In the early 1830s, British social reformer Robert Owen, called the “Founder of Socialism”^[1] by contemporaries, brought forth his “Five Fundamental Facts” on human nature and ignited in London and elsewhere a dramatic debate — in the literal sense of fiery public discussions, as well as in books, pamphlets, and other works. While the five facts are cited in the extant literature on Owen and his utopian movement, a full exploration of the controversy is lacking, which is unfortunate for a moment that left such an impression on witnesses and participants. Famous secularist and editor George Jacob Holyoake, at the end of his life in 1906, wrote, “Human nature in England was never so tried as it was during the first five years” after Owen’s writings, when these five facts “were discussed in every town in the kingdom. When a future generation has courage to look into this unprecedented code as one of the curiosities of propagandism, it will find many sensible and wholesome propositions, which nobody now disputes, and sentiments of toleration and practical objects of wise import.”^[2]

The discourse continued into the 1840s, but its intensity lessened, and thus we will focus our attention on its decade of origin. This work will add to scholarship a little-explored subject, and argue that the great debate transcended common ideological divisions, not simply pitting socialist against anti-socialist and freethinker against believer, but freethinker against freethinker and socialist against socialist as well. The debate was nuanced and complex, and makes for a fascinating study of intellectual history in Victorian Britain, an overlooked piece of the Western discourse on free will going back to the ancient Greek philosophers and nature-nurture stirred up by John Locke and René Descartes in the 17th century.

The limited historiography of the “Five Fundamental Facts” recognizes their significance. J.F.C. Harrison of the University of Sussex wrote that Owen, in his “confidence in the discoverability of laws governing human action,” thought as immutable as physical laws, in fact “provided the beginnings of behavioural science.”^[3] Indeed, “in an unsophisticated form, and without the conceptual tools of later social psychology, Owen had hit upon the crucial role of character structure in the social process.”^[4] Further, Nanette Whitbread wrote that the school Owen founded to put his five facts into action and change human nature, the New Lanark Infant School, could “be justly described as the first in the developmental tradition of primary education.”^[5] However, the facts are normally mentioned only in passing — works on Owen and his movement that make no mention of them at all are not unusual — and for anything close to an exploration of the debate surrounding them one must turn to brief outlines in works like Robert Owen: A Biography by Frank Podmore, not an historian at all, but rather a parapsychologist and a founder of the Fabian Society.^[6]

Robert Owen, to quote The Morning Post in 1836, was “alternately venerated as an apostle, ridiculed as a quack, looked up to and followed as the founder of a new philosophy, contemned as a visionary enthusiast, denounced as a revolutionary adventurer.”^[7] He was born in Wales in 1771, and as a young man came to manage a large textile mill in Manchester and then buy one in New Lanark, Scotland. Influenced by the conditions of the working poor and the ideas of the Enlightenment, and as a prosperous man, he engaged in writing, advocacy, and philanthropy for better working conditions and early childhood education in Britain after the turn of the century. Adopting a philosophy of cooperative, communal economics, Owen purchased an American town, New Harmony in Indiana, in 1825 and ran a utopian experiment, inspiring many more across the U.S. and elsewhere, that was ultimately unsuccessful. He returned home in 1828, living in London and continuing to write and lecture for broad social change.

Soon Owen brought forth his Outline of the Rational System of Society, in circulation as early as 1832 — and by 1836 “too well known to make it requisite now to repeat,” as a Mr. Alger put it in the Owenite weekly New Moral World.^[8] The Home Colonisation Society in London, an organization promoting the formation of utopian communities with “good, practical education” and “permanent beneficial employment” for all, without the “present competitive arrangements of society,” was just one of the work’s many publishers.^[9] Owen, not one for modesty, declared it developed “the First Principles of the Science of Human Nature” and constituted “the only effectual Remedy for the Evils experienced by the Population of the world,” addressing human society’s “moral and physical Evils, by removing the Causes which produce them.”^[10]

The text from the Home Colonisation Society began with Owen’s “Five Fundamental Facts,” the key to his rational system and therefore the prime target of later criticism.^[11] They assert:

1st. That man is a compound being, whose character is formed of his constitution or organization at birth, and of the effects of external circumstances upon it from birth to death; such original organization and external influences continually acting and re-acting each upon the other.

2d. That man is compelled by his original constitution to receive his feelings and his convictions independently of his will.

3d. That his feelings, or his convictions, or both of them united, create the motive to action called the will, which stimulates him to act, and decides his actions.  

