Ii5 
I had an ample conversation with Mr. Owen, relating to his 
system, and his expectations. He looks forward to nothing 
less than to remodel the world entirely; to root out all crime; to 
abolish all punishments; to create similar views and similar 
wants, and in this manner to avoid all dissension and warfare. 
When his system of education shall be brought into connection 
with the great progress made by mechanics, and which is daily 
increasing, every man can then, as he thought, provide his smaller 
necessaries for himself, and trade would cease entirely! I ex¬ 
pressed a doubt of the practicability of his system in Europe, 
and even in the United States. He was too unalterably con¬ 
vinced of the results, to admit the slightest room for doubt It 
grieved me to see that Mr. Owen should allow himself to be so 
infatuated by his passion for universal improvement, as to be¬ 
lieve and to say that he is about to reform the whole world; and 
yet that' almost every member of his society, with whom I have 
conversed apart, acknowledged that he was deceived in his 
expectations, and expressed their opinion that Mr. Owen had 
commenced on too grand a scale, and had admitted too many 
members, without the requisite selection ! The territory of the 
society may contain twenty five thousand acres. The sum of 
one hundred and twenty thousand dollars was paid to Rapp for 
this purchase, and for that consideration he also left both his 
cattle, and a considerable flock of sheep behind. 
I went with the elder Doctor M‘Namee, to the two new estab¬ 
lished communities, one of which is called No. 2, or Macluria; 
the other lately founded, No. 3. No. 2, lies two miles distant 
from New Harmony, at the entrance of the forest, which will 
be cleared to make the land fit for cultivation, and consists of 
nine log houses, first tenanted about four weeks since, by about 
eighty persons. They are mostly backwoodsmen with their 
families, who have separated themselves from the community 
No. 1, in New Harmony, because no religion is acknowledged 
there, and these people wish to hold their prayer meetings undis¬ 
turbed. The fields in the neighbourhood of this community 
were of course very new. The community No. 3, consisted 
of English country people, who formed a new association, as 
the mixture, or perhaps the cosmopolitism of New Harmony 
did not suit them ; they left the colony planted by Mr. Birk- 
beck, at English Prairie, about twenty miles hence, on the right 
bank of the Wabash, after the unfortunate death of that gen¬ 
tleman,* and came here. This is a proof that there are two evils 
that strike at the root of the young societies; one is a sectarian 
* He was drowned in the Wabash, which he attempted to swim over on 
horseback. 
