the age and country. The sensism of Locke and the utilitarian morals of Paley were then taught in nearly all our colleges and universities. Most of the generation to which I belong have been brought up to believe that the mind has no inherent character, and is in the beginning a mere tabula rasa, a blank sheet, with simply the capacity of receiving the characters which may be written on it. It is only recently that Locke and Paley have been dethroned in our universities, and they are not yet expelled from our popular literature. Thirty years ago the whole non-Catholic world believed in the power of education to redeem society, and to secure the reign of truth and justice; and that belief has still many a stalwart champion, not precisely of the FannyWright school.

Be all this as it may, our dependence was placed on education in a system of public schools managed after a plan of our own, or rather of William Phiquepal, a Frenchman, subsequently the husband of Fanny Wright, and who I see has not long since been cast in a suit for damages for the neglect and abuse of some of the pupils he brought with him from France to this country, and whom he pretended to educate. I know something of his mode of managing with these boys; I knew it from his own lips, and him I never trusted. But the more immediate work was to get our system of schools adopted. To this end it was proposed to organize the whole Union secretly, very much on the plan of the Carbonari of Europe, of whom at that time I knew nothing. The members of this secret society were to avail themselves of all the means in their power, each in his own locality, to form public opinion in favor of education by the state at the public expense, and to get such men elected to the legislatures as would be likely to favor our purposes. How far the secret organization extended, I do not know; but I do know that a considerable portion of the State of New York was organized, for I was myself one of the agents for organizing it. I, however, became tired of the work, and abandoned it after a few months. Whether the organization still exists, or whether it has ever exerted any influence or not, is more than I am able to say, or have taken the pains to ascertain.

Our next step, and in connection with this, was the formation of what was known as the Working-Men's Party, started in Philadelphia in 1828, and in New York in the year following. This party was devised and started princi

pally by Robert Dale Owen, Robert L. Jennings, George H. Evans, and a few others, without exception Europeans by birth. The purpose in the formation of this party was to get control of the political power of the state, so as to be able to use it for establishing our system of schools. We hoped, by linking our cause with the ultra-democratic sentiment of the country, which had had, from the time of Jefferson and Tom Paine, something of an anti-Christian character, by professing ourselves the bold and uncompromising champions of equality, by expressing a great love for the people, and a deep sympathy with the laborer, whom we represented as defrauded and oppressed by his employer, by denouncing all proprietors as aristocrats, and by keeping the more unpopular features of our plan as far in the background as possible, to enlist the majority of the American people under the banner of the Working-Men's Party; nothing doubting that, if we could once raise that party to power, we could use it to secure the adoption of our educational system.

Into this party I entered with enthusiasm. I established in Western New York a journal in its support, and co-operated with The Daily Sentinel, conducted by my friends in the city. But I soon tired of the party, and gave my influence and that of my journal, in the autumn of 1830, to the Jackson candidate, E. T. Throop, against Frank Granger, the candidate of the Anti-masons, for Governor. This defection ruined my journal as a party journal, and a few days after the election, I disposed of it to my partner, and ceased to be its editor. The truth is, I never was and never could be a party man, or work in the traces of a party. I abandoned, indeed, after a year's devotion to it, the Working-Men's Party, but not the working-men's cause, and to that cause I have been faithful according to my light and ability.

I

was not naturally a radical, or even inclined to radicalism; but I had a deep sympathy with the poorer and more numerous classes. This sympathy I still have, and trust I shall have as long as I live. I believed, and still believe, that the rights of labor are not sufficiently protected, and that the modern system of large industries, which requires prosecution heavy outlays of capital, or credit, makes the great mass of operatives virtually slaves, slaves, in all slaves,-slaves, except the name, as much so as are the negroes on one of our southern plantations. It is a system which places the laborer

for its

under all the disadvantages, without securing him the advantages, of freedom. I looked, and still look, upon democracy, as it is called, which has its expression in universal suffrage and eligibility, as affording no adequate protection to the laboring classes, as in fact no better than a mockery. The British system, the mercantile system, the credit system, the banking system, the system which gives the supremacy to trade and manufactures, inaugurated by the Peace of Utrecht in 1713, I regarded, and still regard, as worse than the serfdom of the middle ages, and worse even than slavery as it has existed or can exist in any Christian country. It cannot last forever; but it is too powerful to be successfully combated at present. The industrial and commercial supremacy of Great Britain must be annihilated before we can get rid of it, and that supremacy is not easily shaken; for Russia is the only modern nation that is in a condition to offer it the slightest resistance, and Russia is preparing to adopt it.

