit 
 suicide, but only succeeded in blowing out one of his eyes. 
 It was immediately after this that, as if the shock had elec- 
 trified him, his social system discovered itself to him in 
 a single intuition, and enabled him to announce himself 
 as the divine man, saying, " Moses has promised to men imi- 
 versal fraternity, Jesus Christ has prepared it, St Simon has 
 realized it." It presented itself to his view as the comple- 
 tion of that circle of the sciences which he considered that 
 he had been employed in systematizing. In this respect it 
 in some measure anticipated, and no doubt it suggested, the 
 system of Positivism developed by Comte. They have the 
 common features that, beginning with what are termed the 
 exact sciences, they try to prove that each of the other sciences 
 is made certain by the discovery and application of its laws, and 
 to carry up this certainty gradually to the more complex and in 
 popular belief dubious, sciences, until it reaches sociology, 
 when the rules by which men must be organized can be set 
 forth with abstract certainty. But the two philosophers dif- 
 fered greatly in this — that while Comte felt his way with a ri- 
 gorous scrutiny, and was obliged to stop on the borders of the 
 sciences into which he could carry strict laws, rath.er indicating 
 how certainty was, as the result of man's progressive labours, 
 to characterize the whole, St Simon at once found his way to a 
 certain or positive system of social organization, paying little 
 heed to the steps necessary for reaching this congenial 
 ground through the less inviting medium of the other 
 sciences. His plan was thoroughly hierarchical. It was 
 a religion to which all things were to be subservient, and of 
 which he, and after him the ablest of his disciples, was to be 
 the head. Property and all other conflicting institutions
 
 22 co^niuNisM. 
 
 were to be abolished, and notbin<; was to interfere with the 
 k-adership of the leather or supreme leader, whose authority 
 was thus purely absolute. The abolition of competition, and 
 the or<;anization of labour on such a more fitting and eftec- 
 tive scale as the superior wisdom of the St-Simonian priest- 
 hood would naturally sijggest, was a portion of the system ; 
 but the condition of the mass of the people had by no 
 means that alluring j^roniinence afterwards given to it, 
 and the matter was all along viewed more from the right 
 of their superiors to organize and govern them, than from 
 the right of the working classes to privileges not possessed 
 by them. The miholy bond of matrimony was to be abo- 
 lished, and there was substituted for its restraints obe- 
 dience to the sacred instincts of inclination, as directed by 
 the unerring wisdom of the Supreme Father. The difficul- 
 ties felt in giving any intelligible account of artificial pro- 
 jects in general, accumulate and thicken in a contemplation 
 of the mystic ramifications of St-Simonianism, and perhaps 
 the most satisfactory and clear explanation of it may be given 
 in the words of Louis Blanc, who, as a rival projector, may 
 be supposed to speak with the scientific precision of the 
 craft. He thus epitomizes the chief elements of St-Simo- 
 nianism, "that industry should be regulated in obedience to an 
 authority self-constituted, and thejudgeof its own legitimacy; 
 that production should be concentrated to excess, and its ad- 
 vantages portionedout in the ratio of merit ; that the transmis- 
 sion of property should be abolished, as well as that of offices ; 
 that marriage, the legalization of adultery, should give place 
 to the sovereignty of inclination and to the emancipation of 
 pleasure ; that the empire of society should be substituted 
 for that of the family.^ 
 
 It happens, not unfortunately, that no men are more clear- 
 sighted to the anomalies of such projects than rival projec- 
 tors ; and the literature of communism may be said to sup- 
 ply its own confutation by embodying a system in which 
 ^ History of Ten Years, i., 387.
 
 C0M3IUNISM. 23 
 
 each man demolishes what his neighbom" has set up. Hence, 
 to form an accurate notion of the transcendent absurdities 
 of the St-Simonians we must read the Hvely narrative of the 
 author of the Organization of Labour, who, while the St- 
 Simonians held that rewards should be distributed according 
 to ability and merit, maintained the fundamentally opposite 
 doctrine that people should be supplied not according to their 
 abilities, but their needs. In his narrative it will be seen 
 how Father Enfantin took the chief command, to which he 
 was called by the commanding beauty of his person, his per- 
 suasive abilities, and his incomparable impudence. It will 
 be seen how, as supreme judge of the world in matters both 
 spiritual and temporal, he summoned Louis Philippe the king 
 of the French to appear before him, and answer for his usur- 
 pation of the authority of the "supreme father," and other mis- 
 deeds. Though restricted in extent, however, it would ap- 
 pear that among his own followers, called " the Family," the 
 sway of the supreme father was as despotic as that of any 
 eastern potentate ; and the power of compulsion possessed and 
 wielded by him, is another instance of that capacity of en- 
 forcement for temporal purposes which religious adhesion so 
 signally affords. Like all human authority, however, even 
 Enfantin's was subject to rebellious antagonism, and within 
 the college, or the cabinet as it might be termed, of the 
 supreme father, there was a formidable conflict in the autumn 
 of 183L Though this high matter of state was kept secret 
 from the family at large, yet we are told that " from the 
 wearied step of the members of the college, from their worn 
 and pallid fiices which gave manifest evidence of sleepless and 
 anxious nights, from their white lips, from the wild disorder 
 of their remarks, from the mystery with which they care- 
 fully surrounded their proceedings, the membersof thesecond 
 degree saw that some terrible drama vvas going forward.^ 
 
 The insurrection was headed by Bazard, chief of the 
 dogma department of the college, who not only was united 
 1 IbA., 568.
 