4th. That the organization of no two human beings is ever precisely similar at birth; nor can art subsequently form any two individuals, from infancy to maturity, to be precisely similar.

5th. That, nevertheless, the constitution of every infant, except in the case of organic disease, is capable of being formed into a very inferior, or a very superior, being, according to the qualities of the external circumstances allowed to influence that constitution from birth.^[12]

As crucial as Owen’s five facts were to the subsequent arguments, he offered no defense of them in the short Society pamphlet, stating them, perhaps expectedly, as fact and immediately proceeding to build upon them, offering twenty points comprising “The Fundamental Laws of Human Nature.” Here again he explained that the character of an individual was malleable according to the environment and society in which he or she developed and existed — and how by building a superior society humanity could allow its members to flourish and maximize well-being. This was the materialism of the early socialists. That section was followed by “The Conditions Requisite for Human Happiness,” “The Principles and Practice of the Rational Religion,” “The Elements of the Science of Society,” and finally a constitution for a new civilization.

This paper will not explore Owen’s specific utopian designs in detail, but at a glance the rational society offered a government focused on human happiness, with free speech, equality for persons of all religions, education for all, gender equality, communal property, a mix of direct and representative democracy, the replacement of the family unit with the larger community structure, an end to punishments, and more. Overall, the needs of all would be provided for collectively, and work would be done collectively — the termination of “ignorance, poverty, individual competition…and national wars” was in reach.^[13] Happier people were thought better people — by creating a socialist society, addressing human needs and happiness, “remodelling the character of man” was possible.^[14] The five facts aimed to demonstrate this. While this pamphlet and others were brief, in The Book of the New Moral World, Owen devoted a chapter to justifying and explaining each of the five facts, and wrote of them in other publications as well. In that work he clarified, for instance, that it was an “erroneous supposition that the will is free,” an implication of the second and third facts.^[15]

The reaction? As Holyoake wrote, in a front-page piece in The Oracle of Reason, “Political economists have run wild, immaculate bishops raved, and parsons have been convulsed at [Owen’s] communities and five facts.”^[16] The facts, to many of the pious, smacked of the determinism rejected by their Christian sects. An anonymous letter on the front page of a later edition of the same publication laid out a view held by both Christians and freethinkers: “‘Man’s character is formed for him and not by him’ — therefore, all the religions of the world are false, is the sum and substance of the moral philosophy of R. Owen.”^[17] With biological inheritances and environmental influences birthing one’s “feelings and convictions,” one’s “character,” free will was put into question. What moral culpability did human beings then have for their actions, and how could an individual truly be said to make a “choice” to believe or follow religious doctrine? Any religion that rested on free will would be contradictory to reality, and thus untrue. But, the anonymous writer noted, Calvinists and other determinists were safer — they believed in “supernatural” causes that formed one’s character, thus it would be disingenuous to say “all the religions of the world” were fiction, solely on the grounds that individuals did not have mastery over who they were.

The writer then offered further nuance and assistance to ideological opponents (he or she was clearly a freethinker, not only given the journal read and written to but also revealed by lines such as: “But what care religionists for justice in this world or the next? If they cared anything about ‘justice,’ and knew what the word meant, they would have long ere this abandoned the doctrine of an eternal hell”).^[18] It was pointed out that “original sin” was found in non-deterministic and deterministic Christian sects alike — a formation of character before birth. “How then can the ‘five facts’ refute all religions…?”^[19] If human beings were, from the universal or at least near-universal Christian point of view, shaped by supernatural forces beyond their control after Adam and Eve’s storied betrayal, it was a non sequitur, in the anonymous author’s mind, to say the molding of character invalidated common religions. Here we see an introduction to the complex ways the British of the Victorian era approached the debate.

Yet others were not always so gracious. In 1836, The Monthly Review wrote that “No one doubts the sincerity of Mr. Owen” and his desire to “create a world of happiness,” but “no man who takes for his guides common observation, and common sense — much more, that no person who has studied and who confides in the doctrines of the Bible, can ever become a convert to his views.”^[20] The five facts were “intangible” and “obscure,” the arguments “bold, unauthorised, unsupported, ridiculous,” the vision for society as a whole “fanciful, impractical, and irreligious.”^[21] How was it, the periodical asked, that these views could be “demonstrably true” yet had “never found acceptance with the mass of sober intelligent thinkers,” only the “paltry, insignificant, uninfluential, and ridiculed class of people” that were the Owenites, and Owen himself, who was “incompetent”?^[22] The writer (or writers) further resented how Owen centered himself as something of a savior figure. Ridding the world of evil could be “accomplished by one whose soul like a mirror was to receive and reflect the whole truth and light which concerned the happiness of the world — and I, Robert Owen, am that mirror” — and did not the New Testament already serve the purpose of outlining the path to a more moral and happier world?^[23] Overall, it was a scathing attack, an example of the hardline Christian view.

