"We have seen," he says, "that in one or two of his early
letters my father speaks of emigration to America as having
entered his mind; and the failure of the plans I have just
mentioned now caused him to turn his thoughts more decidedly
in that direction; and the result was a scheme of emigration,
to which those who conceived it gave the euphonious name of
'Pantisocracy.' This idea, it appears, was first originated by
Mr Coleridge and one or two of his friends; and he mentioned it
to my father, on becoming acquainted with him at Oxford. Their
plan was to collect as many brother adventurers as they could,
and to establish a community in the New World upon the most
thoroughly social basis. Land was to be purchased with their
common contributions, and to be cultivated by their common
labour. Each was to have his portion of work assigned him; and
they calculated that a large part of their time would still
remain for social converse and literary pursuits. The females
of the party--for all were to be married men--were to cook, and
perform all domestic affairs; and having even gone so far as to
plan the architecture of their cottages, and the form of their
settlement, they had pictured as pleasant a Utopia as ever
entered an ardent mind."--(P. 211.)
We nowhere gather what provision was made for any other branch of
industry than the agricultural. Was each man to be his own tailor,
shoemaker, carpenter, &c.? Or was each Pantisocrat to train himself
for one special art, to be practised for the benefit of the whole?
Or were they to export raw produce, or poetry, the results of their
much literary leisure, and so obtain from the old civilised countries
the necessary articles for a commodious life? If the last was their
plan, their colony, by still being dependent upon other countries,
would lose its character as a complete experiment of a new social
organisation. The projectors seem to have thought of nothing beyond
the cultivation of the soil, (if they had even studied this,) and the
building or the architecture of their cottages. Never surely was such a
scheme of colonisation devised. Amongst the whole number of emigrants,
there were only two who, apparently, had ever handled anything but
books. _Shad_, the servant lad, and one "Heath an apothecary!" They
were all students, poets, or scholars; if they had ever reached the
banks of the Susquehanna, they would have found, on unpacking their
boxes, that they had all brought nothing but books.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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