 24 COMJIUNISM. 
 
 to a wife, over whom he wished to continue exclusive posses- 
 sion, biit also desired to have his daughter married accord- 
 ing to the usual formalities of Trench law and custom. As 
 the s\i|»-cme lather was inexorable both on this and other 
 points, there was a considerable secession from the Family. 
 The next great incident in their history is the dispersal of 
 their college of Menilmontant, and the trial and condemna- 
 tion of their chiefs, as propagators of immorality and irreli- 
 gion. They marched to the tribunal in j)rocession, clothed 
 in the solemn costume of their order — a blue robe with a 
 leathern girdle, white trousers, a red cap, the neck bare, 
 and a flowing beard. The picturesqueness of the whole 
 scene, and the reverential awe and passive obedience en- 
 joyed by the supreme father, naturally created much sensa- 
 tion in the Parisian world ; but even the French toleration 
 of the bombast was outraged, when Enfantin stood gazing 
 at the court, calling attention to his own handsome face and 
 commanding figure, and demanding for them the homage 
 due to such advantages. The supreme father, and his dis- 
 ciples Duverier and Michael Chevalier, were each subjected 
 to a year's imprisonment, and a fine of 100 francs. Two 
 others, Rodriguez and Barault, were fined fifty francs each. 
 The Family were dispersed to diffuse their system in a modi- 
 fied shape, and mystic St-Simonianism gradually yielded to 
 the more attractive views of its historian. 
 
 The three great living representatives of French projects 
 of organization are Auguste Comte,C.J.Prudhon,and Louis 
 Blanc. Both in his works, and in his personal history, each of 
 them has marked individual characteristics, which give them 
 a dissimilarity to each other, more immediately and promi- 
 nently obvious than the differences in the views of their pre- 
 decessors. The first is laborious, repulsive, and calm, pursu- 
 ing his system of inquiry to startling and offensive conclusions, 
 such as the non-existence of a deity, with the most arid 
 deliberativeness. The other two are impulsive and passionate; 
 but Louis Blanc seizes a popular key note, and goes right
 
 COJIMUNISM. 25 
 
 to the feelings and interests of the humbler and uneducated 
 classes with a sort of sympathetic respect for all that men 
 venerate in the shape of religion or the domestic affections, 
 leaving to them all these undiminished, while he offers them 
 other substantial blessings ; while Prudhon lifts his voice 
 with savage ferocity against every object of human venera- 
 tion, and endeavours to break every bond tending to the 
 preservation of order and morality. 
 
 Perhaps it is scarcely just to rank Comte as one of the 
 artificial organizers, since his system rather pointed to a 
 future organization as the result of the growth of Positiv- 
 ism ; and in reality the vast progress in the development of 
 mankind which he represents as the necessary preliminary 
 to the acquisition of socialistic science, is a practical censure 
 on the crude and ephemeral designs which propose an im- 
 mediate decomposition and reconstruction of society. The 
 aim of his positive system is to show that mankind possess 
 the means of gradually acquiring as certain a command over 
 the whole field of thought and action as they at present possess 
 over the exact sciences. In these, so far as the human intel- 
 lect has worked, there is an absolute and satisfying certainty, 
 which leaves no room for difference of opinion or for intel- 
 lectual anarchy. To astronomy, comprehending the grand- 
 est operations of the physical world, the same certainty 
 has been applied, and the motions, distances, and sizes of 
 the heavenly bodies have been adjusted with an absolute- 
 ness which leaves for opposition or scepticism no possible 
 foundation. Passing through the other sciences with ex- 
 traordinary labour and ingenious acuteness, he endeavours 
 to show that they possess the elements of the same sort of 
 certain laws, and that these will in time be developed, the 
 development being much aided and accelerated by his own 
 discovery of the positive system of philosophy. In the phy- 
 sical system his chief difficulty lies in biology, or the laws of 
 animal and vegetable life ; and after seeing and admiring the 
 fragments as it were of certainty which he brings out of
 
 26 COMMUNISM. 
 
 mechanics and even chemistry, the contrast of struggling 
 dlHiculty exhibited in this department tells its own tivle of 
 caution to human |)resum}ition. The last of all the sciences 
 to be subjected to supreme human intellect by the dis- 
 covery and development of its absolute laws is sociology^ 
 This is to be the science whereby men are to be governed 
 and directed in all their conduct and relations, with an as- 
 sured conformity to the laws of their nature ; a conformity 
 as assured, for instance, as that by which man already regu- 
 lates any of the portions of physical nature, such as steam, 
 over which the progress of science has already given him 
 control. We have thus an imperfect type of the certainty 
 with which man may be governed, in the regulation of a 
 steam-engine and its machinery by a highly competent 
 engineer. 
 
 The prospect which this certainty held out to the mass 
 of the people, supposing them possessed of patience to fol- 
 low Comte's long deductions, was not flattering. It anni- 
 hilates freedom of action and opinion. The world will be 
 under the absolute despotism of the intellects which can 
 grasp the greatest quantity of the positive science of socio- 
 logy, as the pupils of a mathematical class are, in the matter 
 of mathematics, entirely subjected to the teacher who knows 
 so much more than they do. But it is to be a despotism to 
 which people will willingly submit, because it is certain and 
 irremediable as fate. The man destined for the humbler du- 
 ties of life will never struggle against his destiny, for he will 
 feel that he occupies the inferior position, by a law as fixed 
 and immutable as that which makes the fern smaller than 
 the oak, and the sheep less powerful than the tiger. It 
 must at least be conceded to Comte that he does not ap- 
 peal to vulgar prejudices. His atheism is reiterated so per- 
 tinaciously and prominently, and is so closely connected with 
 his denial of the possible exercise of a will in the organi- 
 zation of the world, that it must necessarily be mentioned 
 by every one who notices his system. But some of his ad-
 
 comiuNisji. 27 
 
 mirers have thought that a more legitimate result of his 
 System is the secondary argument for the existence of a 
 deity, from the perfection with which he shows the world 
 to be governed. 
 
