cal works, in whatever country or language, who may comply with the request herein preferred to them, of inserting this Address in their pages. And this request I conceive may scarcely be refused by any professing to favour the spirit of human inquiry, and disinterested efforts, whether judicious or erroneous, made in the cause of human improvement.

FRANCES WRIGHT.'

At Sea, Dec. 4, 1827. Explanatory Notes, respecting the nature and object of the Institution, and of the principles upon which it is founded; addressed to the friends of human improvement in all Countries, and in all Nations. The Editors and Conductors of all periodical publications, in whatever Language, are requested to assist in the circulation of this Address by giving it insertion in their pages...

THIS institution was founded in the autumn of 1825, in the western district of the state of Tennessee, North America, by Frances Wright.

'The object of the founder was to attempt the practice of certain principles which, in theory, had been frequently practised. She had observed that the step between theory and practice is usually great; that while many could reason, few were prepared to proceed to act; and that mankind must reasonably hesitate to receive as truths theories, however ingenious, if unsupported by experiment. In the individual who should first attempt an experiment opposed to all existing opinions and practice, she believed two moral requisites to be indispensable, mental courage, and, as some writer has defined it, a passion for the improvement of the human race. She felt within herself these necessary qualifications; and, strongly convinced of the truth of the principles which, after mature consideration, her heart and head had embraced, she determined to apply all her energies, and to devote her slender fortune, to the building up of an institution which should have these principles for its base, and whose destinies she fondly hoped might tend to convince mankind of their moral beauty and practical utility. Actuated from her earliest youth by a passionate interest in the welfare of man, she had peculiarly addressed herself to the study of his past and present condition. All her observations tended to corroborate the opinion which her own feelings might possibly, in the first instance, have predisposed her to adopt, that men are virtuous in proportion as they are happy, and happy in proportion as they are free. She saw this truth exemplified in the history of modern as of ancient times. Every where knowledge, mental refinement, and the gentler, as the more ennobling, feelings of humanity have kept pace, in flux or reflux, with the growth or depression of the spirit of freedom.

But while human liberty has engaged the attention of the enlightened, and enlisted the feelings of the generous, of all civilized

nations, may we not inquire if this liberty has been rightly understood? Has it not been with limitations and exceptions, tending to neutralise its effects; with invidious distinctions, tending to foster jealousies, or to inspire injurious ambition? Has it, in short, been pure and entire in principle, universal in the objects it embraces, and equal for all races and classes of men? Liberty without equality, what is it but a chimera? And equality, what is it also but a chimera, unless it extend to all the enjoyments, exertions, and advantages, intellectual and physical, of which our nature is capable?

• One nation, and as yet one nation only, has declared all men "born free and equal," and conquered the political freedom and equality of its citizens, with the lamentable exception, indeed, of its citizens of colour. But is there not a liberty yet more precious than what is termed national, and an equality more precious than what is termed political? Before we are citizens, are we not human beings, and ere/we can exercise equal rights, must we not possess equal advantages, equal means of improvement and of enjoyment?

Political liberty may be said to exist in the United States of America, and (without adverting to the yet unsettled, though we may fondly trust secured republics of America's southern continent,) only there. Moral liberty exists no where.

By political liberty we may understand the liberty of speech and action, without incurring the violation of authority, or the penalties of law. By moral liberty, may we not understand the free exercise of the liberty of speech and of action, without incurring the intolerance of popular prejudice and ignorant public opinion? To secure the latter where the former liberty exists, what is necessary "but to will it ?" Far truer is the assertion as here applied to moral liberty, than as, heretofore, applied to political liberty. To free ourselves of thrones, aristocracies, and hierarchies, of fleets and armies, and all the arrayed panoply of organised despotism, it is not sufficient to will it. We must fight for it, and fight for it too with all the odds of wealth, and power, and position, against us. But when the field is won, to use it is surely ours; and if the possession of the right of free action inspire not the courage to exercise the right, liberty has done but little for us. It is much to have the fetters broken from our limbs, but yet better is it to have them broken from the mind. It is much to have declared men free and equal, but it shall be more when they are rendered so; when means shall be sought, and found, and employed, to develope all the intellectual and physical powers of all human beings, without regard to sex or condition, class, race, nation, or colour; and when men shall learn to view each other as one great family, with equal claims to enjoyment, and equal capacities for labour and instruction, admitting always the sole differences arising out of the varieties exhibited in individual organization.

Oriental Herald, Vol. 18.

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'It were superfluous to elucidate by argument the baleful effects. arising out of the division of labour as now existing, and which condemns the large half of mankind to an existence purely physical, and the remaining portion to pernicious idleness, and occasionally to exertions painfully, because solely, intellectual. He who lives in the single exercise of his mental faculties, however usefully or curiously directed, is equally an imperfect animal with the man who knows only the exercise of his muscles. Let us consider the actual condition of our species. Where shall we find even a single individual, male or female, whose mental and physical powers have been fairly cultivated and developed? How, then, is it with the great family of human kind? We have addressed our ingenuity to improve the nature and beautify the forms of all the tribes of animals domesticated by our care; but man has still neglected man; ourselves, our own species, our own nature, are deemed unworthy, even unbecoming, objects of experiment. Why should we refuse to the human animal care at least equal to that bestowed on the horse or the dog? His forms are surely not less susceptible of beauty; and his faculties, more numerous and exalted, may challenge, at least, equal development.

