on left the St. Simonians, and I lost sight of him and his
writings for a number of years. But the St. Simonians I continued to
cultivate. I was kept _au courant_ of their progress by one of their
most enthusiastic disciples, M. Gustave d'Eichthal, who about that time
passed a considerable interval in England. I was introduced to their
chiefs, Bazard and Enfantin, in 1830; and as long as their public
teachings and proselytism continued, I read nearly everything they
wrote. Their criticisms on the common doctrines of Liberalism seemed to
me full of important truth; and it was partly by their writings that my
eyes were opened to the very limited and temporary value of the old
political economy, which assumes private property and inheritance as
indefeasible facts, and freedom of production and exchange as the
_dernier mot_ of social improvement. The scheme gradually unfolded by
the St. Simonians, under which the labour and capital of society would
be managed for the general account of the community, every individual
being required to take a share of labour, either as thinker, teacher,
artist, or producer, all being classed according to their capacity, and
remunerated according to their work, appeared to me a far superior
description of Socialism to Owen's. Their aim seemed to me desirable and
rational, however their means might be inefficacious; and though I
neither believed in the practicability, nor in the beneficial operation
of their social machinery, I felt that the proclamation of such an ideal
of human society could not but tend to give a beneficial direction to
the efforts of others to bring society, as at present constituted,
nearer to some ideal standard. I honoured them most of all for what they
have been most cried down for--the boldness and freedom from prejudice
with which they treated the subject of the family, the most important of
any, and needing more fundamental alterations than remain to be made in
any other great social institution, but on which scarcely any reformer
has the courage to touch. In proclaiming the perfect equality of men and
women, and an entirely new order of things in regard to their relations
with one another, the St. Simonians, in common with Owen and Fourier,
have entitled themselves to the grateful remembrance of future
generations.

In giving an account of this period of my life, I have only specified
such of my new impressions as appeared to me, both at the time and
since, to be a