A force d’attentats perdre tous mes remords.[[19]]
TO THE EDITOR OF THE EXAMINER
Sir,—I hope you will not omit to notice two passages in Mr. Southey’s poem, in which, to try his talent at natural description, he gives an account of two of ‘the fearfullest wild-fowl living’—a British Lion and a Saxon one. Both are striking likenesses, and would do to hang on the outside of Exeter-‘Change to invite the curious. The former (presumed not to be indigenous) is described to be in excellent case, well-fed, getting in years and corpulent, with a high collar buried in the fat of the neck, false mane, large haunches (for which this breed is remarkable), paws like a shin of beef, large rolling eyes, a lazy, lounging animal, sleeping all day and roaring all night, a great devourer of carcases and breaker of bones, pleased after a full meal, and his keepers not then afraid of him. Inclined to be uxorious. Visited by all persons of distinction, from the highest characters abroad down to the lowest at home.—The other portrait of the Saxon Lion is a contrast to this. It is a poor lean starved beast, lord neither of men nor lands, galled with its chain, which it has broken, but has not got off from its neck. This portrait is, we understand, to be dedicated to Lord Castlereagh.—Your constant reader,
Ne Quid Nimis.
‘A new View of Society; or, Essays on the Principle of the Formation of the Human Character, and the Application of the Principle to Practice.’ Murray, 1816.—‘An Address to the Inhabitants of New Lanark, on opening an Institution for the Formation of Character.’ By Robert Owen, one of his Majesty’s Justices of the Peace for the County of Lanark.’—Hatchard, 1816.
[‘Dedicated to those who have no Private Ends to accomplish, who are honestly in search of Truth, for the purpose of ameliorating the Condition of Society, and who have the firmness to follow the Truth wherever it may lead, without being turned aside from the Pursuit by the Prepossessions or Prejudices of any part of Mankind;—to Mr. Wilberforce, the Prince Regent,’ &c.]
August 4, 1816.
‘A New View of Society’—No, Mr. Owen, that we deny. It may be true, but it is not new. It is not coeval, whatever the author and proprietor may think, with the New Lanark mills, but it is as old as the royal borough of Lanark, or as the county of Lanark itself. It is as old as the ‘Political Justice’ of Mr. Godwin, as the ‘Oceana’ of Harrington, as the ‘Utopia’ of Sir Thomas More, as the ‘Republic’ of Plato; it is as old as society itself, and as the attempts to reform it by shewing what it ought to be, or by teaching that the good of the whole is the good of the individual—an opinion by which fools and honest men have been sometimes deceived, but which has never yet taken in the knaves and knowing ones. The doctrine of Universal Benevolence, the belief in the Omnipotence of Truth, and in the Perfectibility of Human Nature, are not new, but ‘Old, old,’ Master Robert Owen;—why then do you say that they are new? They are not only old, they are superannuated, they are dead and buried, they are reduced to mummy, they are put into the catacombs at Paris, they are sealed up in patent coffins, they have been dug up again and anatomised, they have been drawn, quartered and gibbetted, they have become black, dry, parched in the sun, loose, and rotten, and are dispersed to all the winds of Heaven! The chain in which they hung up the murdered corse of human Liberty is all that remains of it, and my Lord Shallow keeps the key of it! If Mr. Owen will get it out of his hands, with the aid of Mr. Wilberforce and the recommendation of The Courier, we will ‘applaud him to the very echo, which shall applaud again.’ Till then, we must content ourselves with ‘chaunting remnants of old lauds’ in the manner of Ophelia:—
‘No, no, he is gone, and we cast away moan,
And will he not come again,