William Thompson was among the most important associates of the founder of British socialism, Robert Owen, during the early years of the socialist movement. Thompson was born at Cork, Ireland, in 1775 into a well-to-do Protestant family, the son of John Thompson, a merchant who was both mayor and high sheriff at various times. The family had been important landowners in County Cork since the late seventeenth century, and in 1814 William Thompson inherited the family fleet of trading vessels as well as an estate of fourteen hundred acres at Glandore, some forty miles from Cork. Active in the local Literary and Philosophical Society, he also traveled to France and the low countries. His sympathies were with the democratic cause at the time of the French Revolution, and he was renowned for appearing in Glandore with the French tricolor at the end of his walking stick. Committed to improving the...