 Hitherto we have found in the framers of artificial sys- 
 tems, either abstract philosophers whose works are unsuited 
 to popular taste, or inventors of vast plans in which the 
 people at large did not see any distinct and immediate pro- 
 spect of participating. To Louis Blanc has fallen the lot of 
 striking the key note of popular enthusiasm. He avoided 
 the features on which his predecessors had offensively dwelt, 
 — the necessity of subjection to the true laws of social or- 
 ganization, and the duty of those destined to the humbler 
 grades of the human hierarchy to occupy them without re- 
 pining. With the instinct of the genuine demagogue, he 
 told them solely of the wealth they were to gain, not of the 
 liberty they were to lose. The fervid eloquence of his 
 Organisation du Travail luxuriated in a theme which 
 can never fail to be attractive — the spoliation of the poor 
 by the affluent, and the right of restitution which the hum- 
 bler classes possess against their more fortunate neighbours. 
 His views are expressed with a pleasing eloquence and a 
 touching earnestness, which make the perusal of the book 
 agreeable even to those who see from the beginning the 
 monstrous and almost incredible paradoxes on which the 
 reasonings are founded. That competition is ruinous to 
 the working classes, and not even propitious to their em- 
 ployers, may be called his fundamental principle. He at- 
 tacks it in various ways ; it is selfish and demoralizing, ren- 
 dering men sordid and jealous — it produces unfair inequa- 
 lities in the distribution of the produce of industry — it has 
 several other grave defects, but its grand offence is its po- 
 tency for the destruction of the working classes. The fol- 
 lowing brief extract will perhaps show as distinctly as a 
 fuller exposition, the extreme nature of his views. " A con- 
 tractor requires a workman — three present themselves for
 
 28 COMMl'NISM. 
 
 his selection. ' How much wages do you want?' he says 
 to one. ' Three francs — I have a wile and children.' ' So, 
 so — and you ?' ' Two francs and a half — I have no chil- 
 dren, but I have a wife.' ' Very well — and you ?' ' Two 
 francs will do with me — I am a bachelor.' ' Then you 
 get the job.' It is done — the bargain is made; and 
 what is to become of the two excluded workmen ? — it is 
 to be h<)i)cd that they \\ill i)ermit themselves to die of fa- 
 mine. But what if they should become robbers ? Don't 
 be afraid — we have a police. Or assassins ? Why we 
 have the hangman."* In this country the answer which 
 would at once be made to this, both by theoretic rea- 
 soning and by facts, is, that competition induces the man 
 who requires three francs to work up to their value : and 
 it is at the same time very certain to all who know the 
 general proportion which the profit of cajiital bears to the 
 w-agcs of labour, that if the unburdened workman's labour 
 is only worth two francs there is no possible fund out of 
 which three francs can be paid to the burdened fellow-work- 
 man who requires them. It is competition that creates the 
 fund out of which high wages are paid, and those who would 
 abolish it because it makes an unequal distribution of the 
 realized fund, would not have that fund at all to distribute. 
 He endeavours to show that competition is injurious to 
 trade, since it must necessarily bring things into existence 
 which are supernumerary. The process is the same as that 
 which leads to the starvation of the workmen. A man 
 
 ^ " Un entrepreneur a besoin d'un ouvrier : trois se presentent. 
 'Combien pour votre travail ?' 'Trois francs — j'ai une femme et 
 des enfants.' ' Bien. Et vous ?' ' Deux francs et demi — ^je n'ai pas 
 d'enfants, mais j'ai une femme.' ' A merveille. Et vous ?' ' Deux 
 francs me suffiront — ^je suis seul.' ' A vous done la preference.' 
 C'en est fait : le marche est conclu ! Que deviendront les deux 
 proletaires exclus ? lis se laisseront mourir de faim, il faut I'es- 
 perer. Mais s'ils allaient se faire voleurs ? Ne craignez rien, nous 
 avons des gensd'armes. Et assassins ? Nous avons le bourreau."- - 
 Organisation du Travail, p. 43. Bruxelles, 1843.
 
 coMMnasM. 29 
 
 wants a commodity — three manufacturers competing with 
 each other make triplicates of it — he selects that Avhich is 
 offered at the lowest price, and the other two are lost. It 
 is almost needless to say that, though the supply sometimes 
 does outrun the demand, yet the general object of pro- 
 ducers collectively is to produce no more of any commodity 
 than what will find a market ; and though they may not be 
 perfect judges of the quantity, they are undoubtedly ren- 
 dered by self-interest the best that can be found. But the 
 whole large branch of competition which operates through 
 tender and acceptance is overlooked in Louis Blanc's argu- 
 ment. His statement of facts would be exemplified if, when a 
 man wants a liouse of a peculiar shape, two or three archi- 
 tects build according to his plan, in the hope that one will be 
 accepted; or when a new judge takes his seat, all the tailors of 
 London set to making robes, one only of which can have the 
 good fortune to be of use. But when individual commo- 
 dities are required, either there is a reliance on tl.e prices 
 adjusted by ordinary competition, or there is a special com- 
 petition by previous tender. The service of the post-office 
 is often referred to by Louis Blanc as an instance of or- 
 ganized labour from which competition is excluded ; but it 
 is far otherwise. There are contracts for carrying the let- 
 ters from place to place ; there is competition for the con- 
 struction of the vehicles and other facilities for locomotion, 
 whether under the direct control of the post-office autho- 
 rities or in the hands of those who contract with them ; and 
 finally, among the various persons employed there is the 
 usual competition to obtain as much remuneration as pos- 
 sible, while the government, relying on the same spirit, en- 
 deavours to obtain the greatest amount of service for its 
 outlay. The army is another department loudly appealed 
 to as an instance of the accomplishment of the greatest ob- 
 jects througli organization without competition. But it is 
 for destruction alone that organization here suffices. The 
 ]>roductive part of the arniy service — the supply of food.
 
 30 COMMUNISM. 
 
 apparel, barracks, and weapons — is tlie object of ordinary 
 competition. 
 
 His ultimate project was to substitute a perfect system 
 of state organization ibr the imperfect and pernicious sys- 
 tem of cnii)loyment and competition. At the time when 
 liis work was published, however, the state was a monarchy, 
 of'^hose abuses he had himself made many a bitter exposure. 
 Having therefore considered that state management had, in 
 the exjierience of the world, always tended to abuse and in- 
 equality, he admitted that his system could not be committed 
 to any state such as had existed among mankind. The first 
 step must be the establishment of a perfectly pure demo- 
 cracy, which would have the interests of all impartially at 
 heart. This once done, the organization of labour might 
 be carried out. To make the change adjust itself to exist- 
 ing interests, he proposed to make the competitive efforts of 
 the state, in the first j)lace, absorb all other competition. 
 
