In 1797 he started the “New Lanark Twist Company,” in which his theories were to be carried out; but although the system was nominally and theoretically democratic, Robert Owen ruled as an autocrat, and having a splendid organising and business head he made the scheme into a commercial success. Some of the partners could not agree to his plans, so he bought them out, but took in others, who also declined to let him rule despotically, and in disgust he went off to America to found a Socialistic community there on the wreck of an attempted German Communistic venture. This, however, failed, and when he returned to Scotland the partners in the New Lanark Twist Company had increased in number, and gave him to understand that they intended managing it in their own and not in his way. Then he founded a Communistic Society at Orbiston, in Scotland, but this also slipped from his control. He next started a weekly paper, _The Crisis_, and an “Equitable Labour Exchange.” The latter came to a disastrous end in 1833. After this little was heard of Robert Owen. One of his early theories was that the universe was one great self-acting laboratory, and that all life, movement, thought, were results of chemical action. His conception of the formation of character was bound to end in disappointment. Minds are not mere bits of blank paper on which you may write what you like; souls are not lumps of putty to be moulded to what form you will. My dear father had been impressed with some of Robert Owen’s doctrines, specially with this, and he set to work to shape my brothers and me each for a special profession, and to give each a separate bent; and the result was that we all went in clean opposite directions to what he purposed, and adopted professions which he had intended the others to enter. Owen finally took up with table-rapping and Spiritualism, and supposed himself to be a medium through whom the Duke of Kent revealed the mysteries of the other world. Finally, as his health failed, a great longing came over him to return to his native place and die there. “And as a hare, when hounds and horns pursue, Pants for the place from whence at first it flew,” so did he come back to Newtown, and there shortly after expired. A little way down the Severn below Newtown is Llanllwchaiarn, a church founded by a brother of S. Aelhaiarn of Guilsfield. The parish is not of interest in itself, except as having given birth to, and been the residence of, a remarkable man, Henry Williams, of Ysgafell, one of the sturdiest Nonconformists of the time of the Restoration. His father owned the farm, which had belonged to the family for several generations. The Conventicle Act, which came into force in 1664, imposed a penalty of £5 or three months’ imprisonment on anyone frequenting a dissenting meeting, for the first offence; £10 or six months’ imprisonment for a second offence; and for a third offence a fine of £100 or transportation beyond the seas.