The spirit of curiosity and inquiry which distinguishes the human animal, and which not all the artificial habits and whimsical prejudices of miscalled civilisation have sufficed to quench, seems as yet, for the most part, to have been idly directed. Arts and sciences are multiplied, wants are imagined, and luxuries supplied; but the first of all sciences is left in the germ; the first great science of human beings, the science of human life, remains untouched, unknown, unstudied; and he who would speak of it might, perhaps, excite only astonishment. All the wants and comforts of man are now abstracted as it were, from himself. We hear of the wealth of nations, of the powers of production, of the demand and supply of markets, and we forget that these words mean no more, if they mean any thing, than the happiness, the labour, and the necessities of men. Is it not the unnatural division of mankind into classesoperative, consuming, professional, enlightened, ignorant, &c.which inspires this false mode of reasoning, and leads the legislator and economist to see in the most useful of their fellow-creatures only so much machinery for the creation of certain articles of commerce and to pronounce a nation rich, not in proportion to the number of individuals who enjoy, but to the mass of ideal wealth thrown into commercial circulation? Surely it is time to inquire if our very sciences are not frequently as unmeaning as our teachers are mistaken, and our books erroneous. Surely it is time to examine into the meaning of words and the nature of things, and to arrive at simple facts, not received upon the dictum of learned authorities, but upon attentive personal observation of what is passing around us. And surely it is more especially time to inquire why the occu

pations the most useful and absolutety necessary to our existence and well-being should be held in dispute, and those the most useless, nay, the most frequently mischievous, should be held in honour. The husbandman who supports us by the fruits of his labour, the artisan to whom we owe all the comforts and conveniences of life, are banished from what is termed intellectual society; nay, worse, but too often condemned to the most severe physical privations, and the grossest mental ignorance, while the soldier who lives by our crimes, the lawyer by our quarrels and our rapacity, and the priest by our credulity or our hypocrisy, are honoured with public consideration and applause. Were human life studied as a science, and, as it truly is, the first and most important of allsciences, to which every other should be viewed as the hand-maiden, it would soon appear that we are only happy in a due and wellproportioned exercise or all our powers, physical, intellectual, and moral ;-that bodily labour becomes a pleasure, when varied with mental occupation, and cheered by free and happy affection, and that no occupation can in itself be degrading, which has the comfort and well-being of man for its object.

It will appear evident, upon attentive consideration, that equality of intellectual and physical advantages is the only sure foundation of liberty, and that such equality ay best, and perhaps only, be obtained by a union of interests, and co-operation in labour. The existing principle of selfish interest and competition has been carried to its extreme point, and in its progress has isolated the heart of man, blunted the edge of his finest sensibilities, and annihilated all his most generous impulses and sympathies. Need we hesitate to denounce the principle as vicious which places the interest of each individual in continual opposition to those of his fellows, which makes of one man's loss another's gain, and inspires a spirit of accumulation that crushes every noble sentiment, fosters every degrading one, makes of this globe a scene of strife, and the whole human race idolaters of gold?

'And must we be told that this is in the nature of things? It certainly is in the nature of our anti-social institutions, and need we seek any stronger argument to urge against them?

'Man has ever been adjudged a social animal. And so he truly is, equally we might even hazard the assertion-more capable of being moved to generous feeling and generous action, through his affections and his interests rightly understood, than he is now moved to violence, rapine, and fraud, by hard necessity and his interests falsely interpreted. Let us not libel human nature. It is what circumstance has made it. But, as profiting by experience, we shall change the education of youth, remould our institutions, correct our very ideas of true and false, of right and wrong, of vice and virtue-we may see human nature assume a new form, and

present an appearance rich in peace and enjoyment-yet more rich in future hope.

'It will readily be conceded, that (how great soever the differences stamped on each individual by original organization) by fostering the good and repressing the evil tendencies, by developing every useful faculty and amiable feeling, and cultivating the peculiar talent or talents of every child as discovered in the course of education, all human beings (with the single and rare exceptions presented by malconformation of the physical organs) might be rendered useful and happy. And, admitting only a similar capability of improvement in our own species that we see in other races of animals, we may with justice set no limits to our expectations respecting it, so soon as it shall become, through successive generations, the object of judicious care, and enlightened and fearless experiment.

'But if we should hazard the assertion that of children we may make what we please, we must accord that it is otherwise with men. The simplest principles become difficult of practice, when habits formed in error have been fixed by time; and the simplest truths hard to receive, when prejudice has warped the mind.

The founder of Nashoba looks not for the conversion of the existing generation: she looks not even for its sympathy. All that she ventures to anticipate is the co-operation of a certain number of individuals, acknowledging the same views with herself, a similar interest in the improvement of man, and a similar intrepidity to venture all things for his welfare. To these iudividuals, now scattered throughout the world, and unknown probably to each other, she ventures to address herself. From their union, their co-operation, their exertions, she ventures to expect a successful experiment in favour of human liberty and human happiness. Let them unite their efforts, (their numbers will not be too many,) and in a country where human speech and human action are free, let them plant their standard in the earth-declare fearlessly their principles, however opposed to the received opinions of mankind, and establish their practice accordingly, with consistency and perseverance.

This has been attempted at Nashoba; not in a spirit of hostility to the practice of the world, but with a strong moral conviction of the superior truth and beauty of that consecrated by the legal act of the founder. By a reference to that act, it will be seen that the principles on which the institution is based are those of human liberty and equality, without exceptions or limitations, and its more special objects the protection and regeneration of the race of colour, universally oppressed and despised in a country self-denominated free. This more immediate object was selected and specified by the founder; first, because her feelings had been peculiarly enlisted in behalf of the Negro; and secondly, because the aristocracy of colour is the peculiar vice of the country, which she had chosen as the seat of her experiment.