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SOCIAL UTOPIAS.

IN every country, and in all ages of the world, there have been sages
and poets who, contrasting the present with the past, have seen
reason to anticipate for humanity a destiny as superior to its condition in
the time in which they lived as that was to the barbarism from which it
had emerged; and embodying their sanguine anticipations in prophecy or
philosophic fiction, have idealised a state of society in which the evils of
the past and present should have no existence. These constantly-repro-
duced visions of the future have assumed a variety of forms, according to
the circumstances of time and locality in which they have been promul-
gated, and the bent of mind of the author; sometimes appearing in a jpoli-
tical form, as the veritable Magna Charta of the future; at others associated
with some new theory of the mind ; and often as a new religion, or a new
manifestation of one more venerable. Such theories and speculations seem
natural to the human mind under certain conditions, and it cannot be
doubted that they have conduced to social progress, by spurring society
onward, preventing stagnation and retrogression, and constantly directing
the attention of mankind to a higher destiny. Though never generally
received, who shall say to what extent they have influenced the progress
of society ? It is chiefly in this view that they command our respect and
attention, as infiltrating public opinion with new ideas, suggestive of requi-
site reforms and ameliorations.

The idea of a state of society free from vice and misery of every descrip-
tion dates from a very remote period. All the ancient nations had a tradi-
tion that, in the first ages of the world, man enjoyed an existence uneon-
taminated by crime, and untainted with disease, surrounded by the beauties
of nature, and living in innocence and peace upon the spontaneous produc-
tions of the earth. Such was the Eden of Moses and Zoroaster, and the
Golden Age of the Greek poets. It may easily be understood how belief
in this universal tradition, and the contrast of the barbarism which super-
vened upon the Golden Age with the more advanced condition of society
in which he lived, led the philosopher Plato to imagine a state of society
in which the simplicity and innocence of the golden reign of Saturn should
be revived, and embellished with the artistic and scientific appliances of
that degree of civilisation to which Athens had then attained. That he
intended only to write an amusing fiction, as some have supposed, is very
unlikely; it is far more probable that his aim was to picture a model
No. 18.	ICHAMBERS'S PAPERS FOR THE PEOPLE.

republic, the realisation of which he believed practicable, and anticipated
as the ultimate constitution of society.

The philosophers and legislators of antiquity could not comprehend how-
order could be maintained in a stai'e without the institution of castes, those
barriers to progress which struck with immobility the civilisations of the
past. In legislating for his imaginary republic of Atlantis, which he
describes as a large island far to the westward of Europe, Plato may
reasonably be supposed to have studied the political systems and social
organisation of the ancient states, and to have drawn from them such
institutions as he thought it desirable to perpetuate. In Egypt, in India,
in Greece, even at Sparta under the communitive institutions of Lycurgus,.
he found the system of castes; and hence he divides the citizens of his
ideal republic into three classes—the magistracy, the race of gold; the
warriors, the race of silver; and the workmen, the race of iron. But as if
he saw in this classification a tendency to repress the aspirations of genius
in the most numerous class, he immediately provides a remedy for the
evils of caste in a divine ordination, that a citizen of the race of gold should
have a son of the race of silver, and vice versd; and that one of the race
of iron should have a son of the race of silver, perchance of the race of
gold. Thus the principle of caste is broken down; for where these condi-
tions are possible, it exists no longer, and the fusion of castes becomes
but a question of time.

The citizens of Atlantis have established among them the community of
goods, an institution little compatible with that of caste, though not abso-
lutely opposed to it. Even the women were common to all—a blemish in
his social system into which Plato was led by the general laxity of morals
in the Grecian states, and the prevalence of the custom among several
ancient nations. This leads him to the establishment of the common
family, all the children being recognised as the heirs in common of the
state, which charges itself with their maintenance and education. Thus
another blow is struck at the institution of caste, which seems, indeed, to
have been admitted by Plato only as a sacrifice to the spirit of the age in
which he lived, while he doubted the necessity of maintaining it, and pro-
vided for its ultimate abolition. If he had wished to perpetuate castes, he
would not have established the common family, and the community of
women and goods, nor have admitted the possibility of the fusion of
classes. The poets were banished, lest they should corrupt religion with
their mythological fables; and no foreigners were allowed to reside in the
island, lest the citizens should be led by them to adopt luxurious habits
and injurious innovations in their political and social system.

Of the Thaumasia of Theopompos, a philosopher of Chios, whose fame
as a historian is celebrated by Athenseus and Dionysius of Halicarnassus,
only a fragment is extant. This is a dialogue between Midas, king of
Phrygia, and the demi-god Silenus, in which the latter informs the former
that, beyond the great ocean which lies to the westward of the Pillars of
Hercules, there is an extensive continent, inhabited by a race of giants,
and inferior animals of corresponding size. The people of this continent
possessed many large cities, and some peculiar institutions; one of their
cities was called Eusebes, or the Holy City, the inhabitants of which lived
to double the ordinary period of the duration of human life in Europe.

2^20.\

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Oe> i W	SOCIAL STOMAS.

The country around the city of Eusebes was like a garden, and the inhabi-
tants lived without toil upon the spontaneous fruits of the earth-, war and
strife were unknown among them, and sickness never invaded their dwell-
ings. So peaceful and innocent were their lives, that the gods mixed in
familiar intercourse with them, as the Olympian deities are fabled to have
done with the Arcadians in the Age of Gold.

Arranging social theories and experiments in the order of time, for the
better understanding and appreciation of each, as they often illustrate each
other, we proceed from imagination to reality, from the social idealists of
antiquity to the workers out of their conceptions. The latter are more
significant than the former; between them there is all the distance whkii
separates opinion from fact, theory from practice. We meet in all ages
with associations of individuals separating themselves from the outward
world, striving to organize a state within a state, and constituting a living
protest against exterior society. The first of these which history has
recorded is that of the Essenes, a sect of the Jews, concerning whom Philo,
Josephus, and Pliny, have left us ample details. Both the Jewish historians
speak highly of their morality, and the innocence and peaceftdnesBof their
lives; Josephus indeed says that 4 they exceed all other men that addict
themselves to virtue.1 They believed in one God, and in a future state,
and observed the Jewish Sabbath; but they offered no sacrifices. Their
number in the time of Josephus was about four thousand, and all were
engaged in agriculture. They had no particular town, but were scattered
in groups through the principal parts of Judea; and when one of them
travelled, he was received as a brother by the Essenes of every place that
he came to. They held all their property in common, appointing stewards
to conduct their financial affairs; and as all among them were content with
the necessaries of life, they sought not to amass wealth. War they con-
sidered contrary to religion; regal domination they regarded as impiof®
and unjust, since all mm are brothers; and trade they esteemed the source
of avarice and luxury. Looking upon all men as free and equal, and
united by the ties of universal fraternity, they had no slaves, or even ser-
vants, but laboured equally, and were the servitors of each other. As
many as lived in one town or village had their abode under one roof, and
had their meals together, like the citizens of Sparta and Crete. They pre-
luded their frugal meals with a prayer, and were noted for their temperance
and abstemiousness. Their dress was plain and simple, and the eoteror
most in esteem was white—a preference which evinces their love of clean-
liness. Marriage was discountenanced, and the voids made in their com-
munities *by death were filled up by children whom they adopted, and
reared according to their own formula, and by converts, who were only
admitted, however, after a long probation. Marriage was not absolutely
forbidden, however ; and we learn from Josephus that there was an order
of Essenes who had wives, but who were strict monogamists.

In the education of the children which they adopted, the Essenes chiefly
directed their attention to the healthful and vigorous development of their
frames, and the cultivation of the moral sentiments. They forbade oaths ;
but Josephus testifies to their strict regard to truth, and the justness and
probity of all their dealings. They paid great respect to the aged, and

S76 I 02.Chambers's papers for the people.

supported the sick, the disabled, and the superannuated out of the common
stock. Riches, sensual pleasures, and vainglory they held in contempt.
1 They formed themselves,' says Philo, 1 to sanctity, to justice, to domestic
economy, to social duties, by regulating themselves upon three principles,
which resumed all their doctrine: Love God, love virtue, love mankind.
Their love for God proved itself by their purity of life, by their chastity,
by the anxiety which they had to fulfil all their relations to the Divinity.
Their love of virtue resulted sufficiently in their contempt of wealth, of
pleasure, of vainglory, and also in their patience, in their frugality, in their
temperance, in their simplicity, and in their respect for the laws; while
their love to their neighbours they proved by their benevolence, their
equity, their charity, and by a system of community in which there was no
interest to be covetous.'

There is so much resemblance between the doctrines and customs of
the Essenes and those of the primitive Christians, that Montfaucon, a
learned Benedictine, doubted the antiquity of the Essenes, and considered
them as a sect posterior to the time of the apostles. Josephus speaks of
the Essenes as a sect of the Jews more than a century and a-half previous
to the Christian era; but it is probable that the early Christians derived
from them some of their customs and observances, and the more so, as the
Essenes were universally esteemed for their piety, and the purity and sim-
plicity of their lives. It is easy to recognise this resemblance in the aboli-
tion of slavery and of sacrifices, in the repugnance to war and oath-taking,
in the repasts in common, in their austere morality, and in the community
of goods, a distinguishing feature of the social economy of the Essenes, and
for a certain period of Christianity likewise. Whether the last-mentioned
custom ever extended beyond the primitive church of Jerusalem is uncer-
tain. It was probably adopted there as a means of drawing closer the
bonds of union and fraternity, when persecution menaced the little band of
disciples with extinction, and ended with their dispersion over Judea, pre-
vious to the taking of Jerusalem by Titus. The brief existence of the
practice, however, and its recognition, more or less direct, as a Christian
institution, by Justin Martyr, Irenseus, Tertullian, Origen, St Barnabas, and
St Ambrose, led to its adoption by the monastic orders, and to the claim
of the church's authority and sanction by the social sects of later times.

The revolution of ideas brought about by the religious reformation of
the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, caused the resus-
citation of the doctrine that common property w;as an integral part
of Christianity; and among the long-enslaved serf-class it spread with
the rapidity of wildfire. For them the Reformation would have accom-
plished nothing, if it did not eventuate a social revolution as well as a reli-
gious one. The disciples of WicklifFe, of Luther, and of John Huss,
quoted the apostles and fathers of Christianity, particularly the remarkable
declaration of St Ambrose, that 1 nature has given all things in common to
all men. Nature has established a common right, and it is usurpation
which has produced a private claim.' John Ball, a reforming priest,
proclaimed in Kent the doctrine of the natural equality of all mankind,
and the result was the poll-tax insurrection, headed by Wat Tyler. Simi-
lar in its causes was the insurrection, at a later period, of the peasantry of
Saxony and the Rhenish provinces, and the commotions, more importantSOCIAL UTOPIAS.

in their results, of the Hussites in Bohemia. Here the outbreak took a
more definite form, and was conducted by the indomitable Zisca with the
avowed aim of establishing a social republic upon the ruins of the existing
institutions. Romanism was to be succeeded by the reformed church,
monarchy by a republic, aristocratic feudalism by democracy; the lands of
the Bohemian nobles and gentry were to be parcelled out among all the
people, as the Lacedaemonian state was by Lycurgus; and all feudal tenures
and exclusive privileges to be utterly abolished. Such a state of things
could only be maintained in that age while the Hussites remained in arms,
especially as the ranks of Zisca's army were mainly recruited from the
labouring-classes, and all that had been permanently gained at the termina-
tion of the civil war was the recognition of the reformed religion.

