Owen complained in this pamphlet that Sabbatarianism denied "innocent and cheerful recreation to the labouring man"; and he spoke in public of the influence of religion on progress, with a hostility which sadly injured his popularity. His life was examined with a jealousy which brought to light only its elevation. The opposition of people who thought themselves respectable drove him into agitation for what he was the first to call "Socialism." He published on May 1, 1820, his plan for forming villages, where the people were to work under the supervision of the eldest, and "be freely permitted to receive from the general store of the community whatever they might require." These last words contain the characteristic principle of Socialism, that every labourer is to be paid according to his needs, whatever the value of the work.
A dozen such experiments were made in the United States, about 1825; but it was found impossible to unlearn the experience of the race. Progress has consisted in bringing each man's welfare into more exact proportion to the value of his work. This tendency has never safely been suspended, except under such coercion as has kept up industry and economy among monks, Rappites, Shakers, and other docile enthusiasts. The cooperative stores which Owen was among the first to open seem to have failed because the salaries were not high enough to secure skilful managers.
II. The proof that a reformer was before his age is the fact that later years caught up with him; and this is by no means so true of Owen as of Bentham, who declared Socialism impracticable. He was one of the first to advocate woman suffrage (Works, vol. iii., p. 463), savings banks, cheap postage, collection of statistics, direction of punishment towards reformation, and repeal of usury laws. His bulky volumes are in great part occupied with suggestions for making the courts of justice less dilatory and uncertain, less expensive to the poor, and less partial to the rich. His Principles of Morals and Legislation declared, in 1787, that the sole end of a ruler ought to be the happiness of all the people, and that this rule should be the basis of ethics as well as politics. One of his publications in 1817 claimed the suffrage for every man and woman who could read, but insisted that this would be "worse than nothing" without that "shield to freedom," the secret ballot. An opponent who feared that this would destroy private property was answered thus: "Has he ever heard of Pennsylvania?" The complaint that freedom of the press to expose corrupt officials might weaken the government was met by showing that there can be no good government without it. To think our ancestors wiser than us, he says, is to take it for granted that it is not experience but inexperience that is the "mother of wisdom."
Bentham's best work was in sowing seed that his friends might reap the harvest. Other authors were generously assisted by his manuscripts, purse, and library; and there has been no stronger advocate of reform than the Westminster Review, which he founded in 1824. The first number showed that the Whigs were too much like the Tories. Their leaders were noblemen or millionaires; their favourite measure, abolition of rotten boroughs, was mainly in the interest of the middle class; and their policy towards the masses was a seesaw between promising elevation and permitting oppression. This article was by James Mill, who showed in a later number that any church which was established must, on that account, be bigoted. His essay On Government urges that the masses cannot be protected unless fully represented. They had not yet found out all they needed; but education would teach it; and occasional mistakes would not be so bad as systematic oppression. Among his ablest books is a defence of the rationalism, bequeathed by the eighteenth century, against Transcendentalism, which eclipsed it during the first half of the nineteenth.
The inspiration of the new philosophy was added to that of many new reforms; and a glorious literature blossomed in the long summer of peace. Wordsworth's fear of "too much liberty" did not prevent his encouraging intellectual independence most impressively. Scott tried "to revive the declining spirit of loyalty"; but the result was universal admiration of rebels and sympathy with peasants. Many authors who adapted themselves much more closely and intentionally to the needs of the age ceased long ago, for this very reason, to find readers. This, for instance, was the fate of the indefatigable Cobbett.
Landor, on the other hand, was unpopular from the first, because devotion to Greek and Latin literature made his style as well as some of his favourite topics uninteresting, except for scholarly people who were soon offended by such remarks as "Law in England and in most other countries is the crown of injustice. According to her laws and usages, Brutus would have been hanged at Newgate; Cato buried with a stake through his body in the highroad; Cicero transported to Botany Bay." "Certain I am, that several of the bishops would not have patted Cain upon the back while he was about to kill Abel." "A peerage I consider as the park-paling of despotism." In his Imaginary Conversations, Hofer and Metternich, the emperors of Russia and China, the kings of Spain and Portugal, the Spanish priest, Merino, and many other extraordinary personages tell how badly England was governed by "the hereditarily wise," and what a misfortune it was for all Europe, to have her rulers enjoy such an intimate and universal friendship as was never known among their predecessors.
No writer has spoken more mightily than Byron against the "blasphemy" of ascribing divine authority to these "royal vampires." He knew that Napoleon had been "the scourge of the world"; but he was indignant to see the men who had struck down the lion kneeling before wolves; and yet he looked forward to the reign everywhere of "equal rights and laws." He spoke freely of the "sacerdotal gain but general loss" in superstition; and his own highest faith was that "they who die in a great cause" would
"Augment the deep and sweeping thoughts
Which overpower all others and conduct
The world at last to freedom."
His poems revealed the grandeur of scenery, as well as history, and made delight in mountains and thunderstorms felt as an ennobling influence. His speeches in the House of Lords were pleas for parliamentary reform, Catholic emancipation, and mercy to rioters infuriated by famine. In 1820, he was one of the leading Carbonari in Italy; he gave his life to help the Greeks become free; and his name is still a watchword of revolution.
His friend, Shelley, went so far in the same direction as to call himself a republican, as well as an atheist. His life was pure in his own eyes; but his opinions about divorce were punished by a decision in Chancery that he was unfit to be trusted with his own children. He had consecrated himself in boyhood to war against all oppressors; and his position to the last was that of his own Prometheus, suffering continually with the enslaved, but consoled by faith that his sympathy will hasten the glorious day when every man shall be "king over himself," when women, free "from custom's evil taint," shall make earth like heaven, when "thrones, altars, judgment-seats, and prisons" shall seem as antiquated as the pyramids, and when human nature shall be "its own divine control." He took the side of the poor against the rich in a drama which was suppressed on account of its severity against George IV., and which ends with a portentous scene, where