[Unedited]

“For always in thine eyes, O Liberty!

Shines that high light whereby the world is saved;

And though thou slay us, we will trust in thee.”

John Hay.

On Picket Duty.

The French Parliament has passed the drastic “Anti-Anarchist” bill. It is safe to wager, however, that its press clauses will remain a dead letter.

All signs seem to point to an explosion. The blind fury of the powers that be, the ignorant and unprincipled course of the press, the prevailing industrial depression, the bitterness of the proletariat, — everything makes for war and confusion. But what then, after the explosion? Labor is not ready for any permanent solution of its problem. Whatever our feelings may prompt, the judgment finds no satisfaction in the prospect of a revolution which will do nothing for the social revolution.

The plutocratic editors are nominating Senator Davis for the presidency. Senator Davis is an obscure person, whose sudden prominence is due to a speech or two he made in defence of Pullman, Cleveland, & Co., and in opposition to the rebellious strikers and their sympathizers. Is the brotherhood of thieves so weak and nervous that it has to offer such a reward for a word in its behalf? Hardly; the explanation of the Davis boom is that American editors are sillier than schoolboys.

The French journalists resent the charge that journalism is a trade instead of a profession, and the individual who made it is compelled to fight a duel with a representative of the outraged fraternity. Imagine an American journalist being guilty of such silly and sentimental nonsense! What are words to him? If there is more money in journalism as a trade, then he will be proud of his trade. The French are stupid enough to cherish ideals; the American press writers have forgotten even the meaning of the word. They laugh at everything but the dollar, and would surely eat their own mothers (since, as Ruskin remarks, it is only a sentiment that keeps us from putting our mothers to such practical use) if business required it. They have become spies, blackguards, impostors; why not cannibals? What a fine story it would make, the description of how it feels to eat a human being! I advise the sensational and special-feature papers to consider this scheme.

All liars have short memories, especially the newspaper liars. The very papers which have fiercely denounced Cleveland for his “dictatorial” letter on the tariff to Congressman Wilson and his alleged attempt to influence legislation in contempt of the constitution, traditions, propriety, and what not, were among his most ardent supporters during the great railroad strike, his interference in which they claimed to be eminently proper. That is, to order troops to a State without any communication with the Governor is not a menace to constitutional safeguards, but to write a private letter to a member of Congress on a measure of general interest is a dangerous precedent and an act of usurpation! This, however, is not as irrational as it seems to be. In the strike, Cleveland came to the aid of monopoly, and was welcome; in the tariff controversy, he came near upsetting the conspiracies between the conservative Senators and a few trusts and was therefore sent about his business with considerable warmth.

The “Iowa State Register” criticizes the trades assembly of Des Moines for voting to boycott those Chicago papers whose attitude in the great strike was particularly shameless and outrageous. It admits the guilt of the papers, but pleads that it is not the business of the labor organizations to edit the newspapers. On the same principle, if a shoemaker calls an editor a thief and a scoundrel, the editor must continue to buy his shoes of the offending shoe-maker, for it is not the business of the editor to run a shoe shop. Hasn’t a man a right to choose his shoemaker or baker or bootblack or editor? Why is it improper for workmen to refuse to buy papers that persistently libel and misrepresent them? Compelling a man to be decent by threatening him with the loss of your favor is one of the most natural and innocent ways of enforcing fair play. It is an indirect interference with his business, but since when has such interference been illegitimate? It is curious to observe into what inconsistencies men are led by the lack of guiding principles. They will sanction the plainest aggressions, the most obvious infringements of fundamental rights, and shake their heads at the most indirect and inoffensive methods of inducing respect for one’s rights.