 The state was to begin by raising a loan to establish a 
 limited number of workshops in each department of industry. 
 In these establishments government should regulate the func- 
 tions and gradations of the men ; but after a time, when they 
 became acquainted with each other, and with the princii)le 
 of co-operation, they would adjust their own social hierarchy 
 on the elective system. From the commencement the men 
 would be allowed wages or subsistence money. The profits 
 being struck at the end of the year, would be divided into 
 four parts. One would be a sinking fund for the repayment 
 of the capital, — though it is difficult to see how, when the 
 system fully developed itself, there should be any person in 
 a position to receive payment of capital ; another fo\irth 
 would be divided among the men ; the third would go to 
 found an hospital tor the sick and infirm ; and the last would 
 be retained as a reserve for special purposes. 
 
 By the perfection of their management, their extensive 
 capital, and their general popularity, these national work- 
 shops would gradually drive private establishments out
 
 COMMUNISM. 31 
 
 of the field, and, enlarging themselves, fill the place occu- 
 pied by them. But, as this competition would be worked 
 by a perfectly benevolent, pure, and conscientious govern- 
 ment, it would be deformed by none of the exterminat- 
 ing defects of the ordinary competitive system, and one 
 of its principles should be, that its pressure be as gentle as 
 may be consistent with its effectiveness. In a short time 
 all private competition would be vanquished, and the or- 
 ganization of every department of labour would be vested 
 in the state, to be regulated with that perfect wisdom and 
 justice of which the state, as formed by Louis Blanc, would 
 be certainly possessed. 
 
 It is the policy of Louis Blanc to find fault with nothing 
 in the existing social and moral condition of things beyond 
 that portion of them which must be superseded to admit of 
 his own favourite plan for the organization of labour. 
 Hence, in his endeavours to engraft his novel projects on 
 the ordinary institutions of society, and to prove their supe- 
 riority over M-hat they displace by arguments founded on 
 mere ordinary utility and profit, he renders his fallacies much 
 more palpable than those of his contemporary Prudhon, who, 
 proposing to demolish every existing institution and belief, 
 sets arguments of a merely utilitarian character at defiance, 
 and challenges a contest on a wider and more fundamental 
 ground. But of the two, the paradoxes stated with so much 
 deference to received opinions, and with so much amiable be- 
 nevolence proved far more calamitous than the vast revolu- 
 tions of Prudhon, which, suggested by a relentless hatred 
 of all that men have been accustomed to love and revere, 
 have carried with them their own practical confutation to 
 the greater portion of those who have read them. Without 
 examining more minutely Prudhon's system, it is appro- 
 priate to the point immediately under consideration to show 
 that his practical conclusions are directly the reverse of 
 those of Louis Blanc, whom, after the usual method of or- 
 ganic social reformers wlien speaking of each other's plans,
 
 S2 COMMUNISM. 
 
 he lashes with c'ondiijn ridicule. (lathering up all the phy- 
 sical and moral ucaltli oi" which the rights of property and 
 other human institutions have robbed mankind, Prudhon 
 seems to advocate a distribution according to each human be- 
 ing's contributions as a productive worker to the riches of the 
 world. With his usual felicity of illustration, he compares 
 the man who obtains, by property, office, or in any other 
 shape, more than the proportion corresponding with his exer- 
 tions, to areaper who receives aloaf for cutting an ear of corn. 
 
 On the other hand, Louis Blanc's princi[)le of distribu- 
 tion is, that men should receive not according to their ca- 
 pacities or exertions, but their needs; and the whole object 
 of his organization of labour, both in its theoretic form, and 
 when afterwards, as one of the provisional government of 
 1848, he endeavoured to put it in practice, was to carry 
 out this result. In his national workshops, all competi- 
 tion, all rivalry, all selHshuess, were to be dead. Each man 
 on a principle of honour was to perform his assigned duty — 
 the distribution of the proceeds was to be a separate ope- 
 ration, proceeding on grounds totally distinct from the com- 
 parative services of the producers. 
 
 A suspicion is suggested by the tone of some parts of the 
 Organisation du Travail — which will be confirmed by a per- 
 usal of its author's clever History of Ten Years of the reign 
 of Louis Philippe — that his strong hatred of competition 
 rests on opinions, or more properly speaking impulses, totally 
 different from those economical arguments on which he pro- 
 fesses to found them. In treating of the working classes, 
 he always speaks of them as mere mute instruments who 
 must take, collectively, the position which the capitalists, or — 
 when they are superseded — the predominant party in the 
 state, assign to them ; and he never makes allowance for 
 energy or activity promoting an improvement in their con- 
 dition. In his History he complains of their becoming selfish 
 and sordid, and accumulating money in the savings-banks 
 during the early prosperous years of Louis Philippe's reign.
 
 COMMUNISM. 33 
 
 These indications of a feeling that the working classes are 
 a mere inanimate mass at the command of organizers, are 
 accompanied by unmistakeable references to the time of 
 conquest, aggression, and tyranny, as that of the true glory 
 of France, and bitter allusions to the sordid spirit of peace- 
 ful productive industry, which has been the source of British 
 greatness. He refers repeatedly to the admitted prosperity 
 and influence which Britain has achieved by the spirit of 
 commercial competition, pointing out what France must ac- 
 complish to excel us in such a race, and pointing it out in a 
 tone of deprecatory despondency. It is clear that the pre- 
 dominating influence which has produced his mischievous 
 books is, that in a struggle with Britain for national supe- 
 riority, the chance for his own country is not in directing 
 her people to industrial productiveness, but in abandoning 
 competition and peaceful wealth, and assuming an organi- 
 zation which, as in the days of Napoleon's greatest achieve- 
 ments, will place all France in array against any nation 
 competing with her for the supremacy of the world. That, 
 in short, the best chance for France being great and for- 
 midable is not by producing wealth, but by destroying the 
 wealth created by others. 
 