At the commencement of the sixteenth century, the doctrine of the com-
munity of goods was revived by the Anabaptists. They excited a tumult
at Amsterdam, and raised an insurrection in Westphalia. c We have one
common father, Adam,' said Muntzer, one of their leaders: ' whence
comes, then, the diversity of ranks and of goods ? — why groan we in
poverty while others have delicacies ? Have we not a right to the equality
of goods, which, by their nature, are made to be parted without distinction
among us ? Return us the riches of the time being—restore us that which
you retain unjustly.' To the community of goods, a feature common to all
Utopias, under a form more or less modified, the Anabaptists added the
community of women and the common family—ideas borrowed from the
social republic of Plato. In common with the general Baptists, and the
United Brethren, and other religious sects of a later date, they held the
doctrine that baptism should not be performed until the candidate had
arrived at an age to understand the nature of the ceremony, and then by
dipping in the water, instead of by sprinkling. To this point of difference
from the established churches of the countries in which the sect sprung up
they added the more dangerous tenet, that with those who have the light
of the Gospel to direct them the office of magistrate is unnecessary, and
an encroachment upon liberty. The theological doctrines upon which they
grounded their dissent alike from Luther and from Calvin were harmless
enough, and even their resolution to communise their property and labour
might have been regarded merely in the light of an experiment in social
science; but their political principles were so utterly subversive of all
authority, that they drew upon themselves a persecution which they pos-
sibly might otherwise have escaped.

Muntzer, the first Anabaptist leader, died upon a scaffold at Mulhausen
in 1525. His fate did not diminish the ardour of his disciples, who con-
tinued to propagate his doctrines, which were eagerly received by the
working-classes, and especially by the peasantry. John Bocold, a tailor of
Leyden, and John Matthias, a baker of Haarlem, were declared prophets ;
and the former was afterwards inaugurated as their king. Enthusiastic
and sanguine, determined to maintain and carry out their doctrines by force
of arms, they rose in insurrection under their leaders, the said John Bocold
and John Matthias, and seized the city of Munster, to which they gave the
name of Mount Zion. Here they established the Anabaptist family, and
reduced to practice the doctrine of a community of women and of goods.
They revived the love-feasts of the early Christians; but the simplicity and

5Chambers's papers for the people.

austere morality which had characterised all former attempts to render the
equality of mankind an actuality was unknown among them. Teaching
the reconciliation of the flesh and the spirit, and the sanctification of the
former by the latter, they indulged in festivities and sensuous delights,
until the imperial troops invested their city of refuge. Though immersed
in sensuality, they made a brave defence, Matthias fell in a rash sally, and
Munster was at length taken by storm. Most of the Anabaptists died
fighting; but Bocold was made prisoner, and executed, after suffering the
most cruel torments, which he bore with the fortitude of a martyr.

Among the religious Utopias of this period, that of the Millennians must
not be omitted. These are more prophetic than practical: they are con-
tent to defer until the second advent of Jesus the realisation of that dream
of equality which the Anabaptists sought to work out in their own day.
Basing their anticipations of the future upon the prophecies of Isaiah,
Daniel, and Jeremiah, they await the millennium, or thousand years' reign
of Christ, commencing with his second coming, which Agier fixed for the
year 1849. Under the reign of the Messiah the earth is to be a terrestrial
paradise; the antipathies of the brute creation will cease to be displayed;
and the wolf will lie down with the lamb, and the lion with the suckling-
calf. It will be the reign of universal peace and love, and Christ will be at
once the president and pontiff of the great Commanarchy. Isidore Isolanis,
however, anticipating the Millennium, nominated Pope Adrian YI. the
chief of the world-republic; and Fialin, curate of MarsiHy, expected the
return to earth of the prophet Elijah. Louis Reybaud states that the
Millennians await the reappearance of Jesus to this day at appointed
hours, and even in England the sect is not yet extinct.

After the Anabaptists, no attempt to reduce to practice the speculations
of the social theorists was made for more than two centuries and a-half;
that period, however, had its full share of societary fictions and constitu-
tions for ideal commonwealths. Of these the most celebrated is the
i Utopia' of Sir Thomas More—a work which will bear comparison with the
1 Atlantis ' of Plato, and which has added a word to the English langtage,
every theoretical system of society being since called Utopian. Utopia
is a beautiful island in the Atlantic; the manners of the people are
peaceful, their customs simple, their laws derived from nature, and their
religion one of charity and love. All its citizens are well educated, no
one is persecuted for his belief, they engage in war only for their own
defence, and the punishment of death is unknown among them. The
supposition of criminals under such institutions as those of Utopia mars
the beauty of More's delineation; mildness is preferred by the Utopians
to severity, however, and instead of being put to death, malefactors are
reduced to slavery. The penal laws of England in More's time were
terrible in their severity, and the rigour with which he persecuted the
Protestants proves that he did not regard the views propounded in his
1 Utopia' as practicable in his own age. The institution of monogamy,
modesty of relations between the sexes, and the absence of castes, place
a wide difference between the ideal commonwealth of More and that of
Plato; we feel and understand, in perusing the 1 Utopia,' all the influence
of Christianity upon society. The basis of the government in Utopia isSOCIAL UTOPIAS.

election. Over every group of thirty families there is a philarch, and to
every ten philarchs a protophilarch. The council of protophilarchs and
the senate are elected every year, and the chief magistrate is elected for
life by these two assemblies, but removable by the majority upon any
proved misconduct. Labour and property are in common in Utopia, and
every one makes his wants the measure of his desires. The Utopians
desire, in their clothing, no other quality than durability; they set no
value upon the precious metals, and esteem intellectual pleasures the
highest source of enjoyment. Their communal repasts are enlivened by
music, and their banqueting halls perfumed with the most exquisite
odours. All the Utopians are agriculturists; but every man applies him-
self to some occupation in addition to his share of the common labour in
cultivating the soil, such as the woollen and linen manufactures, or the
mechanical arts connected with architecture. Each family also makes its
own clothes, and the same trade generally descends from father to son,
but departures from this rule are allowed; and indeed nothing can be
more unfavourable to social progress than the tendency to caste which is
inherent in the hereditary succession of trades. In consequence of the
equal division of labour, and the economy of management among the
Utopians, no one works more than six hours per day; and the labour
being so light, and the enjoyment of its fruits so well assured, no one
seeks to evade his share.

Similar in design to the 'Utopia' of More were the other philosophic
fictions produced between the era of the Reformation and that of the first
French Revolution. Little more than the enumeration of these must
suffice: the list embraces the ' New Atlantis' of the philosopher Bacon;
the 1 Oceana7 of the republican Harrington; the 4 City of the Sun* of Cam-
panula, a Calabrian friar, a work which Reybaud describes as ' a fantastic
creation full of grandeur;' the ' Other World' of Hall; the 'Isle of Pleasures*
of Fenelon; the ' Gaudentia di Lucca' of Berkeley; the ' Austral Discovery*
of Retif de la Bretonne; the ' Dream of Perpetual Peace' of the Abbe St
Pierre; and the 1 Basiliade' of Morelly. Many features of the ' Atlantis* and
the 1 Utopia* are common to all these visions of the age of gold; but most
of them exhibit a return towards nature rather than an advance towards
the refinements of civilisation. It is generally of Arcadia that the writers
dreamed: its sunny skies, its blue hills, its cascades, and its shepherdesses;
but one chain of ideas pervades them all—the amelioration of man's con-
dition, the association of interests, the harmony of the passions, the unity
of sentiment. Morelly was perhaps the most sincere believer in the prac-
ticability of the views which he advanced, and his ' Code of Nature' is an
elaborately-written work, advocating the same social principles which, in
the ' Basiliade,' he had presented in the garb of fiction. The idea of the
latter work, which was for a long time attributed to Diderot, was taken
from the account given by Gregory of Nazianzen of a famous charitable
institution as large as a town, founded by Basilius of Csesarea, a noted
rhetorician and Christian preacher, and named after him the Basilias.

Who were the workers-out of these social fictions of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries? We find them only in two of the more obscure
religious sects—the Moravians and the Shakers; or, as they call themselves,

7CHAMBERS'S PAPERS FOR THE PEOPLE.

the Society of United Brethren, and the United Society of Believers. The.
first of these sects sprung up in Moravia, from which they derive the name
by which they are commonly designated; but being persecuted by the=
Austrian government in the middle of the seventeenth century, they settled
themselves in Hungary and Transylvania. Their religion is the utmost
simplification of Christianity: they have no priests, but their elders, of
whom there are three or four to each community, read the public prayers-
every morning and evening, and deliver a religious and moral discourse
on the Sabbath. Their doctrines differ little from those of the Lutheran
church, except as regards baptism: this rite is left unperformed until the
children are ten or twelve years of age, when, if they can repeat the
catechism of the sect correctly, and make a confession of their faith openly
before the congregation, the elders point out to them the duty and benefit
of being joined in membership to the rest of the brotherhood. Believing
that the heart deceives less than the reason, the Moravians rely more upon
goodness than upon intelligence; and Samuel Hartlib, an English traveller,
writing from their colony at Sarospatak in Hungary in 1659, describes,
them as ' an honest, simple-hearted people, humble, godly, laborious, well-
trained up, and lovers of discipline.'

Each of the Moravian communities is composed of several hundred
families, who all reside under one roof; they have a common kitchen and
dining-hall, and the men of every trade have then* distinctive workroom.
They have no social distinctions or classes among them, but each brother
follows some manual occupation, and the produce of his labour is thrown
into the common stock, to provide therefrom for the wants of all. Each
community elects a steward and three or more elders, according to the
number of the brotherhood; and these have the charge of all then* domestic
and financial affairs. They have no privileges or immunities, but greater
responsibility; the steward tiuys and sells on account of the community,
and has to render an account of his management. At their common
repasts, however, the steward and elders sit at a separate table, the other
brothers and the women sit at separate tables, and the children likewise sit
apart—the boys at one table, and the girls at another. The members of.
each community are divided into choirs, according to sex and state: there
are choirs of youths and of maidens, of husbands and of wives, of widowers*
and of widows. Maidens, wives, and widows, are readily distinguished by
the colour of their ribbons.

All the children are educated in common by properly-qualified persons,,
under the superintendence of twelve brothers selected for that purpose-
The boys and girls are instructed apart, but all are treated alike as the
children of one father. All things being common among them, individual
accumulation is impossible, and heritage is unknown; yet no one has any
trouble or anxiety concerning the education, training, and maintenance of
his children. Marriage is among them the object of delicate attention and
scrupulous anxiety, and unmarried men are seldom met with in their com-
munities. There being no considerations of selfish interest on either side,
their unions are prompted by affinity of sentiment alone, and are nearly
always happy. An elder performs their simple marriage ceremony, and
pronounces a blessing upon the married pair in the presence of all the
brotherhood.

8SOCIAL UTOPIAS.

The United Brethren have now extended their communities into Southern
Russia and other parts of Europe. All their settlements maintain their
connection with each other, and co-operate in maintaining and carrying out
a religious propaganda, which"has sent forth its missionaries to Southern
Africa, the West Indies, Canada, Labrador, Lapland, and even Greenland.
Active colonists and zealous apostles, it is seldom that they fail in their
propagandist enterprises. Their missionaries possess in a high degree the
qualities which most contribute to success—patience, devotedness, earnest-
ness, benevolence, and untiring energy. Most of their establishments
borrow their names from places mentioned in the New Testament—as
Nazareth, Bethlehem, Genesareth, Sharon, Galilee, and Sarepta.

