In wading through the mass of absurdities and errors contained in Mr. Owen’s principles, as developed in the “Book of the New Moral World,” it would have been a very easy task to have selected a number more which might have been exposed: but to go through the whole work page by page, would indeed be labour lost, as to most readers; for I am persuaded there are very few that understand, or even profess completely to understand his principles. Neither is it necessary for their purpose that they should. What they want is a system which shall let them live and do as they like, without being exposed to the consequences of their conduct, and this they find in the system of the New Moral World. But I think I have knocked down some, if not all the main pillars of the structure: the rest will fall of themselves.
There is, however, one law of such a character, which, when understood, will perhaps have a greater influence in preserving such as have no selfish or wicked ends to answer, from falling into his pernicious errors, than any long train of argument, and that is the following:—“Each individual is so organized that he must like that which is pleasant to him, or which, in other words, produces agreeable sensations in him; and dislike that which is unpleasant to him, or which, in other words, produces in him disagreeable sensations; and he cannot know previous to experience, what particular sensations new objects will produce on any of his senses.” (Law 12.)
The meaning of this law will be best explained by an extract from Mr. Owen’s “Declaration of Mental Independence, addressed to the Society at New Harmony, July 4, 1826,” in which, in reference to the law of marriage, he says, “It is, in reality, the greatest crime against nature to prevent organized beings from uniting with those objects, or other organized beings, with which nature has created in them a desire to unite.”
Thus has Robert Owen ventured, not only to set himself in opposition to God, but also to declare that that law of Divine appointment which enjoins a man to “leave his father and his mother, and to cleave unto his wife;” and forbids “man to put asunder what God hath joined together,” is wicked; and, as he avers, has “produced hypocrisy, crime, and misery, beyond the power of language to express.” So that he would avoid the crime of adultery by making all persons common; and each man and each woman should be left at perfect liberty to have whom they liked, keep them as long as they liked, and change them as often as they liked. Come, this is speaking out; and it is just what is wanted. The poison then will carry along with it its own antidote.