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“of Serasse, a paper manufacturer, is particularly talked of; and that of Segnin, “formerly a violent Trorist. He has published an account of his conversion; "in which he celebrates what he calls Three Returns: his own return into the bosom "of the Catholic church,-the return of the Pope to Rome, and the return of Louis XVIII. to the throne of his ancestors. Many copies of this account “have been distributed and stuck up in various parts of the city!".

The account which follows will further exhibit the distressing state of the city of Nismes, at the very period when it was affirmed in Parliament that all was tranquil and satisfactory.

"Mr. a most respectable gentleman, residing in Switzerland, who had "passed the winter months in Provence, for the health of his family, arrived at "Nismes, May 21. It was his intention to remain several days among his friends, "but he only remained 24 hours. The deplorable situation of the town, and the melancholy which the sufferings of the Protestants inspired, compelled him to "depart. Not one of the Protestant merchants, or respectable reformed inhabit, ants dured venture to leave their houses, associute with him, or appear in public.”

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Unhappily, the spirit and the practice of Persecution are not confined to France, From the Sketch of the State of the Waldenses, published by the Committee, it is necessary to furnish the following short extracts :

Under these circumstances, the Committee have kaid before his Majesty's Government a state. ment of the situation in which these afflicted churebes are left, by the late political events; and by a deputation, have requested the attention of the Earl of Liverpool to the practicability of renewing, in favor of the Vaudois, the grant of William and Mary.

"Waiting the result of their application, which was graciously and favorably received, the Committee have felt themselves compelled to establish a fund for the immediate relief of their necessitous brethren, and have already sent to them some pecuniary assistance.

"To reuder this fund efficient, they invite the aid of the benevolent, and doubt not that, in the event of its being found impracticable to obtain from the resources of the nation adequate support, the Christian Public, and especially Protestant Dissenters, will enable the Committee to place the descendants of the earliest and most honourable of continental Christian churches in a state of private and domestic contort, though even their political condition should continue to be unjustly oppressive and degraded."

Williams, Printer, Clerkenwell.

This Day is published, in one Volume 8vo, price 6s. in bds.

A

New View of Society :

IN FOUR ESSAYS

ON THE PRINCIPLE OF THE FORMATION OF
CHARACTER, AND THE APPLICATION
OF THE PRINCIPLE TO PRACTICE.

BY ROBERT OWEN OF NEW LANARK.

PRINTED FOR J. HATCHARD, PICCADILLY..

Of whom may be had, by the same Author, AN ADDRESS deli vered at New Lanark, January 1, 1816, on Opening the INSTITUTION: for the FORMATION of CHARACTER. Price 2s. 6d.—And

OBSERVATIONS on the MANUFACTURING SYSTEM. Price 1s.

THE principles developed in these writings are the result of more than twenty-five years experience, which the Author acquired amidst a great variety of character, formed under various circumstances, in different situations.

The result of that experience has been to make it evident beyond. the shadow of doubt, That "any character from the best to the worst, from the most ignorant to the most enlightened, may be given. to any community, however extended, by the application of proper means; which means are to a great extent at the command and under the control of those who have influence in society."

That by the adoption of those means in practice, crime, punishment, idleness, poverty, and the innumerable evils which these generate, may be graduaily removed out of society to a much greater extent than might be supposed..

That this happy result has been already in part reduced to matter of fact, by an experiment made during the last seventeen years at: New Lanark, in which, by the application of these principles to practice, a community exceeding two thousand individuals has been, without any legal punishment, changed from a state of vice, immorality,, and wretchedness, into one of comparative virtue, comfort, and happiness.

In these Essays the peculiar mode is explained by which this. change has been effected. And the whole is now made public, to induce the Government and Society in general to investigate the principles and practice; that, if they should be found to bear the test of the most severe scrutiny, they may be gradually and temperately adopted into legislative practice.

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Oration delivered at the Library, RedCross-Street, London, February 7, 1816, being the Centenary of the Founder's Death; by James Lindsay,

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D.D.