There is a considerable resemblance, it will be seen, between the Mora-
vians and the Essenes; the foundation of their systems is the same, and
many of the details are identical. There is between them precisely the
distance which separates Judaism from Christianity: the Moravian family
is less ascetic—it rests upon a wider basis, and is more concerned with this
world. In some points they approach Quakerism, and in others they
exhibit an approximation to the psychological principles of St Simon and
Fourier: so nice are the shades of difference between the sects established
upon principles of dissent from society, as well as from the churches, social
Rot less than religious.

The United Society of Believers, commonly called Shakers, originated
snore than a century after that of the United Brethren ; its founder was a
female, a native of Lancashire, whose name was Anne Lee. Accompanied
fey a few friends and disciples, she emigrated to the United States, then
agitated by the approaching rupture with the mother country, and cast
upon the soil stirred by Franklin and Paine the seeds of a new social and
religious faith. Anne Lee was but the wife of a poor blacksmith, and had
received little or no education; but her faith was great in the principles
which she believed it her mission to teach, and she was undoubtedly
actuated by the purest motives, by a sincere desire to provide a remedy
for the evils which afflict society. It was some time, however, before the
principles which she and her immediate disciples propounded made much
progress. The self-denial which they inculcated, their peculiar religious
opinions and mode of worship, and the importance which they attach to the
unnatural institution of celibacy, attracted few minds. It was not until
they established the community of property among them that they made
much progress in extending their sect: then their numbers began to
increase, and in 1780 the first Shaker community was established at Nis-
kyuna, now called Water-Vliet, eight miles from the town of Albany, in
the United States. In 1805 the number of their communities had increased
to twenty; in 1847 there were eighteen, and the Shaker population was
estimated at between 4000 and 5000; and they are certainly not upon the
increase. Harriet Martineau and J. S. Buckingham, who have both visited
the Shaker community of New Lebanon, describe their success in the
accumulation of property and the acquisition of the means of material
comfort as most surprising. ' There is no question of their entire success,7
says the former, ' as far as wealth is concerned. A very moderate amount
f labour has secured to them in'perfection all the comforts of life that they
now how to enjoy, arid as much wealth as would command the intellectual

Kn. 1JI	QChambers's papers for the people.

luxuries of which they do not dream. The earth does not show more
flourishing fields, gardens, and orchards than theirs. "The houses are-
spacious, and in all respects unexceptionable. The finish of every external
thing testifies to their wealth both of material and leisure.' The writer
adds, If happiness lay in bread and butter, and such things, these people-
have attained the summum bonum.r

The Shakers attach little importance to mental cultivation, and hold
scientific attainments in small esteem, Here we see a resemblance to the
Moravians ; but in other respects they approach nearer to the Essenes than
any of the religious sects among whom the community of property is or lias
been practised. In their communities the sexes are completely separated :
man and woman are among them two imperfect halves of humanity. They
occupy distinct portions of the house, they work and have their meala
apart, and sit apart in the chapel, which has two entrances—one for the
males, the other for the females. In their costume both sexes assimilate,
somewhat to the Society of Friends, with the addition of such eccentricities
of dress as red stockings for the men. Their mode of worship is calculated
to excite a smile or a feeling of compassion, according to the tone of the
spectator's mind. Their religious exercises commence with a hymn, which
is sung to a lively tune, after which they prostrate themselves thrice upon
the floor of the chapel; then they sing again, which is followed by the men
pulling off their coats, preliminary to a scene perhaps only paralleled among
the dancing dervises of the East. They dance, jump as high as they oanr
clap their hands, and make such other extravagant demonstrations of joy
as might be expected only from the uncivilised aborigines of Caffraria or
Australia. These singular exercises they call manifestations of then? joy
and gratitude for the goodness of the Creator.

As might be expected, the inmates of the Shaker communities are gene-
rally Ignorant to a lamentable degree. The religious sentiment and the
principle of celibacy are with them paramount. The singularity of their
religious exercises, the importance which they attach to entire abstinence,
from marriage, their neglect of mental cultivation, and the little considera-
tion which they display for intellectual attainments, must inevitably tend
to diminish the number of those who join them in the same ratio as the
true elements of social and domestic happiness become understood and
appreciated in the outer world. The peculiar aspect which the Utopian
idea has assumed in their communities is so repellant—so contrary, indeed,
to the prevailing ideas of what social existence ought to he—that there can
be little doubt that their numbers will soon become stationary, and then
rapidly decline. It is certain, however, that the greatest amount of success
has attended those social sects which have made their formula of associa-
tion subordinate to their religious views. Unity of religious sentiment has*
given them a power of coherence which they would not otherwise have
possessed, and which the withdrawal from ordinary and accepted modes of
life has only confirmed. ' Whether the maintenance of this consolidation'
[of interests], says a writer who has lived some time in one of their com-
munities, 1 is absolutely dependent on their particular spiritual position,
may well be questioned. Its violation of the sacred marriage unity must
for ever prevent its entering into harmony with the hallowed feeling of
community now becoming prevalent. It is indeed probable that this, the
10SOCIAL UTOPIAS.

secret of its strength, is its ever-present agony, and will at some not very
remote period prove the cause of its overthrow.'

The Moravians and Shakers are the only social sects which date from the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, if we except the Idealists, who sprung
up with the progress of the tremendous political convulsion of which France
was the scene in the latter years of the last century. It seems that the reli-
gious sects which have been described must be referred to the Reformation
rather than to the particular Utopias of More, Bacon, Harrington^ Fenelon,
Campanella, and Morelly; but that these had no effect in producing later
projects for the regeneration of society, is by no means to be inferred.
The ideas upon social amelioration and improvement which they contain
were revolved and elaborated in the minds of poets, philosophers, and poli-
ticians, and only the French Revolution was required to bring them from
the under-current of opinion to the surface. Rousseau and the Iliumina-
tists generalised the views enunciated by the writers of social fictions, and
gave them a distinct aim and a practical direction ; and the Revolution
found the idea of the reconstruction of society, and'the amelioration of
man's condition, germinating in the bosom of Condorcet, of Robespierre,
and even of the furious and sanguinary Marat.

In our own country the enfranchisement of ideas eventuated by the
French Revolution of 1793 produced the societary speculations of Godwin,
the equalitarian tendencies of the earlier poems of Southey, the Millennial
dreamings of Coleridge, and the splendidly-conceived poetic Utopias of
Shelley. Godwin and Shelley retained through life their faith in the prac-
ticability and ultimate realisation of their societary theories ; but it is well
known that the opinions of Coleridge and Southey underwent a change,
and became considerably moderated. This was more particularly the case
as regarded the latter, and was the more marked, from the intolerance
which afterwards distinguished his attachment to the institutions of the
present. It was while domesticated with Southey at Keswick that the
opinions of Coleridge underwent a change, and that he abjured the Utopia®
visions of his youth. In their earlier days, Coleridge and Southey, in con-
junction with a literary friend named Lloyd, as enthusiastic as themselves,
had determined to emigrate to America, and found upon the banks of the
Susquehanna a Pantisocracy, or state of society in which all things were
to be in common—education, family, labour, property, and suffrage. The
idea was never realised, chiefly owing to the want of funds; and in five
years after it was entertained by them, the opinions of both Southey and
Coleridge underwent a change.

It is chiefly hi his ' Religious Musings '—a desultory poem written on
the Christmas eve of 1794—that we find the Utopian ideas of Coleridge,
and those references to the Millennium, to which allusion has been made
in the preceding paragraph. After descanting upon the person and cha-
racter of Christ, and the influence of Christianity upon the mind, he
inveighs against the war with France, and then proceeds to examine the
origin and uses of government and property. To the institution of private
property he traces selfishness, avarice, and luxury, and to these war,
oppression, poverty, and disease; but he considers the fine arts to have
sprung from luxury, and the sciences from

11chambers's papers for the people.

-' Keen necessities

To ceaseless action goading human thought/

He sees, with the Optimist, good in evil; and from the scientific and
mechanical appliances, which mankind would not have possessed but for
the ' keen necessities' of the past, the poet educes a brilliant future for
the human race, when man shall be a law to himself, and the universal
family shall enjoy in common the produce 'raised from the! common earth
by common toil.' This stage of society, he supposes, will be succeeded
by the Millennium, the thousand years' reign of Christ, 1 in which,' he says
in a note, 11 suppose that man will continue to enjoy the highest glory of
which his human nature is capable; that all who, in past ages, have endea-
voured to ameliorate the state of man, will rise and enjoy the fruits and
flowers, the imperceptible seeds of which they had sown in their former
life; and that the wicked will* during the same period, be suffering the
remedies adapted to their several bad habits. I suppose that this period
will be followed by the passing away of this earth, and by our entering
the state of pure intellect.'

The poetry of Shelley is even more Utopian than that of the.bards of
Pantisocracy: he is the poet of the future, as essentially as Byron is of
the present, and Scott of the past. His 1 Revolt of Islam,' his ' Queen
Mab,' and his ' Prometheus Unbound,' are Utopias in verse. It was the
creed of Shelley that human nature is capable of being rendered perfect;
that kings and priests have hitherto .hindered that glorious consummation
for the attainment of their own selfigli purposes; that religion is hostile
to the development of feelings of charity and fraternity; and that, if the
inherent goodness of the human heart was free to work out its mission,
the Golden Age would be realised. There can be no doubt that Shelley
really believed his principles to be correct, and his views attainable; and
his untiring benevolence in visiting the cottages of the poor during his
residence at Marlow stamps with sincerity and disinterestedness his
eloquent pleadings for humanity. ' Queen Mab,' which is perhaps the
most generally known of Shelley's works, and which was written by its
gifted author at the age of eighteen, with all its strange paradoxes and
contradictions, is a poem abounding in fine passages. He supposes the
soul of a female character called Ianthe to leave the body during sleep,
and to ascend, under the guidance of the fairy Mab, to the latter's cloud-
roofed . palace, from whence she contemplates the earth, and surveys the
ruins of Jerusalem, Palmyra, Athens, and Rome. Then she beholds a
battle-field, and a town destroyed in the conflict, and the deathbed of a
tyrant, and the poet descants upon the horrors of war, the evils of
monarchy, the vices engendered by competitive commerce, and all the
social errors and evils of the present. The spirit describes the auto-da-fe
of an atheist, and Mab, after defending and supporting materialism, sum-
mons the Wandering Jew, who relates the crimes and abuses, and conse-
quent misery and suffering, which are alleged to have resulted from
Christianity. Having thus passed in review the past and the present,
the fairy queen favours Ianthe with a glimpse of the future, when all the
moral and material beauty of the Golden Age, and all the prophetic anti-
cipations of the Millennium are realised and fulfilled. The earth, in the
language of St Simon, is rehabilitated, and no longer produces rank weeds
USOCIAL UTOPIAS.

and poisonous fungi, but everywhere flowers and fruits. Fens and marshes,
which had exhaled malaria, are covered with the ambery corn; the whirl-
wind and the storm are known no more; the burning deserts of Arabia
and Africa are rendered cultivable; the polar ice is dissolved; and the
wild denizens of the forests have forgotten their thirst of blood—the lion
sports with the Hid, and the child shares its meal with the 4 green and
golden basilisk.7 The nature of man has experienced a change corre-
sponding with this beautiful picture of the external universe—war, slavery y
commerce, and all the evils of present society, are no longer known; his
passions are attempered and harmonised; temperance has banished disease
from his frame, and prolonged his life, and his existence has become a
long summer's day—a dream of Arcadia or Paradise realised.

