The Sect had its origin at Wurtemberg in Germany, about 40 years ago, in the person of its present Pastor and Master, George Rapp, who, by his own account, "having long seen and felt the decline of the Church, found himself impelled to bear testimony to the fundamental principles of the Christian Religion; and, finding no toleration for his inspired doctrines, or for those who adopted them, he determined with his followers to go to that part of the earth, where they were free to worship God according to the dictates of their conscience." In other words (I suppose), he had long beheld and experienced the slavery and misery of his country, and, feeling in his conscience that he was born more for a ruler than for a slave, found himself imperiously called upon to collect together a body of his poor countrymen and to lead them into a land of liberty and abundance. However allowing him to have had no other than his professed views, he, after he had got a considerable number of proselytes, amounting to seven or eight hundred persons, among whom were a sufficiency of good labourers and artizans in all the essential branches of workmanship and trade, besides farmers, he embodied them into a Society, and then came himself to America (not trusting to Providence to lead the way) to seek out the land destined for these chosen children. Having done so, and laid the plan for his route to the land of peace and Christian love, with a foresight which shows him to have been by no means unmindful to the _temporal_ prosperity of the Society, he then landed his followers in separate bodies, and prudently led them in that order to a resting place within Pennsylvania, choosing rather to retard their progress through the wilderness than to hazard the discontent that might arise from want and fatigue { 287} in traversing it at once. When they were all arrived, Rapp constituted them into one body, having every thing in common, and called the settlement _Harmony_. This constitution he found authorised by the passage in Acts, iv. 32, "And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart, and of one soul: neither said any of them that aught of the things he possessed was his own, _but that they had all things common_." Being thus associated, the Society went to work, early in 1805, building houses and clearing lands, according to the order and regulations of their leader; but the community of stock, or the regular discipline, or the restraints which he had reduced them to, and which were essential to his project, soon began to thin his followers and principally, too, those of them who had brought most substance into the society; they demanded back their original portions and set out to seek the Lord by themselves. This falling off of the society, though it was but small, comparatively, in point of numbers, was a great reduction from their means; they had calculated what they should want to consume, and had laid the rest out in land; so that the remaining part were subjected to great hardships and difficulties for the first year or two of their settling, which was during the time of their greatest labours. However, it was not long before they began to reap the fruits of their toil, and in the space of six or seven years their settlement became a most flourishing colony. During that short space of time they brought into cultivation 3,000 acres of land (a third of their whole estate), reared a flock of nearly 2,000 sheep, and planted hop-gardens, orchards, and vineyards; built barns and stables to house their crops and their live stock, granaries to keep one year's produce of grain always in advance, houses to make their cyder, beer, and wine in, and good brick or stone warehouses for their several species of goods; constructed distilleries, mills for grinding, sawing, making oil, and, indeed, for every purpose, and machines for manufacturing their various materials for clothing and other uses; they had, besides, a store for retailing Philadelphia goods to the country, and nearly 100 good dwelling-houses of wood, a large stone-built tavern, { 288} and, as a proof of superabundance, a dwelling-house and a meeting-house (alias the parsonage and church) which they had neatly built of brick. And, besides all these improvements within the society, they did a great deal of business, principally in the way of manufacturing, for the people of the country. They worked for them with their mills and machines, some of which did nothing else, and their blacksmiths, tailors, shoe-makers, &c. when not employed by themselves, were constantly at work for their neighbours.