BRETHREN AND FRIENDS, SHOULD justly incur the charge

the circumstances to which I am indebted for an unmerited precedence among so many colleagues, who could have addressed you on the present occasion with greater talent and better effect. To our visitors this statement is especially due. The father of our Trust, who has been more than forty years its most efficient member; whose fame is coextensive with the world of science; whose learning and virtues shed lustre upon our body, and to whom we all look up with respect and affection is present, and in the chair.* The question naturally occurs, why he has not been selected to celebrate the memory of his own countryman, and to distinguish this day, as it ought to be distinguished, by weight of character and elegance of panegyric? I ain bound to exculpate the members of the Trust from what might otherwise be imputed to the want of discrimination:-Our united voice would have called him to a post, which no other can fill with equal dignity; but in pleading precarious health and urgent avocations, he resisted our importunities, and has disappointed your expectations. Next to our father in standing as a trustee, and in all the qualifications which would entitle him to be the eulogist of our excellent founder, is that venerable brother who, with a mental eye yet clear and strong, can unfortunately claim exemption on the lamented ground of bodily darkness.† I am third in the order of seniority;

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and to that cause alone do I owe an office, which I should feel as an honour if it were not for the painful consciousness that I am addressing men in every respect so much my superiors. Happily the occasion does not demand those arts of an ostentatious oratory, so often employed to deck out vice in

to bestow the praise of talent upon the baseness of political intrigue; or to exalt into heroes the scourges of the human race; or to canonize monks and hermits, because they have been the ignorant tools or the hired advocates of ecclesiastical domination. We burn no incense at the shrine of ambition, and heap no praises upon those who consecrate ambition by naming it religion:-those restless spirits who embroil the world to enrich or to immortalize themselves;-princes, who in extending the boundaries of empire contract the limits of freedom and happiness;-statesmen who pian, and warriors who fight, that they may found a name upon the ruins of honest industry and the destruction of human life;-priests who, instead of being. messengers of peace, to allay the angry passions of mankind, become, whenever it suits the purposes of the state which supports them, the trumpeters of discord to irritate the phrensy which it is their duty to restrain. These may constitute fit themes of panegyric to pensioned orators and venal poets :the praises of an enlightened picty and an honest patriotism will be reserved for very different subjects.

He who came not to destroy men's lives, but to save them, has imparted to us far other views of that glory which ought to be the chosen object of a Christian's ambition. He who shared the secret counsels of divine wisdom, and knew what true and lasting glory is, has instructed us in the means by which he obtained himself, -by which every one of us, in our

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connected with the occasion of our meeting? In my judgment, closely. We must know the true nature of Christian glory, before we can select the proper objects of Christian admiration, or confer a suitable tribute of Christian eulogy. He only who imbibes a portion of the same spirit, who acts upon the same views, who cooperates accordine ends to which we to his abilities in

have just alluded, as the ends of our great Master; he only merits the name and the honours of a Christian hero; and it is upon this ground alone that we have assembled to express our veneration for the character and memory of Dr. Daniel Williams. It is not by splendour of birth, of brilliancy of genius, or any of those qualities or deeds which dazzle a vain imagination, that this veneration is excited. No. But it is because our founder voluntarily abridged even that splendour which his fortune might have commanded;-it is because he voluntarily devoted solid talents and useful learning to the duties of a profession which the world despised, and from which he expected and received no worldly advantage; it is because he preferred the simplicity of dissenting worship, and the full possession of Christian liberty, to the favours of the great, which he might have enjoyed; because he chose rather to be the honest, disinterested champion of truth and freedom, than to bask in the sunshine of courts and churches-because he thus formed one in that illustrious band, who have maintained the rights of conscience against the usurpations of power, and blessed their posterity with greater privileges than they them selves inherited; it is because, after establishing so many claims to respect by an upright and honourable life, he perpetuated the effect of his beneficence, in devoting his worldly substance, upon a wise and liberal plan, to the instruction of ignorance, the diffusion of knowledge, and the encouragement of rational religion It is because Dr. Williams aeted thus piously, thus nobly, living and dying, that the trustees of his bounty, after the lapse of a century, during which his bequests have been the means ef instructing, and we hope of saving thousands, meet themselves, and have brought their friends with them, to: express their own thankfulness to Pro

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