“Do you know anything of an association which began at
Brighton about two years ago, and which Gooch writes me word from thence ‘is prospering
splendidly considering the paucity of its means.’ It is a slip of
Owenism grafted upon a sound common sense stock.* The whole principle is
(Gooch loquitur) for a number to join to form a common property by
small weekly subscriptions, which, instead of being vested in savings’
banks or benefit societies, is vested in business. They have already got a
shop, a mackerel boat, and a garden of twenty-eight acres, all of which are
prospering; so that the common property in capital accumulates in two ways, by
the weekly subscriptions and by the profits of trade. In conducting these
trades they employ their own members, and as they increase their trade they
will employ more, till the whole number will be employed in the service: then
the community will be complete, although scattered; but they hope, ultimately,
to live together on their own land in a kind of village, like the Beguines of
Ghent. The practice is spreading among the working classes in various parts of
the
| Ætat. 55. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 51 |
“God bless you!