The January 1838 volume of The Christian Teacher, published to “uphold the religion of the New Testament, in contradistinction to the religion of creeds and parties,” included a writing by H. Clarke of Chorley.^[24] To him the facts were “inconsistent and fallacious”: facts one, two, and four contradicted the fifth.^[25] The first, second, and fourth facts established that a “man’s self” at birth “has at least something to do with forming his character,” but then the fifth established that “by the influence of external circumstances alone, any being” could be transformed into a “superior being.”^[26] To Clarke, the facts at first emphasized that one’s biological constitution played a sizable, seemingly co-equal, role in forming one’s character — then the fifth fact threw all that out the window. If anyone could be made into a superior being, just via environment, what sense did it make to say that biology had any effect whatsoever on an individual’s nature?

Owen did seem to view circumstances as the predominant power. Though he firmly believed there existed, as he wrote, a “decided and palatable difference between [infants] at birth” due to biology, he indeed believed in bold, universal results: “selfishness…will cease to exist” alongside “all motives to individual pride and vanity,” and as “all shall be trained, from infancy, to be rational,” a humanity of “superior beings physically, intellectually, and morally” could arise.^[27] Clarke was not alone in this critique. J.R. Beard wrote something similar in The Religion of Jesus Christ Defended from the Assaults of Owenism, which further held the common blank slate view of human nature (“at birth there is no mental or moral development”), meaning environment was all that was left: “What is this but to make ‘external circumstances’ the sole creator of the lot of man?”^[28]

Clarke further took issue with what he viewed as the contradictory or hypocritical language of the Owenites. “So I learn from the votaries of Owenism…man’s feelings and convictions are forced upon him irrespective of his will, it is [therefore] the extreme of folly to ask a man to believe this or that.”^[29] The Christian believed in belief, but “Owenism denies that man can believe as he pleases…yet strange to tell, almost the first question asked by an Owenite is, ‘Do you believe Mr. Owen’s five fundamental facts?’”^[30] Belief in the five facts, Clarke pointed out, was required to be a member of Owen’s association, which an “Appendix to the Laws and Regulations” of the association printed in The New Moral World in 1836 made clear.^[31] If one’s convictions were formed against one’s will, what sense did it make to ask after or require beliefs? Clarke’s own beliefs, one should note, while against Owen’s views of human nature, were not necessarily hostile to socialism. He prefered “Christ to Mr. Owen, Christian Socialism to the five-fact-socialism.”^[32]

There were some who saw a distinction between the value of Owen’s theories on human nature and that of his planned civilization. In 1836, The Morning Post found Owen, in his Book of the New Moral World, to be “radical” and “destructive,” wanting to dissolve civilization and remake it; the idea that humanity had for millenia been living in systems contrary to their own nature and happiness was “almost incredible.”^[33] But the Post came from a more philosophical position and background than theological (“the Millenium [is] about as probable a consummation as the ‘Rational System’”).^[34] Owen had therefore “displayed considerable acuteness and ability” regarding “metaphysical discussions,” making the book worth a read for ontologists and those who enjoyed a “‘keen encounter of the wit.’”^[35]

As we saw with the anonymous writer in The Oracle of Reason, the five facts divided not only freethinkers and Christians, but also freethinkers as a group. There was too much intellectual diversity for consensus. For example, Charles Southwell, who was “rapidly becoming one of the most popular freethought lecturers in London,” debated Owen’s facts with well-known atheist Richard Carlile in Lambeth, a borough of south London.^[36] The room “was crowded to suffocation, and hundreds retired unable to attain admittance. The discussion lasted two nights, and was conducted with talent and good feeling by both parties.”^[37] Southwell defended the facts, while Carlile went on the offensive against them. 

