en's diagnosis of the social disease explains Southey's partiality.
Like Southey, he traced the evil to the development of the
manufacturing system. That system involved, as he held, what later
Socialists have called the 'exploitation' of the labouring classes by
the capitalists. With singularly crude notions of political economy,
Owen assumed that the 'dead machinery' was in competition with the
'living machinery.' He made startling calculations as to the amount
of human labour represented by steam-engines; and took for granted
that the steam-engine displaced an equal number of workmen. His remedy
for poverty was to set up a number of communities, which should
maintain themselves by cultivating the soil with the spade, and in
which every man should labour for all. Thus New Lanarks were to be
spread over the country, with the difference that the employer was to
be omitted. Owen, in short, became properly a Socialist, having been
simply a paternal philanthropist. For a time Owen met with
considerable support. A great meeting was held in London in 1817, and
a committee was started two years afterwards, of which Ricardo was a
member. Ricardo, indeed, took pains to let it be known that he did not
believe in the efficacy of Owen's plans. Meanwhile Owen was breaking
off his connection with New Lanark, and becoming the apostle of a new
social creed. His missionary voyages took him to Ireland, to the
United States and Mexico, and attempts were made to establish
communities in Scotland and in the State of Illinois.

Owen and his followers became natural antagonists of the Utilitarians.
He agreed with Southey in tracing distress to the development of the
great manufacturing system, though he went much further. The
principles essentially involved in the whole industrial system were,
according to him, pernicious. He held the essential doctrine of his
modern successors that property is theft. Between such a man and the
men who took the _Wealth of Nations_ for their gospel, and Ricardo as
its authorised commentator, there was an impassable gulf. On the other
hand, Owen was equally far from the Tory view of religious
principles. Southey's remark that he could only succeed by allying
himself with some religious fanaticism was just to the point.

Owen was a man of very few ideas, though he held such as he had with
extraordinary tenacity, and enforced them by the effective if
illogical method of incessant repetition. Among them was the