My few months' experience as the editor of a workingmen's journal satisfied me that it was idle to attempt to carry out our plans by means of a working-men's party, or, so to speak, a proletarian party. The working-men, except in the cities and manufacturing villages, do not, in our own country, constitute, as a distinct class, the majority. They are neither numerous nor strong enough to get or to wield the political power of the state. They cannot afford to engage in the struggle to obtain it. Capital or credit, in its various forms and ramifications, is too strong for them. The movement we commenced could only excite a war of man against money; and all history and all reasoning in the case prove that in such a war money carries it over man. Money commands the supplies, and can hold out longer than they who have nothing but their manhood. It can starve them into submission. I wished sincerely and earnestly to benefit the working-men, but I saw, as soon as I directed my attention to the point, that I could effect nothing by appealing to them as a separate class. My policy must be, not a workingmen's party, but to induce all classes of society to co-operate in efforts for the working-men's cause. The rich and poor, the learned and unlearned, the producers and consumers, the headworkers and the handworkers, must unite, work together, or no reforms were practicable, no amelioration of the condition of any class was to be hoped for.

No doubt I was for a moment fascinated by the visionary schemes of my friends, but my motive for supporting the

Working-Men's party was never precisely theirs. I did not do it merely for the sake of the proposed system of education, but with the hope of benefiting the working-men themselves. I acquiesced in that system of education for a moment, but never really approved it. I was a husband and a father, and did not altogether relish the idea of breaking up the family and regarding my children as belonging to the state rather than to me. Parents might not be in all cases well qualified to bring up their children properly, but where was the state to get its army of nurses, teachers, governors, &c. better qualified? What certainty was there that these public schools would be better conducted, or be more favorable to the morals and intelligence of children, than the family itself? After all, what could these schools do for our children? They would bring them up to be rational, it was said; that is, free from superstition, free from all religious prejudices, ignorant of all morality resting for its foundation on belief in God, in immortality, in moral accountability, and restricted in all their thoughts and affections to their five senses and the material world, therefore to purely material goods and sensual pleasures. Suppose the schools to fulfil these expectations, they will turn out our children only well-trained animals a sort of learned pigs. After all, is this desirable?

I cannot carry out my reforms without love, disinterestedness, sacrifice. If man is a mere animal, born to propagate his species, and to die and be no more, why shall I love him, and sacrifice myself for him? Where is his moral worth, his dignity, the greatness and majesty of his nature? What matters it, whether, during his existence of a day, he is happy or miserable, since to-morrow he dies, and it is all the same? For a being For a being so worthless, wherefore devote myself? What is there in him to inspire me with heroism, and enable me in his behalf to dare poverty, reproach, exile, the rack, the dungeon, the scaffold, or the stake?

No longer irritated against religion by being obliged by my profession to seem to profess what I did not believe, I found myself almost instantly reverting with regret to my early religious principles and affections. The moment I avowedly threw off all religion and began to work without it, I found myself impotent. I did not need religion to pull down or destroy society; but the moment I wished to build up, to effect something positive, I found I could not proceed a single step without it. I was compelled to make brick

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without straw. Philosophers had told me, and I had believed, that self-interest would suffice as a motive power, that all one has to do is to show men what is really for their interest, and they will do it. Nothing more false. Men are selfish enough, no doubt of that; but nothing in the world is harder than to get them to labor for their own best interest. They act from habit, from routine, from appetite and passion, and will sacrifice their highest and best good to their momentary lusts. It is an old complaint, that men do not act as well as they know. They see the right, approve it, and yet pursue the wrong. It is not enough to show them their interest, to convince their understandings. I must have some power by which I can overcome what religious people call the flesh, -a power which will strengthen the will, and enable men to subdue their passions and control their lusts. Where am I to find this power except in religious ideas and principles, in the belief in God and immortality, in duty, moral accountability?

I need, then, religion of some sort as the agent to induce nen to make the sacrifices required in adoption of my plans for working out the reform of society, and securing to man his earthly felicity. Certainly, I was far enough from the Christian thought; but this conviction, real and sincere, was a step in my ascent from the abyss into which I had fallen. Certainly, it does not follow that religion is true because it is needed to secure man his earthly well-being; but the conviction that it is necessary for that purpose, if not rudely treated, may, in an ingenuous mind lead to something more. I had fixed it in my mind that the creation of an earthly paradise, a heaven on earth for my race, was the end for which I should labor; and I saw that I could not gain that end without the agency of religion. Therefore I accepted religion once more, and, on quitting my journal, resumed my old profession of a preacher, though of what particular Gospel it would be difficult to say.

CHAPTER VIII. -RELIGION OF HUMANITY.

I resumed preaching, but on my own hook, as an independent preacher responsible to no church, sect, or denomination. Do you say I was wrong, that I acted precipitately, and should have waited till my beard had grown? Perhaps you are right. But perhaps I was not in a condition in which I could wait. A man may often be placed in a situation in which he must act, although perfectly aware that