The agnostic Lloyd Jones, journalist and friend of Owen, had much to say of Richard Carlile’s lectures on this topic.^[38] In A Reply to Mr. R. Carlile’s Objections to the Five Fundamental Facts as Laid Down by Mr. Owen, Jones remarked that Carlile had called Owen’s Book of the New Moral World a “book of blunders” during his talk on November 27, 1837, but the audience “certainly could not avoid observing the multitudinous blunders committed by yourself, in endeavouring to prove it such.”^[39] Carlile, according to Jones, insisted that individuals had much more power to steel themselves against circumstances and environments than Owen was letting on, throwing facts one and two into doubt. This is all rather one-sided, as Jones did not even bother to quote Carlile directly, but instead wrote, “You tell us we have a power to adopt or reject [convictions and feelings]: you have not given us your reasons for so saying; in fact, you did not condescend to reason upon any of the subjects broached during the evening’s discussion.”^[40] Carlile should “try the question… Can you, by a voluntary action of your mind, believe that to be true which you now consider to be false; — or believe that to be false which you now consider true?… Certainly not.”^[41] Jones also defended the idea that conviction and will were distinct, rather than one and the same as Carlile insisted.^[42]

For the socialists, many of them of course Owenites anyway, there was much acceptance of the five facts. James Pate, for the Socialists of Padiham, wrote that an Owenite named Mr. Fleming came to their organization and, to a full house of about 300 people, “proved, in a plain yet forcible manner, the truth of the five fundamental facts; and…showed how little difficulty there would be in the practical application of Mr. Owen’s views to all classes of society.”^[43] The audience was “so fully convinced” that few “dared venture to question any remarks.”^[44] But here divergent thoughts existed too, as we saw with H. Clarke. The branches of religious socialism and secular socialism made for varying thoughts on human nature among the radicals, or simply those sympathetic to or not offended by the idea of socialism. Frederick Lees, for instance, secretary of the British Association for the Suppression of Intemperance, castigated the “infidelity” of Owenism and his five facts but had little to say of socialism, save that it was a front for the former: “In the fair name of Socialism, and in the mask of friendship, Judas like, she [untruth, especially as related to infidelity] seeks to ensnare and betray.”^[45] Owen’s followers, while they professed to desire the “establishment of a ‘SOCIAL COMMUNITY,’ their chief and greatest object is the ascendancy of an ‘INFIDEL CREED.’”^[46] Lees, striking a sympathetic note once more, added that Owenites should “dissolve the forced and arbitrary union between their absurd and infidel metaphysics, and the practical or working part of Socialism, which association of the two excites the rightful opposition of all lovers of christian truth…”^[47]

For a forceful defense of religious socialism, take T.H. Hudson’s lengthy work Christian Socialism, Explained and Enforced, and Compared with Infidel Fellowship: Especially, as Propounded by Robert Owen, Esq., and His Disciples. It was up to “the Christian Religion to secure true socialism,” whereas Owen’s views were “more likely to serve the purposes of the Prince of darkness.”^[48] Hudson spent one chapter, about forty pages, attacking the five facts, followed by three chapters, over 120 pages, advocating for Christian Socialism. The five facts were “based on the false assumptions, that man is good by nature” and were “decidedly irreligious.”^[49] Hudson lambasted the “disguised atheism” of the first fact: it did not mention God as man’s creator, nor his spirit or soul, and left him helpless before nature, without free will.^[50] The “infidel Socialist,” in believing facts two and three, deepened trust in fatalism and the irresponsibility of individuals, but also fell for a “gross contradiction.”^[51] Hudson pointed out that the second fact established feelings and convictions were received independently of one’s will, yet the third fact stated the will was made up of, created by, one’s feelings and convictions.^[52] Initially presented as distinct phenomena, subsequently as a unified phenomenon. J.R. Beard echoed this: it would have been better to say feelings and convictions were received “anteriorly ‘to his will’; for it is obviously his notion that man’s will is not independent, but the result, the creation of his feelings and convictions.”^[53]

Like the atheist Carlile, Hudson thought one could put up “resistance” to external influences, could decide whether to “receive” or reject feelings and convictions — an exercise in willpower, which was thus independent of and prior to feelings and convictions; a person was not a “slave to circumstances.”^[54] This was a refrain of Owen’s critics, with the added element at times of the impossibility of personal change under Owen’s theory (indeed the impossibility that changing circumstances could change people). For instance, Minister John Eustace Giles, in Socialism, as a Religious Theory, Irrational and Absurd (1839), based on his lectures in Leeds, wondered how Owen could believe that “‘man is the creature of circumstances’” yet “professes to have become wise” — did that not show Owen had “resisted” circumstances?^[55] Did not this, plus Owen’s desire to “change the condition of the world…thus shew that while man is the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creatures of man”?^[56] After focusing on semantics and perceived ambiguities in the fourth fact, but not closed to the possibility it was a simple truism, Hudson saw the improvement of individuals in the fifth fact true but was insulted that Christianity, no longer “being alienated from God” and addressing humanity’s “depraved nature,” was not thought necessary to this improvement alongside changing environments.^[57] Indeed, most egregious was the Owenite belief that people were fundamentally good.^[58]

