Transcribed from the [c1840’s] Religious Tract Society edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org [Picture: Book cover] SOCIALISM EXPOSED. * * * * * BY THE REV. JOSEPH MATHER. * * * * * * * * * * THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY, INSTITUTED 1799. 56, PATERNOSTER ROW, AND 65, ST. PAULS CHURCHYARD. MR. OWEN professes to be seeking the happiness of his species: he imagines he has discovered the specific, which, if believed and applied, will produce it; and he is using all the means in his power to convince the world that such is the fact, and to induce the men of it to receive, and follow his prescriptions. We must confess that we are not a little startled at the means by which he proposes to accomplish this desirable object. And here we quote his own language: “The religions founded under the name of Jewish, Budh, Jehovah, God or Christ, Mohammed, or any other, are all composed of human laws in opposition to nature’s eternal laws.” (Book of the New Moral World, p. 68.) From which it appears that all other systems have been wrong, founded on error, and productive of nothing but misery and crime: and before his can be established they must be renounced, and overturned, and abolished. Now, Mr. Owen professes to have found out something better than what I and the world are in possession of; but I do not wish to be like the dog in the fable, which, when he had a piece of meat, dropped it, because, from seeing its shadow in the water, he fancied there was another and a larger within his reach, and so lost them both. Before I give up what I know and feel to be valuable, the source of comfort and the source of happiness, let me not only be convinced that it is a superior good which is held out before me, but let me have the possession of it. Then let me ask, What evidence does Mr. Owen furnish, that the system and principles of the New Moral World are so much superior to those of the Christian system? Let us contrast the two a little, and see how far we shall be acting wisely in rejecting all that we have been accustomed to believe and reverence as Divine in favour of these new principles.