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himself the trouble of weighing * the arguments of both parties . The insurgents in Spanish America are increasing daily in strength , hut every account is filled with horrors produced by the implacable cruelty of the Spaniards . This of course produces irritation on the other side , and the conflict promises to he
# till of long duration . Should the Russians enter the field , the period of misery will he prolonged ; but the extent of territory to he subjugated is so great , that little apprehension need be entertained of the final result . The government of the Brazils has completely subdued its adversaries , and the king will probably soon be induced to revisit hi » European dominions .
Our ambassador to China is returned from his unsuccessful expedition , and we inay expect from the pen of some well-informed men in bis train , some details not only of the embassy , but of the state of that interesting country * The progress of Christianity in it is an important subject ,
and that it is making some way we cannot doubt , as the ruling power employs severe measures against it . The policy of preventing the entrance of foreigners into that kingdom may well be justified by a view of what Europeans have done in the neighbouring states .
At home the usual quiet prevails during thesjunraer months . The parliament having- rested from its labours , and politicians heing engaged in rural occupations , there is time , as Burke * very properly suggested , for reflection on the measures of the winter .
Plots are no more heard of . The spies seem to have done their business , and to have also their summer vacation . Of the prisoners immured nothing is heard , and they will , probably , be dismissed silently to their homes . A plentiful harvest is likely to remove our fears of farther distress from
any thing but want of work in the manufacturing counties : but the hand of benevolence , which was so generally extended in the last winter , will not be shut , if farther calls should be made upon it . In this time of general repose a great political question has been agitated in the
metropolis , and notwithstanding the Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act , two larger meetings have been holden , and as strong language has been used as in the time of perfect freedom . This question was brought forward by a name , which will stand recorded in the annals of
benevolence as high as Howards . The object . of the latter was to meliorate the condition of the prisoner :- —* o give to the lower classes the advantages of education , and of -all the improvements made in society , and with them good food , proper clothing and wholesome habitations , is in the plan proposed by the former . Of the benevolent
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views of Mr . Owen not a doubt can be en , tertained , but in the practicability of his plan and the ultimate benefit to he derived by society , the meetings called by him did not concur . His scheme , therefore , has
apparently fallen to the ground , but there will be great want of wisdom in its opponents if they do not avail themselves of the many useful suggestions which , in the course of the discussion , have arisen both from the proposer and the op posers of the plan .
Mr . Owen proposes , that a certain quantity of land should be procured and laid out for cultivation by a certain number of poor families , who will , by their combined labour and union , be enabled to obtain all the comforts of life in a much greater degree than they do at present . Their children are to be educated in a manner suited
to reasonable beings , and freed from the sectarian prejudices which now so much embitter life . They are to be taught that their "greatest happiness , as indeed their real happiness is , and what is expressly taught by our holy religion , is to promote , as much as in them lies , their neighbours
welfare . Buildings are to be constructed suitable to the plan . In these a great saving is made by the food being prepared for a great number , and all coming from their own land . The married people will have cottages with a garden , and according to the description every thing is to bear an air of comfort procured by easy labour .
The objections to the plan were , first , That they would produce such an excess of population that the country could not support it . This was founded upon a fanciful argument , on the proportion between population and the supplies of food , the former increasing in an arithmetical , the latter in a geometrical progression : the
consequence of which would be , that if one district only was formed , and others gradually supplied from it , and the first population consisted of a thousand persons , the whole island would foe peopled with paupers at a certain time . Thus if the first hive doubled it&elf in thirty years , and so of
the rest , in less than a thousand years the population would exceed eight thousand millions ; if it doubled itself in fifty years , in five hundred years 1 time the produce of the "first hive would be upwards of a million , and consequently less than a score of these institutions would at that time far
exceed the present population of the united country , ' j .. A second argument was , that persons thus collected together would lose all the energies of life , and the comforts arising from home and the domestic relations , would be lost . Besides , what rights were these people to be possessed of ? Under whose controul were they to live ? How
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$ 19 State ofPubUc Affairs .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1817, page 510, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2467/page/62/
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