Whether due to varying personal beliefs or simply varying cautions about driving away potential converts in a pious age, the actual presentation of the fundamental facts as irreligious was not consistent. Lloyd Jones, in an 1839 debate over whether socialism was atheistic with Mr. Troup, editor of The Montrose Review, asked some variant of “Where is the Atheism here?” after reading each of the five facts.^[59] Whereas Owen, also an unbeliever, in an 1837 debate with Rev. J.H. Roebuck of Manchester, called religions “geographical insanities” that could be wiped away by the five facts.^[60] “Mr. Roebuck stated…that the two systems for which we contend are opposed to each other, and that both, therefore, cannot be true. Herein we perfectly agree.”^[61] The national discourse so intertwined the facts and the question of God that a person, on either side of the debate, could not help but assume that one would accompany the other. When a debate on “the mystery of God” was proposed to Owenite J. Smith in January 1837, “the challenge was [mis]understood by myself and all our friends, to be the discussion of the five fundamental facts.”^[62]

Overall, perhaps Robert Owen’s facts flustered the religious and irreligious, and socialists and anti-socialists alike, because they were simply so counterintuitive — not to mention theoretical, without contemporary science to back them up. Owen wrote, in The Book of the New Moral World, for instance: “Man is not, therefore, to be made a being of a superior order by teaching him that he is responsible for his will and his actions.”^[63] Such blunt statements turned on its head what many, across ideologies, judged common sense. Owen’s ideas were “contrary to common sense” for Hudson, Christian socialist, in the same way they were “opposed to the common sense of mankind” for Giles, anti-socialist.^[64] Would not teaching individual moral responsibility enable personal change and create a better society? Not so for Owen. The will was formed by circumstances — thus true personal change came about by purposefully changing environments. Create a better society first, and the positive personal change would follow. These were, according to Owen, “the laws of nature respecting man, individually, and the science of society,” and few posited laws of nature, proven or otherwise, do not provoke intense philosophical debate.^[65]

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^[1] J. Eustace Giles, Socialism, as a Religious Theory, Irrational and Absurd: the First of Three Lectures on Socialism (as Propounded by Robert Owen and Others) Delivered in the Baptist Chapel South-Parade, Leeds, September 23, 1838 (London: Simpkin, Marshall, & Co., Ward & Co., G. Wightman, 1838), 4, retrieved from https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiuo.ark:/13960/t63560551&view=1up&seq=10&q1=founder.

^[2] George Jacob Holyoake, The History of Co-operation (New York: E.P. Dutton & Company, 1906), 1:147.

^[3] J.F.C. Harrison, Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009), 66.

^[4] Ibid.

^[5] Nanette Whitbread, The Evolution of the Nursery-infant School: A History of Infant and Nursery Education in Britain, 1800-1970 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007), 39:9-10.

^[6] Frank Podmore, Robert Owen: A Biography (London: Hutchinson & CO, 1906), 481-482, 499-502.

^[7] The Morning Post, September 14, 1836, cited in “The Book of the New Moral World,” The New Moral World (Manchester: Abel Heywood, 1836-7), 3:6, retrieved from https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31970026956075&view=1up&seq=18&size=125&q1=%22five%20fundamental%20facts%22.

^[8] The Westminster Review (London: Robert Heward, 1832), 26:317, retrieved from https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433096159896&view=1up&seq=329&q1=%22five%20fundamental%20facts%22; The New Moral World (London: Thomas Stagg, 1836), 2:62, retrieved from https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31970026956117&view=1up&seq=74&q1=%22five%20fundamental%20facts%22.

^[9] Robert Owen, Outline of the Rational System of Society (London: Home Colonization Society, 1841), 2, retrieved fromhttps://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hnsp9t&view=1up&seq=6.

^[10] Ibid, 1.

^[11] This was explicitly stated by critics. Dismantle the five facts and the rest of the system goes down with it. See T.H. Hudson, Christian Socialism, Explained and Enforced, and Compared with Infidel Fellowship, Especially, As Propounded by Robert Owen, Esq., and His Disciples (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1839), 52, retrieved from https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433075925721&view=1up&seq=62&q1=%22fundamental%20facts%22.

^[12] Owen, Outline, 3.

^[13] Ibid, 14.

^[14] Ibid.