 The opinions of the Organisation du Travail spread 
 rapidly among the Parisian workmen, and those of the 
 larger provincial towns. Many other works promulgating 
 views of the same kind were eagerly devoured, and even 
 the more abstruse and forbidding treatises of previous or- 
 ganizers were received into favour, as being so far on the 
 side of the abolitionists, that they were against property and 
 other existing institutions. Thus a large body of men ra- 
 diated from central Paris through all the populous portions 
 of France, whose opinions on government were not merely 
 republican as against monarchy, but were communistic or 
 socialistic as against pnjperty and other social institutions. 
 
 It belongs rather to the history of France than to the 
 immediate object of this paper to describe the influence of 
 
 c
 
 34 coMMUNis:\r. 
 
 these far-spread opinions on the eventful history of tlie year 
 1848. Among those who had obtained a popular position 
 in the connuon arena oi' ])olitic's, the provisional government 
 of France included Louis IJIanc, and others for whom power 
 was demanded, rather on account of their anti-economic 
 than their anti-regal opinions. Between the merely politi- 
 cal republicans on the one hand, and the comnnmists and 
 socialists on the other, there was a long conflict which it 
 required a stronger party than either to put down. The 
 miseries of the period of conflict, and the subsequent sub- 
 jugation of France, were the legitimate fruit of the doc- 
 trines which Louis Blanc, Prudhon, and other writers had 
 been promulgating. Strongly represented as they were in 
 the j)rovisional government, they could not obtain a direct 
 practical adoption of their principles as the universal law of 
 France. They obtained, however, general resolutions from 
 the provisional government, importing that an end must be 
 put to the sufferings of the labouring classes, and that they 
 ought to be guaranteed the legitimate fruits of their labour. 
 The committee of the Luxembourg was at the same time 
 appointed, with Louis Blanc at its head, to consider the con- 
 dition of the workmen. The object of the majority of the 
 provisional government was in this shape to get rid of the 
 whole question by making it a mere matter of inquiry. The 
 object of M.Blanc and his friends was to make the committee a 
 means of action rather than of mere investigation. They suc- 
 ceeded, at least, so far as to induce a vast body of workmen to 
 look to them for a regeneration of their lot, and abandon all 
 projects of honest industry. A portion of these were em- 
 ployed, neither to their own satisfaction nor to the benefit of 
 the community, in national workshops where all were paid 
 alike. The idle, who constituted the majority, admired the 
 system. In the hotel Clichy a special experiment was tried on 
 a government order for the uniforms of the Garde Mobile. 
 Fifteen hundred tailors were assembled, with an establish- 
 ment of foremen, clerks, and cutters. The sum at which an
 
 COMMUNISM. . So 
 
 army contractor would during the monarchy have furnished 
 the dresses having been set down as their proper price, the 
 men were allowed two francs a-day as subsistence money 
 while they worked, and were in the end to obtain the bal- 
 ance equally divided among them. But when the day of 
 reckoning came, it was found that not only was there no 
 balance of gain, but that there was loss, and that the two 
 francs a-day of subsistence money — the lowest rate of wages 
 paid by master tailors — had overpaid the men for the work 
 actually done by them under the mere impulse of " liberty, 
 equality, and fraternity." Their energies, unexcited by the 
 spirit of competition, relaxed when each man found that the 
 proceeds of his increased exertions were not to be received 
 by himself alone, but to be distributed over the whole body 
 of 1500 fellow-workmen. 
 
 It is the peculiarity of all great systems of social organi- 
 zation, that when they are put in practice and fail, the failure 
 is attributed to the imperfect character of the experiment. 
 Louis Blanc and his friends have ever maintained that 
 the reason why the efforts to put his projects in force in 
 1848 failed, was because they were imperfectly and not com- 
 pletely tried. The circumstances under which he fled from 
 France, and his contributions to the socialist press of Eng- 
 land, indicate that he purposed to carry out his system by 
 force, when it was seen that the majority of the suffrages of 
 the people were against it. A true fanatic to his views, 
 he held that the |X)pular mind had been impregnated with 
 false principles by the corrupt system of employment and 
 competition ; and that, to afford a fair field for the true sys- 
 tem, it was necessary in the first place to use the power 
 possessed by the wielders of supreme authority in France 
 to carry it out by force. He readily — like all protesters 
 against tyranny who are going to commit a flagrant act of 
 coercion — found an excuse for his conduct in the necessity 
 soundly to indoctrinate the people, and enable them to ap- 
 preciate the truth.
 
 36 coxmuNisM. 
 
 Tlio manlier in uhicli the eoniniunist and socialist doc- 
 trines spread tlironu;h Evu'ope, and were suppressed in 
 France as well as elsewhere, forms one of the most memo- 
 rable chapters in late European history. It has only to be 
 noticed that, while the public organs of these opinions have 
 been suddenly silenced on the Continent, no one can at this 
 moment say how far the opinions themselves may be under- 
 mining the governments which a})pear to keep them down, 
 and the whole order of society. In our own country we 
 know with fortunate distinctness liow the matter stands, and, 
 as the following explanation will show, we have to thank the 
 freedom of the press for a feeling of security of which other 
 nations are lamentably deficient. 
 
 Socialistic and communistic notions, though they have 
 sometimes been very prevalent in Britain, have never en- 
 listed any great amount of intellect, either in devising or 
 promulgating them. The few stray writers who have gone 
 beyond a sentimental and hesitating sympathy with the 
 views of the continental communists have belonged to a to- 
 tally different class in the intellectual hierarchy from those 
 men who have by their genius and fervid eloquence from time 
 to time convulsed the j)ublic mind of France. The name of 
 Robert Owen stands supreme as the prophet and champion of 
 British communism. But, though his position is thus lofty 
 with relation to his peculiar department, he is a man of very 
 moderate literary abilities. A continued perseverance in 
 one tone, an undying sanguineness which made him speak 
 with the assurance of success at the time when the pros- 
 pects of his cause were at the extremity of hopelessness, and 
 an entire reliance on his own infallibility, have been the 
 qualities which, more than once in the course of his long life, 
 have procured him an attentive hearing from a considerable 
 portion of the public. 
 