The immigration bill introduced by Lord Salisbury in the House of Lords contains a provision as follows: “Whenever one of Her Majesty’s principal secretaries of State shall have reason to believe that for the preservation of the peace and tranquillity of any part of this realm, or for the prevention of crimes within or without the dominion of Her Majesty, it is expedient to remove from the realm any alien who may be in it, it shall be lawful for the secretary of State to cause an order under his hand to be served personally upon such alien, or to be published in the ‘London Gazette,’ if personal service in the opinion of the secretary of State be not practicable, and such order may direct that the alien named therein shall depart this realm within a specified time; and if such alien shall knowingly and willfully refuse or neglect to pay obedience to such order, or shall be found in any part of the realm contrary to such order, after the service or publication and after the expiration of the time limited in such order, such alien shall be guilty of misdemeanor, and, being convicted thereof, shall, at the discretion of the court, be adjudged to suffer imprisonment for any time not exceeding one month for the first offence, and not exceeding twelve months for the second or any subsequent offence.” Not only would this provision abolish the right of asylum at one stroke, but, so far as aliens are concerned, it also does away with the freedom of speech in England. The killing of a tyrant could not be applauded or even excused by any foreigner; such an article as Auberon Herbert’s, on the ethics of dynamite, if written by an alien, would render him liable to expulsion, as the opinions expressed would certainly be found to be dangerous to the peace of the realm by any official. The Liberals are opposed to the measure, and it will fail. But the American newspapers are perfectly willing to have such a bill enacted here; they can see nothing in it that is inconsistent with American freedom, or their notion of it.

Free Womanhood.

[Charlotte Perkins Stetson.]

Can you imagine nothing better, brother,

Than that which you have always had before?

Have you been so content with “wife and mother”

You dare hope nothing more?

Have you forever prized her, praised her, sung her,

The happy queen of a most happy reign?

Never dishonored her, despised her, flung her

Derision and disdain?

Go ask the literature of all the ages!

Books that were written before woman read!

Pagan and Christian. Satirists and Sages!

Read what the world has said!

There was no power on earth to bid you slacken

The generous hand that painted her disgrace!

There was no shame on earth too black to blacken

That much-praised woman-face!

Eve and Pandora! — always you begin it —

The Ancients called her Sin and Shame and Death!

“There is no evil without woman in it!”

The modern proverb saith.

She has been yours in uttermost possession! —

Your slave, your mother, your well-chosen bride —

And you have owned in million-fold confession

You were not satisfied.

Peace, then! Fear not the coming woman, brother!

Owning herself she giveth all the more!

She shall be better woman, wife, add mother

Than man bath known before!

“In abolishing rent and interest, the last vestiges of old-time slavery, the Revolution abolishes at one stroke the sword of the executioner, the seal of the magistrate, the club of the policeman, the gunge of the exciseman, the erasing-knife of the department clerk, all those insignia of Politics, which young Liberty grinds beneath her heel.” — Proudhon.

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The appearance in the editorial column of articles over other signatures than the editor’s initial indicates that the editor approves their central purpose and general tenor, though he does not hold himself responsible for every phrase or word. But the appearance in other parts of the paper of articles by the same or other writers by no means indicates that he disapproves them in any respect, such disposition of them being governed largely by motives of convenience.

Government and the Bomb-Throwers.

George E. Macdonald publishes some comments in the “Truthseeker” on the theory and practice of bomb-throwing. They are decidedly too violent. There is no good reason for Mr. Macdonald’s indignation, anger, and hatred. He should discuss the subject more philosophically. If he did, he would not be guilty of such a fallacy as that hidden in his comparison between the methods of the official dynamiteurs, the governments, and the unofficial ones, like Caserio and Vaillant. The government, says Mr. Macdonald, with all its faults and injustice, at least professes and attempts to distinguish between the guilty and the innocent; it tries accused persons; it establishes their guilt in some way before punishing them. The dynamiteurs, on the other hand, punish the guilty and innocent alike. They blow tip people without trial or conviction.