The ' Revolt of Islam' is a poetic Utopia of a somewhat different cast.
The poet arises from slumber visited by unquiet dreams, and meets on the
seashore a beautiful female form, by whom the story is related. She is
beloved by a spirit, who conducts her to the glorious senate of the departed
friends of the human race, where she meets Laon, a patriot of Aigolis,
who relates the story of the revolt of his countrymen against the tyrant
of Islam. This poem is far superior to ' Queen Mab,' and is replete with
passages of exquisite beauty; the glory of the poet's genius is unobscured
by the dark passions, the doubts, the misanthropy, or the cynicism, of
Byron ; and it is seen in this more than in any other of his poems, except
perhaps the ' Prometheus Unbound.' The hymn in the fifth canto, of
the nations who have liberated themselves by revolt, is a complete ex-
position of Shelley's views and opinions: it declares fear to be the cause
of man's misery and degradation; proclaims the moral beauty of equa-
lity; and announces the advent of peace, love, freedom, and universal
brotherhood. The mythic story upon which the /Prometheus Unbound'
is founded is well known: it is as metaphysical and mystical as most of
Shelley's poems; and the atheistic tenets of the poet are as boldly avowed
and proclaimed in it as in any of them. The idea of the perfectibility of
human nature is here reproduced ; and the overthrow of Jupiter, and
unbinding of Prometheus, harbinger the restoration of the Golden Age.
These three poems present us with a complete view of Shelley's social
philosophy; and the %hole tenor of his life, and the revelations of his
character given to the world by his widow, prove that he really believed
it practicable, and was actuated in its enunciation by the purest and most
benevolent motives.

The Utopias of antiquity, and of the period between the Protestant
Reformation and the French Revolution of 1793, were confined to a few
ardent and talented philanthropists, living in ages and countries remote
from each other, and their speculations descended not among the masses.
Those of More, Bacon, Hall, and Campanella, were written in Latin, and
their authors never dreamt of addressing themselves to the people, or of
attempting to reduce to practice their visions of societary perfection. The
Moravians and Shakers, equally with the Hussites and Anabaptists, must
be considered as derived from the religious agitation of the Reformation;
and it was not until the close of the eighteenth century that the idea of
social regeneration began to mingle with the aspirations of the masses for
political emancipation. It entered into the philosophy of Condorcet; weCHAMBERSVPA-PEES FOR THE PEOPLE.

find it in the insane ravings of Marat, though every page of his journal
seems inspired by the genius of bloodshed ; and it was the ever-present
day-dream of the stormy life of Robespierre. ' Robespierre's doctrine,'
says Buonarotti, was, that the Revolution ought to change altogether the
moral and material condition of the labouring-classes.' The reconstruction
of society was too vast a scheme for his brief political existence, during
which France was torn by intestine as well as exterior strife, and no social
changes were seriously projected until the Babouvist agitation and con-
spiracy of 1796.

When the Jacobin Club and its affiliated societies in the departments
had been closed by the Directory, and the workmen disarmed by the
authorities under tlie terror of a threatened bombardment of the faux-
bourgs, the democratic party established a club in the vaults of the Pan-
theon, where they "assembled and organized their forces, and at which a
man named Babeuf, as well from the paucity of talent which successive
decimations had created in the Jacobin ranks, as from his enthusiasm a-nd
extreme opinions, became the principal orator.. He also edited a journal,
in which he supported the constitution of 1793, the communisation of
property, and a new organisation of industry.. From the tribune of the
Pantheon Club, and in the pages of his journal, Babeuf constantly pro-
claimed the doctrine of equality, urging upon his auditors and his readers
that it should be something more than common suffrage, and had a more
comprehensive signification than that given to it by the legal interpreters
of the constitution. Political inequality he regarded as a. less evil than
those social inequalities which create so much dissonance in society, such
wide-spread misery, such heartburnings, and such crimes. He declared
that the soil of every country was the common birthright of the people of
that country, and that it was right and proper that every citizen should
perform his due share of physical or intellectual labour, which, with the
communisation of property and the abolition of heritage, would establish
veritable equality.

i It is easy,' said he, 1 to make every one understand that a few hours'
occupation per day would secure to every individual the means of living
agreeably, and permanently relieve him from those anxieties by which we
are now continually undermined ; and surely the man who now slaves
himself to exhaustion in order to have a little, would work a little in order
to have much.' Labour, he considered, would, under his system, be no
longer disagreeable, but become a mild and pleasing occupation, of which
no person would have either the inclination or interest to elude his share.
4 It would be right,' says Buonarotti, his disciple and historian, ' to charge
in turn all the able-bodied citizens with the more repulsive labours, the
disagreeableness of which, it was hoped, would be progressively but rapidly
diminished by a masculine education, and by the assistance of mechanism,
chemistry, and the physical sciences in general. Probably it would have
been convenient to distinguish the works of strict necessity into easy and
painful, and to oblige each citizen to exercise one of one class, and one of
the other. Probably it might also have been just to establish another
division of citizens, according to age, for the purpose of proportioning the
labour to the increase and diminution of strength, for in matters of this
kind equality ought to be measured and determined less by the intensity
14SOCIAL UTOPIAS.

the labour required than by the capacity of the labourer.' 1 It may be
«aid,' says the same writer, 1 what will become of those productions of
industry which are the fruits of time and genius ? Is it not to be feared
that, being no longer better recompensed than other descriptions of labour,
they will be altogether extinguished to the injury of society ? Sophism I
It is to the love of glory, not to the desire for riohes, that we have been
-at all times indebted for the efforts of genius. Millions of poor soldiers
^devote themselves to death for the honour of serving a cruel master, and
shall we doubt the prodigies that might be operated upon the human heart
by the sentiment of happiness, the love of equality and country, and by
the noble incentives to a wise policy?'

Such doctrines as those promulgated by Babeuf could not fail to com-
mand a considerable share of popular favour, and among the working-
classes, in particular, they were adopted with enthusiasm. True to the
■unconquerable spirit that had actuated them from the commencement of
the Revolution, those of Paris at least were still ready to embrace any
formula or any scheme which promised to restore the constitution of 1793.
The meetings at the Pantheon were attended by excited crowds, whom
Babeuf harangued in a strain of fervent and enthusiastic oratory, until aft
length the attention of the government was drawn upon them, and prompt
measures adopted for their suppression. On the 26th February 1796 the
doors of the Pantheon were closed by the authorities, but another building
was shortly opened, in which the disciples of Babeuf continued to assemble,
-and in which they set up the busts of Robespierre and Marat. The
organisation of the Babouvists and the agitation of their principles had
mow reached a point at which the leaders thought it behoved them to con-
sider the means of rendering the social republic an actuality. It is not
surprising, when the temperament of the French people is considered, that
such an enthusiast as Babeuf should have hazarded an appeal to arms, or
that men so excitable as the workmen of Paris, accustomed as they had
been to emeutes and insurrections for the last seven years, should have been
ready to participate in a movement which promised to restore them even
more than that of which they had been deprived by the constitution of
1795. A plan of insurrection was concerted between Babeuf and his friend
Darth£, which was to be upon an extensive scale. Active emissaries were
distributed through the disaffected quarters of Paris, and sent to try the
feeling among the troops in the camp of Grenelle; a programme of the
new government was drawn up; a, Committee of Public Safety resolved
upon, and concentric movements upon the seats of the Directory; and the
Councils all scientifically arranged. Unfortunately for the success of the
enterprise, the conspirators. had admitted to their confidence an officer
named Grisel, who betrayed their designs to the government on the eve of
their execution; and on the 10th May 1796, Babeuf, Darthd, and seven
others, were arrested, and brought to trial before the high criminal court
of Vendome. Being convicted, the two principal conspirators were con-
demned to the guillotine, and the rest to transportation for life to a penal
settlement. Babeuf and Darthd, on hearing their sentence, stabbed them-
selves in the dock, in the presence of the judges; but the instruments of
intended self-destruction broke, and thus frustrated their intention. After
passing a night of extreme suffering, during which the blade of the weapon

15Chambers's papers for the people.

remained buried in Babeuf s wound, close to his heart, he and DartM
atoned for their attempt upon the scaffold. Their conspiracy excited the
utmost consternation throughout France, though even those who regard
Babeuf as a fanatic and ideologist have acknowledged their conviction of
the sincerity of his desire to realise what he conceived to be the universal
welfare in his system of social equality.

More than a quarter of a century elapsed after the execution of Babenf
and Dartlie before any new theory of society was submitted to public
opinion in Europe, or any fresh attempt made to reduce to practice Utopias
of an earlier date. The din of war resounded throughout Europe, and the
political reaction damped the aspirations of the enthusiastic, or induced
them to look to America as the only land in which any attempt could be
made to solve , the problem of social organisation. In the United States,
indeed, several attempts were made during this period to work out some
plan of social amelioration, and by none more successfully than by the
Harmonists, the Economists, and the Fraternalists.

The first two of these social sects sprung from the Separatists of Ger-
many—so called from their having dissented and separated from the
Lutheran church. The Separatists arose as a religious body in the king-
dom of Wurtemburg; and in 1815 a number of them left Germany with a
capital of only £1200, and formed the settlement of Harmony in the state
of Ohio. From this the colonists derive the name of Harmonists; but
they are better known by that of Rappites, applied to them from that of
their founder, a most pious, benevolent, and simple-hearted man. Their
attempt has been equally successful with that of the Shakers; and the
value of their landed property was estimated a few years since at £340,000-,
exclusive of a considerable sum invested in the American funds. In their
religious views, as well as in their social economics, the Harmonists seem
to form a link between the Moravians and the Shakers. They do not hold
the views of the latter society on marriage, but that institution is placed
among them under such restrictions as tend to check what they consider
would be an undue increase of population. Like the Shakers, however,
they hold all their property in common.

In the spring of 1817, about two hundred more of the Separatists, all of
the humbler classes, left Wurtemburg with a very limited amount of capital,
and embarked for Philadelphia. On their arrival in that city they nomi-
nated as their chief and agent a young man, who had gained their respect
and affection during the voyage across the Atlantic by his superior intelli-
gence, simple manners, and kindness to the sick. His name was Joseph
Bimeler. He had been a weaver, and afterwards a school-teacher, in Wur-
temburg; and his selection by those with whom he was associated to be
their, leader has done honour to their discrimination. He purchased for
the emigrants, on credit, 5500 acres of land in a spot of great natural
beauty in the valley of the Tuscarawas, in the eastern portion of the state
of Ohio, to which they removed in the latter part of the year, and fell to
work in separate families, erecting bark-huts and log-shanties, and pro-
viding for their immediate wants. Strangers in a strange land, girt round
by the pathless prairies, and in the dreary season of winter, the first months
of their settlement passed wretchedly enough, and they endured much
16SOCIAL UTOPIAS.

suffering and privation. For a year and a-half they worked in separate
families, and made little progress in acquiring the comforts of life; then
they resolved to follow the example of Rapp, and endeavour to establish
another Harmony in the wilderness by the power of associated effort. A
constitution was adopted, based upon principles strictly democratic, under
which they have lived to the present time. Their principal officers are
three trustees, in whom their property is vested, and upon whom devolves
the management of the internal affairs of the community; and an agent,
who manages all their relations with the outward world. These officers
are elective—females voting as well as males ; the trustees are elected for
three years, one retiring annually, when his post is filled by a new election.
Like the Harmonists, they hold all their property in common.

