ABSTRACT
Owen’s departure from the English stage left it clear for others. Quite a body of people of one kind or another were interested in forming communities. There was, for instance, John Minter Morgan who first heard Robert Owen at the London Tavern on 21 August 1817 expound his gospel that ‘national education and employment could alone create a permanent, rational, intelligent, wealthy, and superior population, and that these results could be attained only by a scientific arrangement of the people, united in properly constructed villages of unity and co-operation’. As Owen became more aggressively atheistic, Minter Morgan became more conciliatory and Christian. Minter Morgan had supported the Duke of Kent's Committee, established in 1819 to raise subscriptions for the establishment of an experimental ‘parallelogram’ or ‘Village of Unity and Co-operation’, by publishing an enthusiastic pamphlet entitled Remarks on the Practicability of Mr. Owen's Plan to improve the Conditions of the Lower Classes. 193