How superficial all this is! If the revolutionists’ case against governments rested solely or even mainly on faults and blunders committed in their courts of justice, the criticism of Mr. Macdonald would apply. If the dynamiteurs said: “You governors do not try people properly; your courts are not just; you do not protect the innocent well enough and do not punish the guilty as they deserve; to make you more just, we will dynamite you and your families and friends,” — if they said this and proceeded to throw bombs, they would be open to Mr. Macdonald’s charge of being even worse than the governments. But their case against the governments rests chiefly on the crimes and blunders that never reach courts of justice. By its monopolies, privileges, taxes, and aggressions of all kinds, the State condemns millions of men, women, and children to starvation, misery, despair, and death. These are not tried and found guilty of anything; their punishment is inflicted without any formalities; they are innocent of wrong-doing. And it is this violation of equity and freedom which is responsible for the terrible condition of the masses of the innocent people, — for their poverty, enforced idleness, vice, and crime, — that the bomb-throwers seek to punish. Most of those whom the government does try and punish under form of law are driven into criminal careers by its own injustice.

Of course, the bomb-throwers are not philosophers; they punish individuals for systems and institutions which, however wrong, cannot be always traced to the conscious wickedness of anybody living or dead. But human nature is human nature. No revolution, no revolt, is philosophical. In all revolutions, in all wars, innocent people are bound to suffer. Even the soldiers of an invading army are innocent; they invade and kill because they are ordered to do so by their superiors. Yet do those who resist invasion refrain from punishing these innocent soldiers? In the war between the masses and the classes, neither side is philosophical, neither side wholly innocent. Those who are philosophical enough to grasp the situation, to trace the evil to its source, can do nothing but warn those who happen to occupy the position of the aggressors at this juncture, and enjoy the fruits of injustice, and educate those who happen to be the aggressed-upon, the victims. We have a right to expect a little more philosophy from those who reap the benefits of the present system than from those whom it condemns to ignorance and misery. If those on top are blind, cruel, inhuman, and deaf, those below cannot be blamed for being even more brutal. If the powerful show no disposition to overhaul things, examine the complaints and protests of the disinherited, peace is impossible.

It is easy to dismiss the whole subject by saying that both the exploiters and the exploited are ignorant and unjust. This is a truism. But the struggle will not cease. The ranks of the suffering will continue to send forth unphilosophical champions to assert their vague claims and demand a new order of things. These champions, to arrest the attention of the heed-less and demoralized plutocrats, will continue to use daggers and dynamite. All this is natural. It cannot be otherwise. But the question is, where will it end? Violence will accomplish nothing. Political education alone, given the desire to do justice, can guide us to the establishment and maintenance of a harmonious social order. As Mr. Macdonald’s function is that of an educator, it is important that he should guard against a misapplication of his true principles and a misinterpretation of the facts and phenomena with which we have to deal. These are critical times, and it is not easy to preserve intellectual equilibrium. First principles should not be neglected for a moment, but the factor of human nature should also be taken into account. Y.

The Woman-Suffrage Question.

In a recent issue of the “Twentieth Century,” Ellen Battelle Dietrick, a progressive and able woman of strong individualist leanings, whose writings would have great weight and value if their economic basis were not borrowed from the shallow and exploded bourgeois economics, animadverts upon my position on the woman-suffrage question as stated in Liberty of June 30. I am not sure that Mrs. Dietrick understands my position, and before taking up her points seriatim, it may be well to emphasize one or two general considerations.