 The conditions under which he first appealed to public 
 sympathy were favourable to his demands, since he advocated 
 the cause of a portion of society to which the social institu-
 
 COilJIL'XISM. 37 
 
 tionsof the age failed to communicate their organizing in- 
 riuence. The inventions of Hargreaves and Arkwright had 
 just given their impulse to the manufacturing system. By 
 the creation of cotton mills in districts which had been but 
 thinly peopled, a [X)rtion of the people were dragged cut of 
 the bosom of ordinary society and all the organizing prin- 
 ciples which had arisen with its slow growth, and were 
 chaotically massed together in large groups, without the ap- 
 plication of any sanction to replace those influences which 
 they had left behind them, in the shafje of ecclesiastical mem- 
 bership, corporate or parochial supervisance, the genial con- 
 trol of hereditary neighbours, and the family ties- In Scot- 
 land the social revolution was signally conspicuous and disas- 
 trous. The cheapness of labour in that part of the empire, 
 and the geological facilities for obtaining water po«er, at- 
 tracted English manufacturing capital northwards, and often 
 in some solitary glen several hundreds of persons were at 
 once set down as mere producing machines, without any 
 consideration for their moral condition or any effort to sup- 
 ply for them those elements of social organization which, 
 naturally of slow growth, cannot be voted and adopted at 
 once by a working population even had they knowledge 
 enough to be aware of their necessity. 
 
 Owen was himself practically engaged in manufactures, 
 and the first revelations of his system came to the English 
 public with all that authority which disinterested benevo- 
 lence, supported by practical sagacity, is sure to command. 
 So in the year 18 lo, in a tract called " Observations on the 
 Effect of the Manufacturing System, with Hints for the 
 Improvement of those |mrts of it which are most injurious 
 to Health and Morals," we may read the following excellent 
 remarks : — 
 
 " In the manufacturing districts it is common for parent;- 
 to send their children of both sexes, at seven or eight years 
 of age, in winter as well as summer, at six o'clock in the 
 morning, sometimes of course in the dark, and occasionally
 
 38 COMMUNISM. 
 
 amidst frost and snow, to enter the manufactories, whicli are 
 often heated to a liigli temperature, and contain an atmo- 
 sphere far i'rom being the most favourable to lumian hfe, and 
 in which all those employed in them very frequently con- 
 tinue until twelve o'clock at noon, when an hour is allowed 
 for dinner, afler which they rctm-n to remain, in a majority 
 of cases, till eight o'clock at night. 
 
 " The children now find they must labour incessantly for 
 their bare subsistence ; they have not been used to innocent, 
 healthy, and rational anmsements ; they are not permitted 
 the requisite time if they had been previously accustomed 
 to enjoy them. They know not what relaxation means, 
 except by the actual cessation from labour. They are sur- 
 rounded by others similarly circumstanced with them- 
 selves ; and thus passing on from childhood to youth, they 
 become gradually initiated, the young men in particular, 
 but often the yoimg females also, in the seductive pleasures 
 of the ])ot-house and inebriation, for which their daily hard 
 labour, want of better habits, and the general vacuity of 
 their minds tend to prepare them. 
 
 " Such a system of training cannot be expected to pro- 
 duce any other than a population weak in bodily and men- 
 tal faculties, and with habits generally destructive of their 
 own comforts and the well-being of those around them, and 
 strongly calculated to subdue all the social affections. Man 
 so circumstanced sees all around him hurrying forward at a 
 mail-coach speed to acquire individual wealth, regardless of 
 him, his comforts, his wants, or even his sufferings, except 
 by way of a degrading parish charity, fitted only to steel the 
 heart of man against his fellows, or to form the tyrant and 
 the slave. To-day he labours for one master, to-morrow for 
 a second, then for a third, and a fourth, until all ties between 
 employers and employed are frittered down to the consider- 
 ation of what immediate gain each can derive from the other. 
 The employer regards the employed as mere instruments 
 of gain, while these acquire a gross ferocity of character.
 
 COMMTINISM. 39 
 
 which, if legislative measures shall not be judiciously devised 
 to prevent its increase, and ameliorate the condition of this 
 class, will sooner or later plunge the country into a formid- 
 able and perhaps inextricable state of danger." 
 
 This was new to the world in the year 1815, and the best 
 testimony that it was not only new but true and valuable, is 
 to be found in the too frequent repetition of the same causes 
 of complaint down to the present day, uttered with a general 
 similarity of tone which makes these sentences scarcely seem 
 obsolete or antiquated after the lapse of forty years. 
 
 But when a few such apt elucidations are culled fi'om 
 Owen's earlier works, it is easily perceived that their merits 
 are exhausted ; and through the tremendous voluminousness 
 of his writings during the ensuing forty years, we may wade 
 in vain, finding nothing at the utmost better than an ex- 
 hausted repetition, after many years, of some judicious sen- 
 timent to be found in his early pamphlets. That Owen was 
 connected with a manufactory, the organization in which 
 contrasted with such descriptions, was a very well known 
 fact, which gave much emphasis to his writings. But it 
 must be questioned whether any great portion of either the 
 practical or theoretical wisdom of which he has obtained the 
 merit was his own. The New Lanark cotton mill, with 
 which Owen's name has long been associated, was founded 
 in the year 1784 by Mr David Dale. Owen married his 
 daughter, and thus succeeded to a patrimonial interest in 
 the establishment. In the multifarious works in which he 
 has proclaimed his own merits, he occasionally, but very 
 rarely, mentions the organizing efforts of Mr Dale as a sort 
 of introduction to his own. It is known, however, that Mr 
 Dale was the author of at least a very large proportion of 
 the practical arrangements in the New Lanark mill ; and 
 when it is mentioned that he is not known to have ever 
 solicited public attention to his exertions, while Mr Owen 
 has been an incessant prater about himself, his services, and 
 his projects, for half a century, it may be conjectured that
 
