‘How much longer shall we continue to allow generation after generation to be taught crime from their infancy, and when so taught, hunt them like beasts of the forest, until they are entangled beyond escape in the toils and nets of the law? When, if the circumstances from youth of these poor unpitied sufferers had been reversed with those who are even surrounded with the pomp and dignity of justice, these latter would have been at the bar of the culprit, and the former would have been in the judgment-seat. ‘Had the present Judges of these realms, whose conduct compels the admiration of surrounding states, been born and educated in St. Giles’s, or some similar situation, is it not reasonable to conclude, as they possess native energies and abilities, that ere this they would have been at the head of their _then_ profession, and in consequence of that superiority and proficiency, have already suffered imprisonment, transportation, or death? Or can we for a moment hesitate to decide, that if some of those men whom our laws, dispensed by the present Judges, have doomed to suffer capital punishment, had been born, trained, and surrounded as these Judges were born, trained, and surrounded; that some of those so imprisoned, transported, or hanged, would have been the identical individuals who would have passed the same awful sentences _on our present highly esteemed dignitaries of the law_?’ This is a delicate passage. So then according to the author of the ‘New View of Society,’ the Prince Regent of these realms, instead of being at the head of the allied sovereigns of Europe, might, in other circumstances, have been at the head of a gang of bravoes and assassins; Lord Castlereagh, on the same principle, and by parity of reasoning, without any alteration in his nature or understanding, but by the mere difference of situation, might have been a second _Count Fathom_; Mr. Vansittart, the chancellor of the exchequer, might, if he had turned his hand that way in time, have succeeded on _the snaffling lay_, or as a pickpocket; Lord Wellington might have entered houses, instead of entering kingdoms, by force; the Lord-chancellor might have been a Jew-broker; the Marquis of —— or Lord —— a bawd, and their sons, tapsters and bullies at bagnios; the Queen (God bless her) might have been an old washer-woman, taking her snuff and gin among her gossips, and her daughters, if they had not been princesses, might have turned out no better than they should be! Here’s a levelling rogue for you! The world turned inside out, with a witness!—Such are Mr. Owen’s general principles, to which we have nothing to say, and such his mode of illustrating them in his prefaces and dedications, which we do not think the most flattering to persons in power. We do not, however, wish him to alter his tone: he goes swimmingly on at present, ‘with cheerful and confident thoughts.’ His schemes thus far are tolerated, because they are remote, visionary, inapplicable.