From the view-point of current political doctrine and prevailing political practices, there is no rational objection to woman suffrage. It is impudence, self-stultification, and contemptible meanness for those who really believe that suffrage is a right, an attribute of sovereignty, a function of responsible and conscious citizenship, to deny the fitness of woman for the exercize of the suffrage. To the demands and protests of the women who want the ballot, the supporters of popular government have nothing to oppose. They are beginning to perceive and admit it, for the average Republican or Democratic organ now seeks refuge in the allegation that the women themselves refuse the suffrage. Liberty is not arguing from the standpoint of current political belief, however, but from that of perfect individualism, equal freedom, no-government; or, more correctly, from the standpoint of men who, believing in individualism or equal freedom, wish to do and promote everything making for that ideal of political life, and to discourage and hinder everything calculated to obstruct progress and strengthen vicious tendencies and institutions. We do not believe that men are entitled to vote; we do not regard the ballot as a corollary of equal freedom. We do not believe in government, in majority-rule, in enforced coöperation. The ballot is a weapon of coercion, compulsion, government, and as such we condemn it. We seek to deprive men of this weapon, to abolish all coercive government of man by man. Now, while thus fighting coercion and government, we are called upon to deal with a practical movement in favor of extending the suffrage to women, — that is to say, in favor of arming a few additional millions with the dangerous weapon of voting. Our first and natural inquiry is, will the women use this new weapon in the interest of progress or of reaction? The question is not one of right, but of expediency. The women are not entitled to the ballot not because they are women, but because the ballot is not something which can be claimed by any one under the highest law of social existence, — equal freedom. Is it well for society, for progress, that women should obtain this weapon and wield it pending the realization of the new ideal of a free society? This is the only pertinent question, and it is a question which can only be answered in the light of woman’s work and endeavors in the fields that are open to them. The Anarchists and individualists oppose woman suffrage simply and solely because they are convinced that woman’s political activity would be directed tyrannyward and would arrest the political emancipation of all of us. If we thought otherwise, we would aid women in their present efforts, for, our object being the increase of liberty, we naturally favor the use of every method that leads to that result.

Having made these general statements, I turn to Mrs. Dietrick’s criticisms. Of course, in meeting pro-woman-suffrage arguments, it is not always needful to refer to the general objections specified; some of the incidental and minor allegations are disposed of by the application of mere common sense and ordinary logic or experience.

Thus Mrs. Dietrick attempts to dispute my assertion that woman suffrage would curtail the amount of liberty we now enjoy. She remarks:

It is one of the most amusing facts of the male crusade against woman’s right to self-government that we here have, on the one hand, “Y” prophesying that to give women equal liberty with men will plunge us Into “more prohibition,” and, on the other hand, we have scores of excited editors pronouncing woman’s present possession of such liberty in Wyoming a failure because it has not resulted in any prohibition whatever! The editors of the “Omaha Bee” and sundry other Western newspapers affirm that after twenty-five years of equal rights of citizenship between men and women in Wyoming those who want to gamble gamble, those who want to drink drink, and those who want to make themselves lower than beasts by excessive sensual indulgences follow their perverted tastes with fully as much liberty as before women received their own liberty to express an opinion in their community. “Y” would do well to suspend his dismal prophesying and turn to the “Omaha Bee” for comfort, for the “Omaha Bee” pronounces woman’s quarter of a century of freedom in Wyoming a failure on the ground that it has not resulted in “more Comstock laws, more prohibition, more meddling, more cant and hypocricy, and more reform by force!” Like the Kilkenny cats, the arguments of “Y” and of the “Omaha Bee” may be left to finish each other.

Had an ordinary woman attempted to smuggle this deliverance through as a piece of reasoning, I should have witnessed the act without surprise. But Mrs. Dietrick’s writings have led me to expect better logic from her. What logical canon justifies her conclusion that, because certain papers have expressed views directly opposite to mine, we must both be wrong? If I say a thing is white, and another asserts that it is black, must it necessarily be green or red or yellow? May it not be white (or black) after all? It is a new kind of proof of error, surely, to show a man that somebody else squarely differs with him. The “Omaha Bee” (a paper which I read every day, and which never impressed me as a great authority on any question) complains that woman suffrage has not resulted in more prohibitive legislation, while I express the fear and the belief that it will lead to such legislation. Is my fear at once shown to be groundless? In the first place, the “Bee” may be ignorant of the facts and talk without any knowledge of the situation. The “Bee’s” facts have to be looked into first of all. I care nothing about the “affirmations” of the newspapers. Does Mrs. Dietrick know the facts? Has she kept track of Wyoming legislation and attempts at legislation? If she has, and can show that a period of twenty years of woman suffrage in Wyoming has not checked the progress of liberty, the evidence will possess a certain value, though it will still remain an unsettled question how far special circumstances have operated to bring about a result which may be exceptional. But surely it is a wonderfully easy way to refute an opinion by citing a divergent or antithetical opinion; and had this method been countenanced by logic, it would have been used far more generally than it is. It would have saved a great many from intellectual annihilation.