 10 COJIMUNISM. 
 
 liis practical footino: in a well-organized manuflictory was 
 made for him. In fact, though he jirofesses to have found 
 liis predecessor struggling by imperfect remedies with social 
 (liflicultics which he himself afterwards overcame through 
 means ol'his peculiar solvent, tliere is no doubt that all that 
 was beneficently and judiciously effected at New Lanark 
 was the doing of INIr Dale. Owen had at least sense enough 
 to see the usefulness of his arrangements, and to improve on 
 them. Whether by his own talent, or from the instructions of 
 his father-in-law, he could generalize on the lesson taught by 
 the defects of the ordinary manufactory system in the manner 
 of the passage quoted above ; and thus, being a vain good 
 Innnoured man, frivolous and fond of popularity, it fell to his 
 lot to acquire a very high rei)utation, as a social ])hilosopher 
 who had accomplished the imwonted feat of putting Lis the- 
 ories into practice. The New Lanark mills were for some years 
 deemed one of the wonders of the world, and no member of 
 a royal house, or illustrious stranger travelling in Scotland, 
 failed to visit them. Owen when he went to London de- 
 livered addresses in Exeter Hall, at which members of the 
 royal family thought they were doing a public duty by at- 
 tending ; and it was at one time rumoured that the Duke 
 of Kent intended to give the princess who is now the queen 
 of the British empire the benefit of instructions, in social 
 science, by Robert Owen. Among the many foreign tri- 
 butes to his popularity, was the offer of a province in Texas 
 where he might carry out his system much more freely than 
 he could in the New Lanark mills, but he declined the 
 banishment involved in such an arrangement. 
 
 As time passed, however, the practical base on which 
 Owen appeared to found his system was seen to slip from 
 beneath him. His partners in the New Lanark mill found 
 it necessary to buy him off. He was continually writing 
 papers explaining how the human race had heretofore been 
 left in ignorance, darkness, and misery, which he possessed, 
 by the establishment of his " Rational System of Society,"
 
 COM5IUNISM. 41 
 
 the means of immediately connecting. He indicated his 
 opinion that the New Lanark works had reached successfully 
 two points out of twenty which were necessary to perfecti- 
 bility; and some of his partners who appeared to be well 
 contented with the pecuniary results of the undertaking, 
 afraid tliat Owen might defeat them by attempts to carry 
 out a portion of the remaining eighteen points, resolved if 
 possible to be rid of him. 
 
 With the capital which he drew out of the concern — a 
 considerable sum — Owen immediately projected an esta- 
 blishment in more entire conformity with his now matured 
 system. The place selected was Orbiston in Lanarkshire, 
 where a great parallelogram was to be erected, that being 
 the only form of edifice in which the perfect uniformity of 
 organization which was to reign throughout the administra- 
 tion would have its proper development. The edifice was 
 commenced in 1825, and Owen's own funds were sufficient 
 to build a portion of it Of the whole sum necessary, how- 
 ever, which he fixed at L.96,000, so small a proportion was 
 available that only one angle of the parallelogram was com- 
 pleted. In this mutilated shape it was of course impossible 
 that the social organization dependent on the parallelogram 
 form could be developed. Nearly two hundred inmates oc- 
 cupied it for some time, but they lived with so little of the 
 promised harmony of The New Moral World, that the country 
 people called the place Babel. 
 
 It was treated as a great moral nuisance, and the society 
 soon breaking up, the building was levelled with the ground, 
 much to the satisfaction of the neighbourhood. By this 
 time, indeed, Owen had turned the tide of popular feeling 
 against him by views calculated to be extremely offensive. 
 Among his observations on the habits of the manufacturing 
 population, he had laid it down that in their moral consti- 
 tution vice and superstition alternated. To a person coming, 
 as he did, from England, into close contact with the most un- 
 restrained section of the Scottish population, the rigidness of
 
 1 2 COMMUNISM. 
 
 the Calvinistic principles of the people would naturally appear 
 in startling and mipleasing contrast with their deep vices. 
 To tiuhoni the deptlis of such a social system, and adjust 
 the proper remedies, re(iuired a stronoer judgment than 
 Owen's, and a less presumptuous will. He inmiediately be- 
 gan an unequal theological contest, in which he omitted no- 
 thing that could rouse the jealousy and indignation of the 
 clergy, or shock the j)rejudices of the people. He was not 
 only to be the lawgiver, but the prophet of his system, esta- 
 blishing in it a new rational religion of his own ; and though 
 he did not require a communion of wives as well as a com- 
 munion of goods, yet he made the marriage tie dissolvable 
 with alarming facility. 
 
 On the other hand, the supporters of free political insti- 
 tutions were alarmed by the complex official hierarchy which 
 was to rule with absolute power. It is true that there was 
 in the eyes of its constructor a perfectly efficient check on 
 tyranny, injustice, and rapacity, but it was not sufficient to 
 convince the rest of the vvorld. It arose from the perfec- 
 tion of nature which men would obtain under the rational 
 system of society — their entire divestiture of all human pas- 
 sions and prejudices. These expectations, along with as- 
 surances that every Inmian being would possess under the 
 new system an abundance of everything desirable to an 
 inhabitant of the world, were conveyed in unceasing streams 
 of such mellifluent prophecies as the following : — 
 
 " In these separate societies there will be no contest or 
 competition between the members ; nor yet will there be 
 any between the societies, however near or distant or nu- 
 merous they may be . . . all will be trained and edu- 
 cated to acquire the greatest amount of useful and valuable 
 knowledge ; and then possessing the spirit of charity, kind- 
 ness, and love for all their fellows, which spirit will be given 
 to them by their new mode of instruction from birth, — all 
 will of necessity feel the greatest desire to aid and assist 
 each other to the full extent of their powers, and their
 