^[15] Robert Owen, The Book of the New Moral World (London: Richard Taylor, 1836), 17, retrieved from https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015003883991&view=1up&seq=47&q1=%22five%20fundamental%20facts%22.

^[16] The Oracle of Reason (London: Thomas Paterson, 1842), 1:113, retrieved from https://archive.org/details/oracleofreasonor01lond/page/112/mode/2up?q=five+facts.

^[17] Ibid, 161.

^[18] Ibid.

^[19] Ibid.

^[20] The Monthly Review (London: G. Henderson, 1836), 3:62, retrieved from https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.319510028065374&view=1up&seq=80&q1=%22five%20fundamental%20facts%22.

^[21] Ibid, 62, 67-68.

^[22] Ibid, 63.

^[23] Ibid, 62-63.

^[24] The Christian Teacher and Chronicle of Beneficence (London: Charles Fox, 1838), 4:219, retrieved from https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.ah6jrz&view=1up&seq=255&q1=%22five%20facts%22.

^[25] Ibid.

^[26] Ibid, 220.

^[27] Owen, Book, 22-24.

^[28] J.R. Beard, The Religion of Jesus Christ Defended from the Assaults of Owenism (London: Simpkin, Marshall and Company, 1839), 233, retrieved from https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hnmy5r&view=1up&seq=243&q1=%22second%20fact%22.

^[29] Christian Teacher, 220.

^[30] Ibid.

^[31] Ibid, 220; New Moral World, 2:261.

^[32] Christian Teacher, 220.

^[33] New Moral World, 3:6.

^[34] Ibid.

^[35] Ibid.

^[36] Edward Royle, Victorian Infidels: The Origins of the British Secularist Movement, 1791-1866 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1974), 69.

^[37] The New Moral World (Leeds: Joshua Hobson, 1839), 6:957, retrieved from https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31970026956133&view=1up&seq=361&size=125&q1=%22five%20fundamental%20facts%22.

^[38] Regarding Jones’ agnosticism, see: Report of the Discussion betwixt Mr Troup, Editor of the Montrose Review, on the part of the Philalethean Society, and Mr Lloyd Jones, of Glasgow, on the part of the Socialists, in the Watt Institution Hall, Dundee on the propositions, I That Socialism is Atheistical; and II That Atheism is Incredible and Absurd (Dundee: James Chalmers & Alexander Reid, 1839), retrieved from shorturl.at/pvxM1.

^[39] Lloyd Jones, A Reply to Mr. Carlile’s Objections to the Five Fundamental Facts as Laid Down by Mr. Owen (Manchester: A. Heywood, 1837), 4, retrieved from https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89097121669&view=1up&seq=12&q1=%22five%20fundamental%20facts%22.

^[40] Ibid, 9.

^[41] Ibid.

^[42] Ibid, 10-11.

^[43] New Moral World, 3:380.

^[44] Ibid.

^[45] Frederick R. Lees, Owenism Dissected: A Calm Examination of the Fundamental Principles of Robert Owen’s Misnamed “Rational System” (Leeds: W.H. Walker, 1838), 7, retrieved from https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112054157646&view=1up&seq=7&q1=%22socialism%22.

^[46] Ibid, 16.

^[47] Ibid.

^[48] Hudson, Christian Socialism, 4, 13.

^[49] Ibid, 50-51.

^[50] Ibid, 53-63.

^[51] Ibid, 63-64, 66.

^[52] Ibid, 66.

^[53] Beard, Religion, 234.

^[54] Hudson, Christian Socialism, 65-66.

^[55] Giles, Socialism, 7.

^[56] Ibid.

^[57] Hudson, Christian Socialism, 72-81, 87-88.

^[58] Ibid, 89.

^[59] Report of the Discussion, 12.

^[60] Public Discussion, between Robert Owen, Late of New Lanark, and the Rev. J.H. Roebuck, of Manchester (Manchester: A. Heywood, 1837), 106-107, retrieved fromhttps://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.c080961126&view=1up&seq=111&q1=%22fundamental%20facts%22.

^[61] Ibid, 107.

^[62] New Moral World, 3:122.

^[63] Owen, Book, 20.

^[64] Hudson, Christian Socialism, 65; Giles, Socialism, 36.

^[65] Owen, Book, 20.

While finding a decisive victor in debates on semantics and historical interpretation often proves difficult, in the lively clash between historians David Spring and Lawrence Stone on social mobility into Britain’s landed elite, the former presented the strongest case. The discourse, of the mid-1980s, centered around the questions of how to define “open” when considering how open the upper echelon was to newcomers from 1540-1880 and, most importantly, to newcomers who came from the business world. On both counts, Spring offered a more compelling perspective on how one should regard the historical evidence and data Stone collected in his work An Open Elite? Namely, that it was reasonable to call the landed elite open to members of lower strata, including business leaders.