Mrs. Dietrick thinks that it would be difficult to find a more illogical piece of rubbish than my notion of what is implied in “women’s demand for active coöperation with men.” I am sorry to have to charge my critic with careless reading. I expressed no opinion as to the implications of “women’s demand for active coöperation with men.” What I said, and what Mrs. Dietrick quotes, is this:

Even the most progressive and modern of the champions of woman suffrage astonish one by the audacity and ignorance of their assertions. Their favorite argument is that male government has proved a miserable failure, and that the abolition of crime, vice, and misrule is impossible without the active coöperation of women. The implication, of course, is that women are wiser, purer, and better than men.

Here, manifestly, I speak of the implication carried by the favorite argument for woman suffrage, not by the demand for woman suffrage. The demand may imply much, little, or nothing. When the reasons for the demand, the arguments, are disclosed, we have something to deal with: we have the arguments themselves and their implications. I mentioned a certain specific “favorite argument” and pointed out its implication. All of Mrs. Dietrick’s talk is wholly irrelevant, because of her careless assumption that I had reference to the implication of the mere demand for woman suffrage. She says:

If a man and woman enter a contract to live together (thus originating a variety of mutual affairs), in order to have the best mutual understanding and to conserve the equal rights and equal liberty of these parties, it is absolutely necessary that they should agree to listen with respect to each other’s opinion; to settle their affairs, when possible, by mutual and equally free exression of opinion, or, to present themselves as equals before arbitrators or judges, when requisite to call a third voice in to aid their settlements. This is not because the woman is wiser, purer, and better than the man, or vice versa. Nor is it because one is of one sex and the other of the other sex. It is simply and solely necessary, owing to the fact that the one who is denied the right given to the other is placed in an inferior and relatively defenceless position toward the other.

This is true, but it does not touch my point. Mrs. Dietrick cannot logically deny that the implication of the favorite argument I specified is what I held it to be, — that “women are wiser, parer, and better than men.” If the implication is not intended, there is no virtue or meaning in the argument. If women are not purer and wiser than men, their coöperation will not prevent government from being a miserable failure and will not succeed in abolishing crime and vice.

My proposition that “for self-protection no vote is needed,” Mrs. Dietrick pronounces a glaring absurdity, pointing out that the vote is merely a voice, or an expression of an opinion. Mrs. Dietrick is not a thorough-going individualist, but she ought to have a clear and complete understanding of the position of those who are thorough-going individualists. Under compulsory coöperation, government, a vote is more than an expression of an opinion: it is, in addition, an expression of a determination to enforce that opinion. The voter hopes and expects to be with the majority and to compel the minority to do his bidding. For mere self-protection, it is perfectly obvious, no vote is essential. In the absence of compulsion and governmental invasion (public or private), each would buy protection as he buys bread and eggs and butter, for a sum certain, determined by competition among the insurance and police associations. There would be no voting that would bind the unwilling. Apart from this Anarchistic ideal, Mrs. Dietrick well knows that there are possible forms of political coöperation under which rights may be fully secured without the voting institution. Take Carlyle’s ideal of a benevolent and just despotism. Men may enjoy as much real freedom under a Monarchy as under a Republican form of government. Voting is simply an appliance, a means, and when the end is secured without it, it is not needed. Popular government means the coöperation of a large number of small invaders; the women are clamoring for a chance to do a little (a good deal, rather) of the invading. Do those who maintain that women want to vote for self-protection imply that they contemplate the formation of a party having a repeal platform and seeking to abolish all invasion and privilege? Hardly.

