this country. But the lure of a distant scene was too
attractive. Cottle, the friend and publisher of the Pantisocrats, has
left his account of their aims. Theirs was to be "a social colony in
which there was to be a community of property and where all that was
selfish was to be proscribed." It would realise "a state of society free
from the evils and turmoils that then agitated the world, and present
an example of the eminence to which men might arrive under the
unrestrained influence of sound principles." It would "regenerate the
whole complexion of society, and that not by establishing formal laws,
but by excluding all the little deteriorating passions, injustice,
wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking, and thereby setting an example
of human perfectibility."

What is left of the dream to-day? Some verses in Coleridge's earlier
poems, the address to Chatterton for instance

O Chatterton! that thou wert yet alive,
Sure thou wouldst spread the canvas to the gale;
And love with us the tinkling team to drive
O'er peaceful Freedom's undivided dale.

and those lines, half comical, half pathetic, in which the "sweet
harper" is assured as some requital for a hard life and a cruel death,
that the Pantisocrats will raise a "solemn cenotaph" to his memory
"Where Susquehana pours his untamed stream." Long afterwards, Coleridge
described Pantisocracy in _The Friend_ as "a plan as harmless as it was
extravagant," which had served a purpose by saving him from more
dangerous courses. "It was serviceable in securing myself and perhaps
some others from the paths of sedition. We were kept free from the
stains and impurities which might have remained upon us had we been
travelling with the crowd of less imaginative malcontents through the
dark lanes and foul by-roads of ordinary fanaticism."

Pantisocracy was indeed a happy episode for English literature. One may
doubt whether the "Ancient Mariner" would have been written, had
Coleridge travelled with Gerrald and Sinclair along the "dark lane" that
led to Botany Bay. Nature can work strange miracles with the instinct of
self-preservation, and even for poets she has a care. The prudence which
teaches one man to be a Whig, will make of another a Utopian.

CHAPTER II

THOMAS PAINE

"Where Liberty is, there is my country." The sentiment has a Latin ring;
one can imagine an early Stoic as its author. It was spoken by Benjamin
Franklin, and no saying better expresses