For several years the colony struggled with difficulties, but these were
gradually surmounted by the economy, industry, and integrity of the plod-
ding and frugal Germans, and now they are as wealthy as the Shakers and
Harmonists. Their property, consisting of 9000 acres of land, a woollen
factory, two iron-foundries, an oil-mill, two flour-mills, a saw-mill, a tan-
yard, farming stock and implements, and money invested in the American
funds, was valued three years since at nearly half a million of dollars.
Their numbers have slightly diminished since 1817, in consequence of the
poverty which environed them in the early years of their settlement, which
prevented the contracting of new matrimonial alliances, and the loss of fifty
persons during the prevalence of the cholera in the summer of 1832. Their
village, named Zoar, contains twenty-five dwelling-houses, many of them
built of logs, and nearly all unpainted, so that the place has far from a
prepossessing appearance. They are substantial, however, and comfortable
inside. The bams are of large dimensions, and, like the rest of their build-
ings, are grouped without order, rearing their brown sides and red-tiled
roofs above the foliage of the fruit-trees which partially conceal them.

The sounding of the horn calls the Economists to their labours at day-
break. They work in groups, in a plodding, but systematic manner, which
accomplishes much. Their agricultural implements are of the simplest and
most primitive description; their scythes, like those used in the south of
Germany, are short and unwieldy; and their hoes clumsy and heavy. The
women perform their share of field-labour in common with the men : they
hoe the corn and reap it; they make hay; and they even clean out the
stables, and wheel away the manure in barrows. The costume and lan-
guage of Germany are still retained among them. They are seen about
the village with their rude implements of labour over their shoulders, their
contented-looking countenances shaded by broad-rimmed straw-hats; or
with their hair combed straight back from their foreheads, and tied under
a coarse blue cotton cap, carrying upon their heads baskets of apples or
potatoes. Systematic division of labour is a prominent feature in their
domestic economy, though it is far from having reached its attainable per-
fection among them. They have a common washhouse, a common bake-
house, and a common nursery for all the children over three years of age ;
those under that age remain with their mothers. The closest economy
regulates all their domestic and industrial affairs.

In common with the Moravians and Shakers, the Economists have but
little mental development among them. Elementary instruction is given

17CHAMBERS'S PAPERS FOR THE PEOPLE.

in winter to the children in German and English. They are a simple-
minded, artless people, unacquainted with the outer world, and taking no
interest in the great social and political questions which agitate it. Their
morality is of a high order; and not one among them has ever been con-
victed of any offence against the laws of the land in which they live. The
little log-church of their community is often filled on winter evenings,
and twice on the Sabbath. Like the Harmonists, they use neither prayers
nor thanksgivingsthey do not baptise, or observe the sacrament of the
Eucharist; and, like the Jews and Mohammedans, they abstain from pork.
Their morning service consists of vocal and instrumental sacred music,
in which a piano is used, with the reading and explanation of some portion
of the Old or New Testament. The evening service differs from it in
the substitution of catechising from a German work for the perusal and
exposition of the Scriptures.

The Fraternalists, sometimes called Eestorationists, are a social and
religious sect of later origin than the Separatists of Germany, from whom
have sprung the communities of Harmony and Zoar. The sect and com-
munity of the Fraternalists were founded by Adin Ballon, a Universalis
preacher of some note in the state of Massachusetts, and a man personally
^esteemed for his many excellent qualities. They are few in number com-
pared with the Shakers and Germans, and occupy a house at Mendon, to
which are attached two or three hundred acres of land. They hold all
their property in common, and apply what is called the non-resistance test
to all who desire to join them—namely, they are required to sign a declara-
tion that they will not, under any circumstances, enter the army, navy,
militia, or constabulary, commit any assault or other violence, or maintain
.any action at law. The Fraternalists are free from debt—an incubus
which has extinguished most of the Fourierist experiments in America;
but whether they will ever attain that degree of prosperity which has
attended the communities of the Shakers and Germans remains to be seen.

Taking the social sects and their founders in the order of time, we next
arrive at St Simon, whose new religion and new organisation of society
dazzled the active intellects of France more than any which have since
been submitted to public opinion in that or any other country. Henri St
Simon had served under Lafayette in America, and had afterwards travelled
in Spain, England, Germany, and Switzerland. He early conceived that
idea of social amelioration which was the dream of his life; and in his first
work, the 1 Letters of an Inhabitant of Geneva,' he proposed a plan for
the popular remuneration of men of learning and genius, by means of a
national subscription apportioned annually among those who attained the
highest number of suffrages. In developing this plan, he divides mankind
into three classes, and seeks to prove to all, by arguments appropriate to
each, the excellence of the proposed mode of remuneration. He proposed
to transfer spiritual affairs from the clergy to the learned, and to vest the
direction of the civil government in the proprietors of land, from which
class the 1 grand chiefs of humanity' should be chosen by universal suffrage.
His next treatise was upon the progress of science since the Kevolution,
but the tendency of his thoughts was always more towards the future than
the past; and the leading idea of this work was the impulsion of men of
18BOCIAXi UTOPIAS.

learning to the reconstruction of society. He denounced tlie war aft
inimical to social progression, and advocated the institution of an intellec-
tual magistracy, one of the fundamental principles of his social system. In
his latest -work, the 1 New Christianity,' he contends for a new religious
reformation, and asserts that religion should be of a progressive nature ;
that it cannot perform its mission in canonical shackles; and that it should
receive as much impulsion from society as it gives to it, and act upon the
age as the age reacts upon it. It should be the mission of Christianity, he
maintains, to modify itself according to the manners, the country, the
people, and the age, and to preserve nothing immutably and eternally save
the divine precept, 1 Love one another.' To this St Simon added, 1 Re-
ligion should direct society towards the grand design of the amelioration,
the most rapid possible, of the condition of the class the most numerous
and the most poor.' After claiming the sacerdotal office, as he had before
done the magisterial, for the men the most capable of contributing to the
permanent wellbemg of society, he leaves the doctrine in an uncertain and
speculative state, and loses himself in a cloud of brilliant ideas. The
choice of the new priesthood and the organisation of the regenerated church
he left an unsolved problem.

The critical portion of this work is one of profound study and discrimi-
nation, He attacks both the Romish and Protestant churches, charging
upon the former the misdirected studies of the clergy and the vicious edu-
cation of the laity ; and upon the latter the adoption of an inferior moral
code, the omission of a social organisation adapted for continued progress,
and the neglect of those artistic refinements and illusions which had ren-
dered such powerfid support to the church of Rome. Christianity, he
maintained, should be social as well as religious, and have its sensuous
phase as well as its spiritual one. 4 In attacking the religious system of
the age,' said he to M. Olinde Rodriguez just before his death,1 people have
really proved but one thing—that it is not much in harmony with the pro-
gress of the positive sciences, and they have done wrong in concluding
that the religious system should disappear entirely. It ought only to place
itself in accordance with the progress of the sciences.'

St Simon died May 19, 1825. The disciples whom he left were neither
numerous nor wealthy; but M. Olinde Rodriguez being joined by MM.
Bazard, Enfantin, Cerclet, Buchez, and others, a journal was established
by association for the publication of articles on social science and indus-
trial statistics. The times, however, were not favourable for the complete
development of the St Simonian faith, and the writers of the school re-
served their social and religious system for better times, confining them-
selves to the expression of individual opinions. The chief result of the
publication of the journal was the gathering of a little knot of intelligent
men round the nucleus formed by the immediate disciples of St Simon, and
it soon became extinct. Having lost this means of publicity, they began
to hold reunions and conferences, to organise correspondence, and to estab-
lish propagandist centres, and a system of widely-ramified affiliations. M.
Bazard gave a complete exposition of St Simonism in a series of lectures;
and the initiations of poets, artists, workmen, and students, increased in
number every day. Among the new converts were MM. Armand Carrel,
Carnot, Chevalier, Barrault, Duveyrier, and others, who, with MM.ciiambers's papers for the people.

Rodriguez, Bazard, and Enfantin, afterwards constituted what they termed
the Grand College.

The Exposition of M. Bazard commences by deploring the evils of
society throughout Europe ; he sees everywhere discord and antagonism—
nowhere concord and cohesion. Having taken a survey of present society,
he proceeds to indicate another order of social relations, i which should
unite divided mortals, making them march with peace and love towards
a common destiny, and giving to society, to the entire world, a character
of union, of wisdom, and of beauty.1 The author then surveys the history
of society, founds the St Simonian system on the science of human life,
and discovers in the nature of humanity an irresistible tendency towards
universal association. He next denounces the wrongs which an imperfect
civilisation inflicts upon the poor; and to destroy the usurpations of con-
quest and the privileges of birth, he proclaims the St Simonian formula—
i To each according to capacity, to each capacity according, to works.' He
then examines the constitutive law of property, and demands the abolition
of heritage, and the establishment of the common family.

The second part of the Exposition was devoted to the religious and
moral system of St Simon. Its head was declared to be God, but the defi-
nition of the divine character and attributes opened a wide field for con-
troversy and future schism. In it the pantheistic system of Spinoza was
revived and reproduced. St Simon was declared to be the Messiah of the
new religion—it was he who had organised the religious system, as the
material had been organised by Moses, and the spiritual by Jesus. It was
the mission of St Simonism, therefore, to fuse together the material and
the spiritual, to put an end to their antagonism, anc^ sanctify the orie by
the other. It admitted no longer a church and a state, but fused them into
one; it dethroned alike the emperor and the pope, to set up the sage in
the place of both. The St Simonians meditated a theocratic and asso-
ciative constitution, and divided mankind into three classes—sages, artists,
and workmen, each subject to its chiefs. The religious chief was to be
the sole legislator and judge, and the distributor of the common wealth of
the family, receiving it as sole inheritor, and rendering it to each and all
according to their formula of remuneration. There were insurmountable
difficulties in the way of the realisation of this constitution, but it had
many attractions for the imaginative, and the workmen were fain to em-
brace any scheme which promised amelioration of their condition.

It was not until the Revolution of 1830 that the St Simonians became a
conspicuous sect; then they set on foot a journal devoted exclusively to
the dissemination of their views, and nominated MM. Enfantin and Bazard
the co-pontiffs of the new religion. A discussion in the Chamber of De-
puties, in the course of which they were accused of preaching the commu-
nity of goods and of women, called forth a pamphlet from M. Bazard, in
which he denied that the St Simonians held such doctrines; 1 because,' said
he, ' they believe in the natural inequality of men, and regard that in-
equality as the basis even of association, and as an indispensable condition
of social order.' What they advocated, he said, was simply the abolition
of the privileges of birth, and consequently of heritage, and such an indus-
trial organisation as would render ' the task of each the expression of his
capacity, and his riches the measure of his works.' With regard to woman,
20SOCIAL UTOPIAS.

it was not promiscuity which they advocated, but a more sacred marriage
law, and her complete emancipation.

