(God bless her) might have been an old washer-woman, taking her snuff and gin among her gossips, and her daughters, if they had not been princesses, might have turned out no better than they should be! Here's a levelling rogue for you! The world turned inside out, with a witness!—Such are Mr. Owen's general principles, to which we have nothing to say, and such his mode of illustrating them in his prefaces and dedications, which we do not think the most flattering to persons in power. We do not, however, wish him to alter his tone: he goes swimmingly on at present, "with cheerful and confident thoughts." His schemes thus far are tolerated, because they are remote, visionary, inapplicable. Neither the great world nor the world in general care any thing about New Lanark, nor trouble themselves whether the workmen there go to bed drunk or sober, or whether the wenches are got with child before or after the marriage ceremony. Lanark is distant, Lanark is insignificant. Our statesmen are not afraid of the perfect system of reform he talks of, and, in the meantime, his cant against reform in parliament, and about Bonaparte, serves as a practical diversion in their favour. But let the good which Mr. Owen says he has done in one poor village be in danger of becoming general,—let his plan for governing men by reason, without the assistance of the dignitaries of the church and the dignitaries of the law, but once get wind and be likely to be put in practice, and his dreams of elevated patronage will vanish. Long before he has done as much to overturn bigotry and superstition in this country, as he says Bonaparte did on the continent, (though he thinks the restoration of what was thus overturned also a great blessing) Mr. Wilberforce will have cut his connection. When we see Mr. Owen brought up for judgment before Lord Ellenborough, or standing in the pillory, we shall begin to think there is something in this New Lanark Scheme of his. On the other hand, if he confines himself to general principles, steering clear of practice, the result will be the same, if ever his principles become sufficiently known and admired. Let his "New View of Society" but make as many disciples as the "Enquiry
