We take pleasure in stating that since the publication of Mr. Owen’s little work, (now ten years,) we have good reason for believing that the public mind is better prepared for the reception of the Editor’s amended edition of his book. As each revolving year passes over, and as truth overcomes error, and as the diffusion of knowledge dispels ignorance, so will the subject elicit additional inquiry, and the merits of the work be more justly appreciated by the enlightened portion of the community. A further discussion and investigation of the subject will cause it to be better understood, and a public opinion favourable to the subject will be formed, of immense moral utility. As in the language of the author,—How mighty and how beneficent the power which such an influence might exert, and how essentially and rapidly it might conduce to the gradual, but thorough extirpation of those selfish vices, legal and illegal, which now disgrace and brutify our species, it is difficult even to imagine. In the silent, but resistless progress of human improvement, such a change is fortunately inevitable. We are gradually emerging from the night of blind prejudice and of brutal force; and, day by day, rational liberty and cultivated refinement, win an accession of power. Violence yields to benevolence, compulsion to kindness, the letter of law to the spirit of justice; and, day by day, men and women become more willing, and better prepared, to entrust the most sacred duties (social as well as political) more to good feeling and less to idle form—more to moral and less to legal keeping. It is no question whether such reform will come: no human power can arrest its progress. How slowly or how rapidly it may come, _is_ a question; and depends, in some degree, on adventitious circumstances. Should this little book prove one among the number of circumstances to accelerate, however slightly, that progress, its author will be repaid, ten times over, for any trifling labour it may have cost him.