The debate quickly obfuscated lines between the two questions. In his review of An Open Elite?, Spring noted that Stone showed a growth in elite families from 1540-1879, beginning with forty and seeing 480 join them, though not all permanently. Further, “Stone shows that regularly one-fifth of elite families were newcomers.”^[1] In his reply, Stone declined to explore the “openness” of a twenty percent entry rate because it was, allegedly, irrelevant to his purpose: he was only interested in the entry of businessmen like merchants, speculators, financiers, and manufacturers, who did not come from the gentry, the relatively well-off stratum knocking at the gate of the landed elite. Spring “failed to distinguish between openness to new men, almost all from genteel families, who made a fortune in the law, the army, the administration or politics…and openness to access by successful men of business, mostly of low social origins.”^[2]

True, Stone made clear who and what he was looking at in An Open Elite?: the “self-made men,” the “upward mobility by successful men of business,” and so on, but leaned into, rather than brushed aside or contradicted, the idea of general social immobility.^[3] For instance, observe the positioning of: “When analysed with care…the actual volume of social mobility has turned out to be far less than might have been expected. Moreover, those who did move up were rarely successful men of business.”^[4] The notion of the landed elite being closed off in general was presented, followed by the specific concern about businessmen. Stone went beyond business many times (for instance: “the degree of mere gentry penetration up into the elite was far smaller than the earlier calculations would indicate”^[5]), positing that not only was the landed elite closed to businessmen but also universally, making his protestations against Spring rather disingenuous. Stone insisted to Spring that an open elite specifically meant, to historians and economists, a ruling class open to businessmen, not to all, but Stone himself opened the door to the question of whether the landed elite was accessible to everyone by answering nay in his book. Therefore, the question was admissible, or fair game, in the debate, and Spring was there to provide a more convincing answer. A group comprised of twenty percent newcomers from below, to most reasonable persons, could be described as relatively open. Even more so with the sons of newcomers added in: the landed elite was typically one-third newcomers and sons of newcomers, as Spring pointed out. Though it should be noted both scholars highlighted the challenge of using quantitative data to answer such historical questions. The collection and publication of such numbers is highly important, but it hardly ends the discussion — the question of openness persists, and any answer is inherently subjective.

However, it was the second point of contention where Spring proved most perceptive. He pointed out that while the gentry constituted 181 entrants into the landed elite during the observed centuries, those involved in business were not far behind, with 157, according to Stone’s data. This dwarfed the seventy-two from politics and seventy from the law. As Spring wrote, Stone’s quantitative tables conflicted with his text. Stone wrote in An Open Elite? that “most of the newcomers were rising parish gentry or office-holders or lawyers, men from backgrounds not too dissimilar to those of the existing county elite. Only a small handful of very rich merchants succeeded in buying their way into the elite…”^[6] Clearly, even with different backgrounds, businessmen were in fact more successful at entering the landed elite than politicians and lawyers in the three counties Stone studied. What followed a few lines down in the book from Stone’s selected words made far more sense when considering the data: businessmen comprised “only a third of all purchasers…”^[7] The use of “only” was perhaps rather biased, but, more significantly, one-third aligned not with the idea of a “small handful,” but of 157 new entrants — a third business entrants, a bit more than a third gentry, and a bit less than a third lawyers, politicians, and so on. Spring could have stressed the absurdity, in this context, of the phrase “only a third,” but was sure to highlight the statistic in his rejoinder, where he drove home the basic facts of Stone’s findings and reiterated that the landed elite was about as open to businessmen as others. Here is where quantitative data truly shines in history, for you can compare numbers against each other. The question of whether a single given number or percentage is big or small is messy and subjective, but whether one number is larger than another is not, and provides clarity regarding issues like whether businessmen had some special difficulty accessing Britain’s landed elite.

