SEVERAL years before he died John Newman had aban-
doned all hope for his second son. He gloomily gave it
out to the family as his distinct opinion that Charlie would
never make his way in the world. Soon afterwards Charlie,
not without some reason in the circumstances, apparently
gave up all hope of his father, and decided that the only hope
for himself and for the world at large was Socialism. To his
heartriven family he might just as well have declared him-
self an atheist, an anarchist, an abortionist, or a Roman
Catholic. We will bear in mind that this was the year 1823,
not 1923, when young people were mad about anarchists and
abortionists, and when it was becoming smart to be a Roman
Catholic, especially a wicked one. He had, in fact, gone
over neck and crop to the atheistical socialism of the Welsh
reformer, Robert Owen of Lanark, though he was later to
break away from Owenism and, so little do things change,
invent a New Moral World of his own.

What Charlie N.M.W. revealed to this old and immoral
world is now mostly lost to us. All we know of it is that his
brothers considered it neither likable nor moral, and there is
no record to show that it ever had many, if any, followers.
He also, in later years, formed a friendship with George
Jacob Holyoake, whom students of the century will recall,
according to their political opinions, either as "the" agitator,

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