Declaration Project

Editor’s Note: Robert Owen, a British utopian socialist, entrepreneur and industrialist who created humane working conditions and paid fair wages to his employees, moved in 1824 to the U.S., where he established a collective farm in New Harmony, Indiana (Owen is considered a father of the co-op movement). In this declaration, he issued a call for “mental independence.” In the penultimate paragraph, Owen says with with less than humble panache, “I been employed, heart and soul, day by day, almost without ceasing, in preparing the means and arranging the circumstances, to enable me to give the death-blow to the tyranny and despotism, which …no mortal hand dared approach to set the suffering prisoner free.”

Oration Containing a Declaration of Mental Independence

by Robert Owen, Public Hall, New Harmony, Indiana, July 4, 1826

We meet to commemorate the period, when the inhabitants of this new world attained the power to withdraw from the control of the old world, and to form a government for themselves.

This event is likely to prove, in its consequences, as important as any which has occurred in ancient or modern times.  It has been the means of preparing a new era in the history of man, and of producing such a change in circumstances as will admit of the introduction of measures to change, entirely, the character and condition of the human race.

The revolution in America, sanctioned and secured by the Declaration of Independence in 1776, gave to a people advancing towards civilization, the first opportunity of establishing a government, which would, by degrees, permit them to acquire that greatest of blessings, MENTAL LIBERTY.

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Yes, my friends, the Declaration of Independence, in 1776, prepared the way to secure you MENTAL LIBERTY, without which man never can become more than a mere localized being, with powers to render him more miserable and degraded than the animals which he has been taught to deem inferior to himself.  It is true, the right of mental liberty is inherent in our nature; for, while man exists in mental health, no human power can deprive him of it:  but until the Revolution of 1776, no people had acquired the political power to permit them to use that right, when their minds should be so far freed from early imbibed prejudices as to allow them to derive benefits from its practice.  No nation, except this, even yet possesses the political power to enable the people to use the right of mental freedom.

This right — this invaluable right, you now enjoy by the Constitution obtained for you by Washington, Franklin, Henry, and the other worthies associated with them.

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Still, however, these men, whose minds were in advance of the age in which they lived, were encircled by the prejudices which they and their fathers brought from Europe, and which had descended to the inhabitants of those regions through many ages of despotism, superstition and ignorance.  And although a few of these highly-gifted men of the Revolution saw a stronger and clearer light at the distance, as they supposed, of some ages before them; they were too conscious of the extent of the old errors around them to attempt more than to secure the means in the Constitution which they formed, by which their successors might work their way to the superior distant light, and gain for themselves the innumerable advantages which real mental liberty could bestow upon them.

It is for YOU and YOUR successors now to press onward, with your utmost speed….

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My friends, it surely cannot be your wish, that any good and great cause should be effected only by halves, — and more especially when that which remains to be done, is, beyond all calculation, the more important?  There is a noble object before us, to be won by some party or another in this or in some other country.  It is no less than the destruction of the threefold causes which deprive man of mental liberty, which compel him to commit crimes, and to suffer all the miseries which crime can inflict.  Could we but gain this object — soon would rational intelligence, real virtue, and substantial happiness, be permanently established among men:  ignorance, poverty, dependence, and vice, would be forever banished from the earth.

Let me now ask, —

Are you prepared to imitate the example of your ancestors?  Are you willing to run the risks which they encountered?  Are you ready, like them, to meet the prejudices of past times, and determined to overcome them at ALL hazards, for the benefit of your country and for the emancipation of the human race?  Are you, indeed, willing to sacrifice your fortunes, lives, and reputations, if such sacrifices should be necessary, to secure for all your fellow-beings, the GREATEST GOOD, that, according to our present knowledge, it is possible for them ever to receive?

Are you prepared to achieve a MENTAL REVOLUTION, as superior in benefit and importance to the first revolution, as the mental powers of man exceed his physical powers?

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Upon an experience, then, of nearly forty years, which owing to a very peculiar combination of circumstances, has been more varied, extended and singular, than perhaps has ever fallen to the lot of any one man, and, during which period, my mind was continually occupied in tracing the cause of each human misery that came before me to its true origin; — I now declare, to you and to the world, that Man, up to this hour, has been, in all parts of the earth, a slave to a TRINITY of the most monstrous evils that could be combined to inflict mental and physical evil upon his whole race.

I refer to PRIVATE, OR INDIVIDUAL PROPERTY — ABSURD AND IRRATIONAL SYSTEMS OF RELIGION — AND MARRIAGE, FOUNDED ON INDIVIDUAL PROPERTY COMBINED WITH SOME ONE OF THESE IRRATIONAL SYSTEMS OF RELIGION.

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The revolution, then, to be now effected, is the destruction of this HYDRA OF EVILS — in order that the many may be no longer poor, wretched beings, — dependent on the wealthy and powerful few; that Man may be no longer a superstitious idiot, continually dying from the futile fear of death; that he may no longer unite himself to the other sex from any mercenary or superstitious motives, nor promise and pretend to do that which it depends not on himself to perform.

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For nearly forty years have I been employed, heart and soul, day by day, almost without ceasing, in preparing the means and arranging the circumstances, to enable me to give the death-blow to the tyranny and despotism, which, for unnumbered ages past, have held the human mind spell-bound, in chains and fetters of such mysterious forms and shapes, that no mortal hand dared approach to set the suffering prisoner free.  Nor has the fulness of time, for the accomplishment of this great event, been completed until within this hour, — and such has been the extraordinary course of events, that the Declaration of Political Independence, in 1776, has produced its counterpart, the Declaration of Mental Independence in 1826 — the latter just half a century from the former.

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Rejoice, then, with me, my friends, that this light is now set upon a hill, for it will increase daily, more and more, until it shall be seen, felt, and understood, by all the nations of the earth.