Stone failed to respond directly to this point, a key moment that weakened his case, but instead sidetracked into issues concerning permanence of newcomers and by-county versus global perspectives on the data, areas he explored earlier in his response, now awkwardly grafted on to Spring’s latest argument. Yet the reader is largely left to pick up on what is being implied, based on Stone’s earlier comments on said issues. He noted that only twenty-five businessmen of the 157 came from the two counties distant from London, seemingly implying that Hertfordshire, the London-area county, had tipped the scales. Merchants and others were not as likely to rise into the landed elite in more rural areas. What relevance that had is an open question — it seemed more a truism than an argument against Spring’s point, as London was a center for business, and thus that result was perhaps expected. Regardless, he did not elaborate. The adjacent implication was that Spring was again seeing “everything from a global point of view which has no meaning in reality, and nothing from the point of view of the individual counties.”^[8] In the debate, Stone often cautioned that it made sense to look at counties individually, as they could be radically distinct — one should not simply look at the aggregated data. But Stone’s inherent problem, in his attempt at a rebuttal, was that he was using the global figures to make his overall case. He took three counties and lifted them up to represent a relatively closed elite in Britain as a whole. It would not do to now brush aside one county or focus heavily on another to bolster an argument. Spring, in a footnote, wrote something similar, urging Stone to avoid “making generalizations on the basis of one county. [Your] three counties were chosen as together a sample of the nation.”^[9] To imply, as Stone did, that London could be ignored as some kind of anomaly contradicted his entire project.

Stone’s dodge into the permanence of entrants was likewise not a serious response to Spring’s observation that business-oriented newcomers nearly rivaled those from the gentry and far outpaced lawyers and politicians. He wrote that “of the 132 business purchasers in Hertfordshire, only 68 settled in for more than a generation…”^[10] The transient nature of newcomers arose elsewhere in the debate as well. Here Stone moved the goalposts slightly: instead of mere entrants into the landed elite, look at who managed to remain. Only “4% out of 2246 owners” in the three counties over these 340 years were permanent newcomers from the business world.^[11] It was implied these numbers were both insignificant and special to businesspersons. Yet footnote five, that associated with the statistic, undercut Stone’s point. Here he admitted Spring correctly observed that politicians and officeholders were forced to sell their county seats, their magnificent mansions, and abandon the landed elite, as defined by Stone, at nearly the same rate as businessmen, at least in Hertfordshire. Indeed, it was odd Stone crafted this response, given Spring’s earlier dismantling of the issue. The significance of Stone’s rebuttal was therefore unclear. If only sixty-eight businessmen lasted more than a generation, how did that compare to lawyers, office-holders, and the gentry? Likewise, if four percent of businessmen established permanent generational residence among the landed elite, what percentages did other groups earn? Again, Stone did not elaborate. But from his admission and what Spring calculated, it seems unlikely Stone’s numbers, when put in context, would help his case. Even more than the aggregate versus county comment, this was a non-answer.

The debate would conclude with a non-answer as well. There was of course more to the discussion — it should be noted Stone put up an impressive defense of the selection of his counties and the inability to include more, in response to Spring questioning how representative they truly were — but Spring clearly showed, using Stone’s own evidence, that the landed elite was what a reasonable person could call open to outsiders in general and businessmen in particular, contradicting Stone’s positions on both in An Open Elite? Stone may have recognized this, given the paucity of counterpoints in his “Non-Rebuttal.” Spring would, in Stone’s view, “fail altogether to deal in specific details with the arguments used in my Reply,” and therefore “there is nothing to rebut.”^[12] While it is true that Spring, in his rejoinder, did not address all of Stone’s points, he did focus tightly on the main ideas discussed in the debate and this paper. So, as further evidence that Spring constructed the better case, Stone declined to return to Spring’s specific and central arguments about his own data. He pointed instead to other research that more generally supported the idea of a closed elite. Stone may have issued a “non-rebuttal” not because Spring had ignored various points, but rather because he had stuck to the main ones, and there was little to be said in response.

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^[1] Eileen Spring and David Spring, “The English Landed Elite, 1540-1879: A Review,” Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies 17, no. 2 (Summer 1985): 152.

^[2] Lawrence Stone, “Spring Back,” Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies 17, no. 2 (Summer 1985): 168.

^[3] Lawrence Stone, An Open Elite? England 1540-1880, abridged edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 3-4.

^[4] Ibid, 283.

^[5] Ibid, 130.

^[6] Ibid, 283.

^[7] Ibid.

^[8] Stone, “Spring Back,” 169.

^[9] Spring, “A Review,” 154.

^[10] Stone, “Spring Back,” 171.

^[11] Ibid.

^[12] Lawrence Stone, “A Non-Rebuttal,” Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies 17, no. 3 (Autumn 1985): 396. For Spring’s rejoinder, see Eileen Spring and David Spring, “The English Landed Elite, 1540-1879: A Rejoinder,” Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies 17, no. 3 (Autumn 1985): 393-396.