They had now taken a large house in Paris, where they established the
St Simonian family, and reduced to practice their views on association and
industrial organisation. Then* numbers continuing to increase, they estab-
lished two preparatory colleges, from which they drew the members of the
supreme college. Lectures and pamphlets aided the propaganda, and
departmental churches were established at Toulouse, Montpelier, Lyons,
Metz, and Dijon. But just as the religion had reached the zenith of its
notoriety, schism entered the church through a rupture between MM.
Bazard and Enfantin. The latter dreamed of a universal St Simonian
family, and expected to realise in his lifetime complete supremacy, a uni-
versal religious pontificate and political tribuneship, and the former recoiled
from his colleague's adventurous flight. A rupture ensued, M. Bazard
resigned, and the St Simonians divided: M. Pierre Leroux, who had lately
joined them, adhering to the retiring chief, who was succeeded by M.
Rodriguez. The seceders alleged that the views of M. Enfantin on the
emancipation of woman tended to promiscuity, and the scandal thus
brought upon the religion damped the popular ardour in the height of its
excitement. There was an arrest of proselytism, the income diminished,
the bank became low, and the real property possessed by the St Simonian
church was not easily convertible into cash. An attempt was made to
raise a capital by means of a joint-stock association; but it did not succeed,
and the St Simonian formula for the organisation and remuneration of
labour was not realised more happily. Four thousand workmen had been
affiliated, and worked at their respective occupations in special houses on
account of the church; but the doctrine had no substantial hold upon their
minds, and the promised amelioration came not.

Yet in spite of their financial difficulties, the falling off of the workmen,
and the secession of many of their ablest leaders, the remaining St Simo-
nians continued to disseminate their doctrines, until their demand of uni -
versal suffrage attracted the notice of the government, and a body of police
was sent to eject them from their principal lecture-hall, which was hence-
forth closed against them. The house in which the St Simonian family
had established itself was also entered by the police, and some papers there
seized formed the basis of a criminal prosecution. This, the closing epoch
of St Simonism, abounded in disgraces. M. Rodriguez repeated the charge
of advocating sexual promiscuity, before made against M. Enfantin,
and the justice of which the latter had rendered no longer doubtful, and
separated from his colleague, calling the faithful to him as the immediate
disciple and direct successor of St Simon. The abruptness of this rupture,
and its inopportunity on the eve of a judicial prosecution, gave a severe
blow to the movement. The journal was discontinued, the workshops
were closed, and the St Simonian family dissolved. From this time the
sect engaged but little of the public attention, and does not appear likely
ever to renew the excitement and the notoriety of its palmy days.

While St Simonism was fading from the popular mind, which it had
dazzled for two years like a brilliant but evanescent meteor, sinking into
obscurity through the force of dissension and schism on one side, and

21Chambers's papers for the people.

governmental prosecution on the other, a new theory of soeietary organisa-
tion was beginning to act upon imaginative minds and benevolent hearts
dissatisfied with the existing system of society. Charles Fourier, the son of
a humble shopkeeper at Besancon, himself a traveller on commission through
France, Germany, Belgium, and Holland, afterwards a private soldier in a
dragoon regiment, and eventually clerk to a merchant, had published in
1807 a work called the ' Theory of Four Movements.' As a theory, it was
imperfect and incomplete—an indication of the author's views rather than
their development; probably he had then scarcely matured his soeietary
system in his own mind. The bent of his mind is seen, however, in hi»
criticisms on present society, and his imperfect sketches of industrial
organisation. God, man, the universe, cosmogony, all find place in its-
pages; but every subject is left in an incomplete and unsatisfactory state—
the mere outlines of a grand picture which in all probability Fourier him-
self could not at that period have filled up. His principal work did not
appear until fifteen years after the 1 Theory of Four Movements.' In the
1 Treatise on Association' he follows up his acute criticism on the errors
and prejudices of old society, and constructs a new social system more in
accordance witht what he deems the laws of nature and the universe. With
unity of system for his basis, and universal analogy for his guide, he sets
out with harmonising the passions, and proceeds to solve the great problems
which social science, ethics, and theology, present to the mind of the moral
cosmogonist. Improving upon Babeuf, he seeks to render labour attractive
by overcoming, by scientific and mechanical appliances, everything which
can make labour repulsive; and through man's industry, aided by science,
to subdue the earth, to attemper the icy atmosphere of the poles and the
burning simooms of the equator, to fertilise the ocean-sands, to render
cultivable the snow - covered steppes of Siberia and the arid deserts of
Africa, and to raise magnificent palaces amid the beautiful gardens with
which they should be covered, not for crowned monarchs, but for all the
family of man. Idleness would be unknown where labour is made attrac-
tive ; and crime would cease where the means of subsistence by moderate
exertion are placed within the reach of all.

The rehabilitation of the earth had been idealised before by Shelley, and
had entered into the views of the St Simonians. Science may yet accomplish
much in the direction indicated: in attracting moisture by planting trees—
in protecting from hail-storms, as proposed by M. Arago—in accelerating
germination by electric agency—in draining fens and marshes by the steam-
engine—and in further applying the science of chemistry to the fertilisation
of the soil; but Fourier, like Shelley, has prophesied much more than the
present state of the sciences warrants us in anticipating, and we must regard
his glimpses of the future as the brilliant dreamings of an imaginative mind*
He foresaw that his system would be regarded as an impracticable theory—
a Utopia never to be realised; and he earnestly desired to submit it to the
test of practice, and to find some benevolent and wealthy individual to
venture the experiment. He assures riches and undying fame to those
who would become the founders of the first Phalanstery, or Harmonic Indus-
trial Colony, in which there should be neither poor nor rich—where the
sick and infirm would find a comfortable asylum—where industry would be
scientifically and harmoniously organised—where; each individual would
22SOCIAL UTOPIAS.

work for himself, according to his own taste, and vary his occupation as
often as he pleased—where all the children would be well educated—where-
the hearts and minds of all would be free and unshackled, and grateful
man would incline himself before his Creator, who has reserved him for en-
joyments unknown in any past stage of society. Perfect freedom and bounds
less prosperity would there develop all the noblest sentiments of humanity,,
and happiness would be increased by the universality of its diffusion.

No one responded to Fourier's appeal. Mistaking the cause of this
negative result, he concluded that his grand work was too elaborate and
extensive for the study of his theory; and to remedy this, and facilitate its
comprehension, he resolved to write an abridgment, containing nothing but
what had a direct relation to practical operations. With this view he pub-
lished his ' New Industrial World,' which detailed a development of his
plans for the establishment of phalansteries—a word which he derives from
the Macedonian phalanx, to convey the idea of strength and organisation.
Like Plato and St Simon, he divides mankind into three classes: the work-
men, the capitalists, and the artists; and on the three bases of labour,
capital, and talent, he founds his social and industrial system. He divides
labour into works of necessity, of utility, and of pleasure, and proposes to
remunerate them in the same order—awarding to workmen of the first class
more than would be received by those of the second, and to the latter more
than the share assigned to those of the third class. His mode of distribu->
tion is the division of the capital of each association into twelve parts-—of
which five are allotted to the workmen, four to the capitalists, and three to-
the artists. In this arrangement it will be seen there is a closer approxi-
mation to existing social relations than in the system of St Simon, far
removed as that was from the Communitive institutions of the social
republic idealised by Babeuf. The capitalist had no existence in the latter
system, and in the St Simonian hierarchy was only represented in the sage,
in whom was vested the property of the common family.

Like his predecessor St Simon, Fourier died in indigence and obscurity:
his decease took place in the winter of 1837. His disciples soon became
numerous both in France and Belgium; and his principles of social organi-
sation and industrial remuneration were widely adopted in the United
States. Even in this country they had at one time their representative in
the press, and they have still their advocates here among men of moderate
views, who, regarding a change in the relations of society as inevitable,
prefer Fourier's plans to those of more levelling tendencies. The main-
tenance of vested privileges, and individual property and interests, were
points which recommended them to many who regarded those of Babeuf
and St Simon as destructive of social order. The absence of the pantheism
of the St Simonian system, and the materialism of that of Owen, also tended
to obtain favour for Fourierism among minds in which, the religious senti-
ment was strongly developed. To these various causes must be ascribed
the progress of Fourierism, which, in a few years after the death of its
founder, numbered its disciples in France alone by many thousands, and
which still maintains its position, while the new religion of St Simon has
sank into nearly complete oblivion.

In the autumn of 1841, 150 of the most intelligent artisans of Paris, who
had imbibed the views of Fourier, emigrated to the Brazils, under the

23CHAMBERS'S PAPERS FOR THE PEOPLE.

guidance of Dr Mure, an enterprising, benevolent, and enlightened man.
On the arrival of the colonists at Rio Janeiro, Dr Mure was introduced by
the minister of state to the emperor, who approved the objects of the
association, and presented them with an extensive tract of uncultivated
land, upon which to reduce their system of attractive industry to practice.
The spot selected for the experiment was the peninsula of Du Sahy, and in
twelve months after their arrival, the settlers had erected temporary habita-
tions and workshops, cleared several hundred acres of land, harvested their
first crop of corn, made a road four miles in length, and constructed eighteen
bridges. Nearly 400 more workmen followed at various times during 1842,
and the inspectors appointed by the Brazilian government reported favour-
ably of the progress made by the associated settlers, but no account of
the present position of the colony has reached this country. In 1843 a
similar settlement was founded in Guatemala by an association of workmen
who had emigrated from Belgium, and received from the government of
Guatemala a grant of 12,300 acres of land, upon which they proposed to
establish manufacturing and agricultural phalansteries. In the preceding
year the Fourierists had commenced an experiment in France, under the
superintendence of Mr A. Young, a warm advocate of their views, who
purchased, at an expense of £64,160, the estate of Citeaux, twelve miles
from Dijon, on the main road from Paris to Geneva, and having a commu-
nication with numerous adjacent towns by means of the roads which
intersected it. The property consisted of a park, in the centre of which
was a splendid mansion, four farms, brick-fields and kilns, extensive work-
shops, a large building used as a manufactory for refining sugar, several
cottages, two flour-mills, and a large saw-mill. The extent of the land was
1300 acres, and the soil was extremely fertile, and the situation favourable
for the disposal of the produce.

Two hundred persons were located upon this estate, under a form of
association permitted by the laws of France, by which no member is liable
for more than the amount of his own shares; but notwithstanding the
extent of the undertaking, the eligibility of the site, and other concurrent
advantages, the scheme proved a complete failure, and in a few years was
abandoned. The same fate has attended most of the numerous phalan-
steries established during the last ten years in the United States, and those
which still remain are involved in debt, and struggling with difficulties.
It seems, indeed, that the preference for Fourier's plan evinced by many
rests on fallacious grounds, and that community of interests is the only
basis on which association can be long or beneficially maintained.

Contemporaneously with the Fourierist movement in France was that of
the Socialists in this country, which originated with Mr Robert Owen,
formerly a cotton-manufacturer at Cromford, and subsequently at New
Lanark. . After travelling in France, Belgium, Switzerland, and America,
and submitting his views to the governments of Prussia, Holland, and the
United States, Mr Owen commenced the publication of his book of the
1 New Moral World,' in which he developed his opinions on social and
political economy, religion, ethics, metaphysics, and education. He cri-
ticises present society much in the style of St Simon and Fourier, but the
new system which he would substitute for it differs widely from those of his
24SOCIAL UTOPIAS.