 COMMUNISM. 43 
 
 greatest pleasure will arise from being thus occupied. There 
 will also be in each of these societies the due proportion of 
 manufactures, trades, and commerce, for the number of 
 members and their wants ; but manufactures, trades, and 
 commerce will be established and conducted on principles 
 very different to those prevalent throughout present society. 
 • . . In this manner will these societies, being always 
 supplied with the latest and best machinery for performing 
 whatever it can be made to well execute, produce the 
 greatest amount of the most valuable wealth in the shortest 
 time and in the best manner, so as to produce health and 
 enjoyment to all while engaged in the department of pro- 
 duction." ^ 
 
 Owen appeared to have obtained another and a still 
 more satisfactory opportunity of attesting his principles in 
 the year 1 843. The communists and socialists, acting under 
 the impulses to be presently mentioned, had collected a con- 
 siderable sum of money, and resolved to centralize their 
 societies under the authority of a congress, which was to 
 meet in Harmony Hall, an edifice built by them in Hamp- 
 shire, to serve both as a central office for socialist oi'ganiza- 
 tion, and a model for other quadrangular establishments. 
 Here, on the 10th of May, Mr Owen was solemnly chosen 
 President of the Congress. From that time, in the official 
 organs of his sect, we find him making progresses among 
 the provincial establishments, like a sovereign inspecting the 
 several local institutions of his realm ; and it would be re- 
 corded that he visited the Concordium, and after having in- 
 spected the premises, was presented with an address by the 
 Pater and Elder, and was entertained by the whole family 
 at dinner. 
 
 But it soon turned out that a total difference of view lay 
 between Owen and his supporters. He, ever looking to 
 the broad measures of universal human regeneration over 
 which he had been now for several years a theoretic dreamer, 
 
 ^ The Book of the Neiu Moral World, explanatory of the Elements of 
 the Science of Hociefj, by liobert Owen, I., t. xi., p. 19.
 
 44 COMMUNISM. 
 
 contemplated only the blessings wliieh the world was to 
 reap from an entire social regeneration, while his disciples 
 were bent on obtaining personal advantages from the imme- 
 diate application of its principles. These they did not find 
 at Harmony Hall, and they consequently deposed their chief. 
 The history of the new race of communists and socialists, 
 who had thus lost all respect for the j)atriarch of their sect, 
 must be briefly given. 
 
 While tlie policy of protection to native agriculture and 
 other interests prevailed, and the Apprentice Act, with various 
 corporate restrictions on labour, was in full observance, the 
 ■\M)rknuin, far from being taught that he must depend on 
 his own industry and prudence, was led to expect that the 
 state would take care of him. It professed to protect the 
 landed and farming interest, the shipping interest, and va- 
 rious other separate interests. It did not entirely neglect 
 the workman. By acts for restraining the introduction of 
 foreign silk and cotton goods, and by various other legis- 
 lative efforts, he was professedly protected. Still, while the 
 landowner, the farmer, the shipowner, and the master-ma- 
 nufacturer were rich, he was poor and miserable. He main- 
 tained, therefore, that what the state had done for them it 
 had not done for him, and he hailed the doctrines of the 
 communists and socialists as affording him a more entire and 
 effective protection. Hence those princi|)les had spread so 
 widely from the passing of the Reform Bill downwards as to 
 create much alarm. While some wisely considered that 
 free discussion, and the remedy of admitted evils, would be 
 the best cure for this social disease ; others proposed a re- 
 sort to coercion. On the 20th of January 1840, the Bishop 
 of Exeter asked in the House of Lords if the government 
 had taken any steps to repress the progress of socialism, and 
 was answered by Lord Normanby, the home secretary, that 
 no such steps had been taken ; but that, if the persons re- 
 ferred to w^ere guilty of any offence, the jjroper proceedings 
 would he adopted. On the 24th the bishop resumed the dis- 
 cussion, on the presentation of a petition bv 40.000 of the
 
 COMMUNISM. 45 
 
 clergy, magistrates, merchants, and traders of Birmingham, 
 praying their Lordships to interpose for the suppression of 
 sociaUsm. He stated that " Great Britain was divided into 
 tburteen principal districts. A congress met annually, which 
 assumed to itself legislative power for directing the whole 
 proceedings of the general body. That congress assembled, 
 he believed, at different points in different years. Two 
 delegates were sent from all the places where there were 
 charter branches of the society, not amounting to less than 
 61. There was besides an executive body, the Central 
 Court. He did not know how often that met ; but he be- 
 lieved it was in a constant state of capacity for meeting. 
 That body superintended the formation of associations 
 throughout the land, and appointed missionaries to each of 
 the fourteen districts into which the United Kingdom was 
 divided by the society. There were no fewer than 350 
 towns regularly visited by these m.issionaries." — Hansard's 
 Debates. 
 
 The vehement and intolerant terms in which the bishop 
 demanded the suppression of the offensive doctrines created 
 an immediate reaction in their favour. Whatever amount 
 of adhesion they had obtained was speedily increased, and 
 several able periodicals for some time represented the opi- 
 nions of various clusters of communists and socialists. Free 
 discussion, however, and the known failure of the partial ex- 
 periments which had occurred, accompanied by the abolition 
 of the protective system, soon undermined any position which 
 such doctrines had obtained in the public mind. The revo- 
 lution of 1848 was followed by an expiring flash. The com- 
 munistic periodicals, after a brief period of excitement and 
 success, dropped one by one out of existence. There is at 
 the present moment no known public organ of these systems 
 in Britain ; and while this has been the happy result of entire 
 freedom of discussion, there can be little doubt tliat, in those 
 nations where opinion has been coerced, a communistic spirit 
 of the most dangerous kind still smoulders, ready, when an 
 occasion offers itself, to burst forth in a consuming fla.ne.
 
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