French cotemporaries. He proposed the establishment of agricultural
and manufacturing associations, on the principle of community of interests;
but though he enters largely into the statistical details of his plans, his
views on social and industrial organisation are vague and incomplete.
He is strictly practical and utilitarian, and there is nothing in his works of
that brilliant imagination and those poetic conceptions which characterise
the works of St Simon and Fourier. A unitary habitation should shelter
the members of each of his communities, and all the appliances of science
and mechanism should be applied to the abridgment of labour, and the
consequent increase of leisure for intellectual culture. Education should
be in common, and each community should have a common kitchen and
dining-hall, and a common nursery for the younger children. Land, labour,
capital, and skill, being the elements of wealth, were to be combined in each
of the proposed communities, in which, contrary to the views of the political
economists of the school of Ricardo and J. B. Say, manufactures were to be
subordinate to agriculture. The objects of wise social arrangements were
declared to be the production and equable distribution of wealth in the
manner most beneficial for all, the education of all in such a manner as to
insure the equal and harmonious development of all the faculties, and the
attainment of a wise and enlightened government, calculated to watch over
and promote the common interests of every member of the community.

These economical views were mixed up with those metaphysical dis-
quisitions upon free-will and necessity which have always been such a fruit-
ful source of controversy among moral philosophers. The doctrine of the
necessity of human actions, and consequently of man's irresponsibility,
which in various forms had entered into the religious systems of the Fatal-
ists, the Antinomians, the Pelagians, and the Necessitarians, was repro-
duced by Mr Owen, and made to form the basis of his social system. The
character of man, he maintains, is formed by the union of two forces: first,
by the organisation derived from his parents at his birth, and afterwards,
by the influence of exterior circumstances acting upon his organisation; and
his organisation reacting upon circumstances, from the cradle to the grave.
Man is therefore virtuous or vicious, intelligent or ignorant, religious
or irreligious, not as he wills to be, but according as his organisation is
inferior or good, and as the moral and material conditions by which he is-
surrounded through life tend to depress or elevate him in the scale of
humanity. This view of the formation of character necessarily involved
the doctrine of man's irresponsibility for his actions, they being the inevit-
able result of circumstances entirely beyond his control; and praise and
blame, reward and punishment, were declared to be alike irrational. In
the communities which he proposed to establish, man would be placed
amid the circumstances best calculated to render him virtuous, intelligent,
and happy; and each succeeding generation would progress in rationality
and intelligence, and have its capacity for happiness thereby enlarged.

These views were propounded by Mr Owen as early as 1816, and he
continued to write and lecture upon his system at various periods after-
wards ; but no society was formed for their dissemination until 1835, and
the ' Book of the New Moral World' was not published until seven years
later. Few rallied round the society upon its first establishment, and these
were chiefly working-men ; but in the following year the system of sendingCHAMBERS'S PAPERS FOR THE PEOPLE.

out itinerant lecturers was adopted with much success. A weekly journal
was set on foot, the lecturers increased in number, and in a few years the
disciples of Owen amounted to many thousands. In 1840 the attacks of
the Bishop of Exeter and Lord Ashley upon the Socialists, from their
places in parliament, had the effect of elevating the society to a prominent
position in public opinion, and materially aided its progress, by the manner
in which its principles and objects were made the theme of universal com-
ment by the press. The opponents of the system grounded their attacks
upon its alleged immorality and irreligion, charging the Socialists with
disseminating atheistical opinions and advocating promiscuous intercourse.
The latter charge was entirely without foundation, the views of Mr Owen
on marriage amounting to its recognition as a civil contract merely, and
the extension of the privilege of divorce to all classes of the community.
With regard to religion, that of Socialism was declared in the constitution
of the society to be ' a knowledge of the unerring and unchanging laws of
nature, derived from accurate and extended observation of the works of
the great Creating Power of the universe, and the practice of charity for
the feelings, convictions, and conduct of all men;' and that all should
* have equal right to express their opinions respecting the Supreme Power
of the universe, and to worship it under any form, or in any manner,
agreeable to their consciences—not interfering with equal rights in others.*
At the same time, it must be admitted that most of the Socialists engaged
in the dissemination of the principles had adopted deistical or atheistical
opinions, and that their assaults upon religion were sometimes of a nature
to call forth the animadversions of Mr Owen, who reprehended them as
inconsistent alike with the metaphysical principles upon which his system
was based, and with the feeling of charity with which those principles
should inspire his disciples.

In 1841 the society commenced its practical operations upon 1200 acres
of land in Hampshire, upon which a large building was erected in the fol-
lowing year, and called Harmony Hall. It consisted of three ranges or
compartments, of which the first contained the library, and reading, conver-
sation, and dining-rooms, and above these the sleeping apartments of the
unmarried persons, with well-devised arrangements for the separation of
the sexes; the second, or central range, contained the offices of the, super-
intendents and the storehouses, above which were the dormitories of the
married people; and the third contained the school-rooms and baths, with
the sleeping-apartments of the children over them. The culinary arrange-
ments were admirable, and the entire building was heated, ventilated, and
supplied with hot and cold water, according to the latest improvements
which science has enabled the present generation to effect. Fifty or sixty
persons were draughted from the Socialist body, and located at Harmony
Hall, where they engaged in cultivating the land, and working at various
mechanical occupations. For a time all went on well, and the experiment
began to attract the attention of the press; but a feeling of dissatisfaction
gradually arose in the Socialist body, both within and without the commu-
nity. Those located at Harmony Hall claimed the management of their
own affairs, and the election of the governor, which the society could not
concede without endangering the interests of those who had invested capi-
tal in the experiment; and the general body was eager to, enter into com-
26SOCIAL UTOPIAS.

munity, and felt dissatisfied that the outlay of more than £30,000 should
have effected no larger result than the location of about fifty persons.
These circumstances, added to the pressure of pecuniary difficulties, im-
pelled the society upon a retrograde course, and in July 1845 it became
bankrupt: all its property was sold, its weekly organ was discontinued,
-and the society itself shortly afterwards became extinct.

Socialism, however, has not existed for nothing: though it has failed in
practice as an associative system, and we hear no more of the name, it has
not ceased to operate indirectly in various ways, and we owe to its agita-
tion the establishment of co-operative stores, corn-mills, bakehouses, and
coal clubs, public baths and washhouses, model lodging-houses, ragged
schools, and societies for promoting sanitary reform and improving the
dwellings of the poor. These things arose out of the conviction that was
.gradually forced upon the public mind of the duty and necessity of raising
the humbler classes of society from the ignorance and material wretched-
ness to which attention was so loudly called by Mr Owen and his disciples.
Moreover, they gave an additional impetus to that keen desire for the
acquisition of knowledge which sprung up coevally with the Socialist agi-
tation, and which manifested itself in the establishment of Halls of Science
in most of the large towns, which are estimated to have cost the Socialist
body more than £20,000, and to have been attended at one time by thirty
thousand persons. Most of these have since been converted into lecture
halls, unconnected with any peculiar religious, social, or metaphysical
principles. Though the Socialists have ceased to exist as a separate body,
it would be wrong to infer that they have abandoned their views upon
social economy; upon the ruins of the Rational Society several others
have been established with objects somewhat similar, but for the most part
unconnected with any theological, political, or metaphysical peculiarities.
Some of them emigrated to America in 1843, and formed a colony on the
principle of community of interests at Mukwonago in Wisconsin. In
1845 a number of them emigrated to Venezuela, with the view of estab-
lishing there similar communities upon land granted them for the purpose
by the government of that state. Many more have joined the various
co-operative land and building societies in this country. The association
of Fraternal Democrats is, as its name implies, more political in its ten-
dencies, but takes its place among the numerous social ideologies of the
present age by the declaration, as one of its fundamental principles, that
the land should be the common property of the people. It confines itself
to propagandism, and maintains a correspondence with the similar societies
and clubs in France, Belgium, and Germany. A detailed account of these
does not come within the scope of the present Paper; they are only men-
tioned here as an evidence of the persistency with which the Utopian idea
is constantly reproduced, and the diversity of forms which it assumes.

Other social sects, however, have sprung up in the British islands,
which, like the Socialists, have identified themselves with religious or
metaphysical opinions peculiar to themselves. These are the Concordists,
the White Friends, and the Communist Church. The first of these origi-
nated in 1842 with the disciples of J. P. Greaves, a psychological mystic,
who died in the early part of that year: they formed a communitive asso-
ciation, under the name of the Concordium, at Ham in Surrey, but they

27Chambers's papers for the people.

never became numerous, and the community was dissolved two or three
years afterwards. While the Socialists taught that the human being must
be placed amid superior conditions, in order to acquire a superior character,
the disciples of Greaves maintained that it was too late to perfectionise the
present generation, as no degree of intellectual development, or any other
external conditions, could possibly repair the defects of birth. Society,
according to them, could only be regenerated individually, not in masses;
and the process must be internal, not external—directed from the centre
upon the circumference, and not from the circumference upon the centre.
Associated interests and unitary habitation were only adopted by them as
a means of attracting minds intelligent and loveful, that by them society
might be leavened, and an impetus given to the diffusion of those truths
through which its regeneration was to be effected. Celibacy was recom-
mended until the nature of the individual had become regenerated, and, in
the future, marriage was to be placed under restrictions similar to those
which prevail among the Harmonists. To rehabilitate the fallen nature
of man, self-denial and asceticism were enjoined; and in their food and
clothing they emulated the simplicity of the Golden Age. They wore
their hair and beards long; the outer garment of the men was a tunic of a
dark-chocolate colour; they slept on hard mattresses, and made frequent
use of th6 cold bath; their food was bread, vegetables, and fruit, and their
drink water. The fruits by all of them, and the vegetables by many, were
eaten in the raw, or, as they regarded it, the natural state—the process of
cooking depriving them, as they believed, of their etherealising properties.
Each in turn read to the rest during their simple meals, and on Sunday
afternoons scientific lectures were delivered in the school-room.

Similar in some respects to the Concordists, but approximating in others
to the Shakers, are the White Friends, Irish Separatists from Quakerism
at the commencement, but recruited from other sects since they adopted
the community of goods. The sentiment of Religion is as strongly deve-
loped in them as in the Shakers, and, like them, they set little value on
mental attainments. Their religious doctrines are little different from
those of the sect from which the founders of the body sprung, but in prac-
tice they sometimes run into fanaticism, after the manner of George Fox.
They derive their name from wearing white and undyed garments; the
men wear their beards long, and go bareheaded—many of them go bare-
footed likewise. The women have their hair neatly braided, and none of
them wear caps. They occupy a large house, formerly a hotel, at Usher's
Quay, Dublin, and a noble mansion called Newlands, formerly the residence
of Lord Kilwarden, about five miles from that city ; to the latter 180 acres
of land are attached. As among the Shakers, all their furniture is of
the most primitive description, and they agree with the Concordists in
the adoption of a vegetable dietary. They hold their property in common,
and regarding themselves as one family, use only the baptismal name.

The Communist Church was founded in 1843 by Mr Barmby, a young
man of considerable talent, who had imbibed the extreme communitive
views then and since agitated upon the continent; and had been led, by the
success of the Shaker and Harmonist communities, to regard religion as the
true basis of the communitive life. The ten fundamental tenets of his
church are :—That God is infinite and eternal, the universal mind and uni-
28SOCIAL UTOPIAS.

versal matter; that God is the communal parent of all mankind; that the
human race inherit all the properties of the divine nature; that all man-
kind have equal capacities, present appearances to the contrary resulting
from the want of communal education; that these capacities should be
communally developed; that the human race have common wants and
rights, the expression of which is summed up in universal suffrage; that all
mankind have common powers, present appearances to the contrary result-
ing from the want of a communal organisation of industry; that these powers
should be communally exercised; that the human race, as co-heirs of God,
should possess and enjoy in common; and that the consummation of the
preceding doctrines would be the salvation of universal humanity. The
pantheistic tendencies of St Simonism are here reproduced, and with this
system its founder reconciles the doctrines of every other church and sect.
Communism is announced in his writings as the continuation of Christianity,
and as a complete system of politics, societetics, ecclesiastics, and domestics.
Mr Barmby's style, like that of Thomas Carlyle and J. P. Greaves, is one
peculiar to himself: new words occur in every sentence of his works, and
are regarded by him as necessary for the expression of new ideas. It is
extremely florid, and evinces an imaginative mind and an enthusiastic
temperament: he seems to regard himself as the Messiah of a new dispen-
sation, and his conceptions of his ideal future are grand and often highly
poetic. He anticipates, like Shelley and Fourier, the rehabilitation of the
earth, and dreams of magnificent communisteries under the sunny sky of
Syria, in which the happy commoners dine off gold and silver plate, in
superb banqueting halls, furnished with splendid pictures and luxurious
couches, and enlivened with music. His ' Book of Platonopolis,' of which
only a few chapters have been published, is a vision of the future, in which
he supposes himself conducted by a venerable man to a grand com-
munistery, built in the form of a crescent, in which the pillars are of
marble and porphyry, and from the summit of which floats the green and
sun-emblazoned banner of Communism. Steam-cars convey the commoners
from one communistery to another as often as they desire a change of resi-
dence, and when they wish to vary the mode of travelling, balloons and aerial
ships are ready to convey them through the air. Every communistery
resembles an Oriental palace, and the whole country is like a well-cultivated
garden; Platonopolis, in short, is an Atlantis, or City of the Sun, improved
by modern science, and adorned with all the conceivable productions of
genius in the department of the fine arts.

The social ideologies which remain to be noticed are those which, during
the last twenty years, have taken such hold upon the public mind in Cen-
tral Europe, particularly among the working-classes, and which latterly
have mingled with their ideas of a perfect political system. We come now
to the successors of Babeuf—to those who have discarded the societary
theories of St Simon and Fourier, bold innovators as they were, as approxi-
mating more closely to the present system than to that of pure equality,
by which they would supersede it; and numerous as are the modifications
of Babeuf's idea of a social republic which the period under review has
produced in France, they all seem resolvable into three, of which the heads
are M. Cabet, the Abbe Constant, and M. Proudhon. The ' Travels inCHAMBERS'S PAPERS FOR THE PEOPLE.

Icaria..1 of the first is the text-book of his school: it is a description of an
imaginary model republic, illustrating the author's ideas of perfect demo-
cratic equality. He supposes an English nobleman to be so much inte-
rested by the description given to him by a friend of the government, insti-
tutions, and customs of Icaria, that he undertakes a journey to that country
with the view of becoming personally and more fully acquainted with
them. The Icarians have abolished among them the use of a circulating
medium, and indeed have ceased to require any, since they neither buy
nor sell. Foreigners are not allowed to take money into the country with
them; but on paying to the Icarian consul a sum proportionate to the time
they propose to remain in the country, they receive a passport which
franks all their expenses, and admits them to all public buildings and
places of amusement; and when they leave Icaria, their money is restored
to them, if they have brought more than is required. All property is in
common among the Icarians ; but the unitary habitation, which is asso-
ciated with this institution in the systems of Adin Ballon, Robert Owenr
and Mr Barmby, is discarded by M. Cabet for streets and squares. The
streets of Tyrama, a seaport-town, are described as straight, wide, and
clean, with colonnades on either side, and perfectly regular in their archi-
tecture. 11 was delighted,' says the imaginary traveller,1 with the elegant
houses, the fine open streets, the excellent taste, displayed in the arrange-
ment of fountains, and with the magnificence of the public buildings and
national monuments. The public gardens and promenades were enchant-
ing ; and, on the whole, Tyrama was the most beautiful town I had ever
beheld.' Everywhere he sees the evidences of wealth and comfort, and
every available application of science to produce them. Railways are
numerous, and atmospheric propulsion is anticipated. , Agriculture has
been brought to great perfection in Icaria. ' Every yard of ground was
cultivated, and appropriated to some useful purpose. The whole country
seemed covered with the green harvest, having interspersed vines, flowery
arbours, groves, plantations, farm-houses, and picturesque villages. Here
and there flocks were scattered over the meadows, and groups of husband-
men enlivened both hill and dale. The road was extremely level, and in
excellent order. The footpaths were continuous, and shaded with fruit-
trees in bloom. We passed farms and villages, crossed rivers and canals;
indeed the road seemed the continuation of the suburbs of a large town, or
an avenue intersecting an immense garden.' The capital is approached by
a wide avenue of poplars, and the eastern entrance is described as ' a
gigantic monument of art.' From the extremity of the avenue, which is a
gentle decline, a fine view is obtained 1 of the thousand pinnacles of the
city, and two immense colonnaded palaces towering above all.' The
government of Icaria is a pure democracy, and its citizens are remarkable
for their intelligence, the urbanity of their manners, and the respect in
which they hold the female sex.

The disciples of M. Cabet are very numerous, and resemble the Socialists
in the inculcation of universal charity and fraternity, in desiring to carry
out their views by peaceful and constitutional means, and in their opinions
on marriage and divorce. In one respect, however, M. Cabet is the moral
antipode of Robert Owen: the Icarians have a priesthood and temples of
religion, and the founder of the system constantly contends that Christi-
30SOCIAL UTOPIAS.

anity is Communism, and the latter but another name for the former. His
disciples are distinguished from those of M. Proudhon and the Abbe Con-
stant by the denomination of Icarians. Two or three hundred of them
emigrated about eighteen months since to Texas, in order to found the
social republic of Icaria; but most of them appear to have been totally
unfitted for such an enterprise, and many of them have returned to their
native land in disappointment and disgust. M. Cabet held the office of
procurator-general under the government of Louis-Philippe; said though^
like all innovators, his character has been variously represented, those
who can separate the man from his principles cannot fail to appreciate the
sincerity and benevolence of the former, however much fraught with danger
to society they may consider the latter.

The Communism of the Abb£ Constant differs little from that of M.
Cabet, but the respective means by which they propose to attain the com-
mon object place a wide gulf between them. While the latter inculcates
feelings of charity and brotherhood, and looks to peaceful and legal means
alone for the actualisation of his system, the former discourses in a -fierce
and warlike tone, and would establish the social republic by the pikes and
muskets of the dwellers in the fauxbourgs. To this party belong Barbes
and Thore, and the Icarians were assailed and -vilified by them for pro-
pounding their scheme of emigration on the eve of the Revolution of
February 1848.—The third section into which the French Communists
may be divided is headed by M. Proudhon, a compositor, whose disciples
are numerous among the working-classes, but lack the organisation of those
of M. Cabet. His views are also more vague and cloudy, and his tone is
often as violent as that of Thor£; he is a materialist, moreover, and his
anti-religious opinions are as daringly avowed in his works as those of
Shelley in his ' Queen Mab.' He deals largely in paradoxes, and often
loses himself in a labyrinth of metaphysical reasoning. Between MM.
Proudhon and Cabet, therefore, there is as wide a distance as between the
latter and the Abbe Constant; and the former is often engaged in an acri-
monious controversy with both the Icarians and the almost extinct St
Simonians on the merits of their respective systems.

The Utopias which remain to be described are the 1 Re-establishment of
the Kingdom of Zion,' and the ' Gospel of the Poor Sinnersthe former
written by M. Albrecht, a native of Switzerland; and the latter by M. Weit-
ling, a German, who imbibed the views of M. Cabet while working in Paris
at his occupation of tailor. Both these works mingle religion with politics
and social science, and bear some resemblance to the New Christianity of
St Simon. In the first-named work, the social institutions of the Mosaic
dispensation are blended with a system of Christian Communism; but the
disciples of the author are few in number compared with those of Weitling,
and are confined to the western cantons of Switzerland. Its style is pro-
phetic, sometimes approaching that of the Old Testament, and the author
appears to be a man of considerable talent. The 'Gospel' of M. Weitling is
a work more remarkable than even that of Albrecht, and created on its
appearance a sensation equal to that produced in France by the publication
of the celebrated ' Words of a Believer' of the Abbd Lamennais. Faith,
hope, and love, are in it declared the cardinal points of the Christian
system; and in a review of the acts and precepts of its Founder, it is main-

31chambers's papers for the people.

i&ined by M. Weitling that the Eucharist should be a love-feast—that
Jesus abjured private family and private property—that he taught the
abolition of punishments and of money—that he preached war and attacked
property—and that the doctrines of the Gospel are those of liberty and
equality, and the communisation of labour, property, and enjoyment.
Though maintaining that the Founder of Christianity preached war, the
author in another work expatiates eloquently upon its horrors, and the
misery to which it gives rise; and it is probable that he makes a distinction
between wars undertaken for the recovery of national independence, or for
the political enfranchisement of the class to which he belongs, and those
waged for foreign conquest or spoliation. He established in Switzerland
many societies of German and Swiss workmen, which, under the veil of
singing clubs, became propagandist centres for the diffusion of the prin-
ciples enunciated in his works. In 1843 he was arrested at Zurich, tried
upon charges of sedition and conspiracy, and after several months' impri-
sonment, was handed over to the government of his native country—Prussia
—and obliged to serve in the army as a conscript; but he evaded the greater
part of his term of service, and made his escape to England. He was
regarded by his party as a martyr, and the principles which he had
advocated spread more rapidly than before, not only in Switzerland, but
throughout Germany. His general views accord more with those of the
Icarians than of any other of the social sects of modern times, but are more
deeply tinged than any with the politics of extreme democracy.

The persistency with which the Utopian idea has been reproduced
through so many centuries, is regarded by some as a proof that the
human mind revolves continually in a circle, constantly conceiving the
same ideas; and by others as an evidence of the correctness of the
principle upon which the idea is based. The progression that has been
forbids us to entertain the first belief; and the second involves a pro-
blem which will be best solved by posterity. The social ^eologi§&of
the present day are, however, evidently the expression of a deeply5f§||
want, an aspiration after the beautiful and the intellectual, a feeling of
sympathy for human wo; and while their authors, and those who adopt
them, confine themselves to moral and peaceful means of propagating
them, and do not suffer their zeal to mislead them into courses inimical
to the continuance of order, we should respect their motives, however
erroneous we may deem their opinions. In an age like the present,
whatever of good may be contained in the systems that have been passed
briefly under review, will not be lost ; the criticisms of their authors upon
present society may be useful in drawing the attention of legislators to
many errors and abuses, the dust and cobwebs of the past; and their
visions of the future may suggest many modifications applicable to the
moral, mental, and material wants of the present generation. We dive for
pearls into the depths of the ocean, and descend for gold into the dark-
some mine; and we should not disdain to search for truths among dreams
of Utopia and foreshadowings of the Millennium.This book is a preservation facsimile produced for
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