Referring to my comments on the action of Miss Anthony and the Rev. Anna Shaw in connection with the Kansas Populist plank on woman suffrage, Mrs. Dietrick sap:

The only trouble with “Y’s” argument here is that his premises are a mixture in which falsehood largely predominates over the grain of truth. Neither Miss Anthony nor Miss Shaw formally enlisted in the Populist ranks to induce the Populist State Convention of Kansas to adopt a plank in favor of woman suffrage. The Populist State Convention adopted the woman suffrage plank without any such inducement. After the plank was adopted, both women were invited to the platform and both expressed their fervent gratitude to the Populists, and both promised to speak in Populist gatherings in favor of this plank. Moreover, Miss Shaw does believe in several (though not all) of the distinctively Populist doctrines, and in regard to one expresses no opinion because she has not yet given the subject sufficient consideration.

Mrs. Dietrick must have other sources of information than those on which most of us rely. I am not a great admirer of our newspapers, but when their accounts are not disputed, I assume them to be true, unless there are à priori considerations against such an assumption. My account of the affair in question was based, not on the report of one paper, but on the reports of several, including “Kate Field’s Washington.” As all the papers commented on the incident in rather strong language without eliciting any denial or explanation, it was entirely safe to accept the main statements as true. Mrs. Dietrick now gives a totally different version of the affair: what is her authority, and why was not her version given to the general public?

But suppose my version is correct: can the question of the moral superiority of twelve millions of persons, asks Mrs. Dietrick, be definitely settled by citing the moral inferiority of two persons? No, it cannot; but when the two persons are admired and chosen leaders, and their action is tacitly endorsed by thousands of followers, it is legitimate and even imperative to watch their conduct and cite it as an indication of the general state of feeling.

Space forbids the consideration of other points of minor importance raised by my critic; but even at the risk of repetition, I quote these general observations for analysis:

His position seems to be as follows: Every individual should be as free from coercion and interference as possible, therefore all women should be deprived of even the degree of freedom men now enjoy! This is as much as if one who was trying to induce the whole human race to run freely, should refuse to allow any woman even to walk. Men have learned all they know of liberty by progressive experiments in greater and greater use of liberty. There is no other way under heaven for women to learn to love and respect liberty save by similar experimentation, and liberty for the whole race depends upon the appreciation of liberty cherished by the whole race, not only by the male half “Y” says, “It is impossible to point out a single advantage to society reasonably to be anticipated from woman suffrage, while a good many disadvantages would inevitably and speedily result from it.” Just so might a weak, foolish mother argue in regard to allowing her infant to learn to walk. The chief good in woman suffrage is to the women who exercize it, just as the chief good in the walking lesson is to the infant. The benefit to society in both these cases is indirect, and comes through the self-development of the real and the artificial infant, neither of whom can help society save by their own self-development.

Women are entitled, not to the degree of freedom men now enjoy, but to the largest amount of freedom compatible with equality of freedom. The ballot, the “right to vote,” is not a right deducible from equal freedom, and no person can justly claim it. Men unjustly claim and exercize it, but that is a poor reason to use in demanding it for women. The fact that one man steals does not justify another man in attempting to steal. The vote should, and will, be taken away from men in due time, as soon as sound political ideas and the meaning of free institutions penetrate a sufficient number of minds. It is true that men have learned something of liberty (not all they know of it, by any means) by experiments in coercion. The failures of legislation have taught them the lesson of less interference. But cannot women profit by men’s experience; can they not read, observe, analyze, compare, reflect? Where is history, political science, economics, ethics, and practical politics? Will the ballot do more for women than the study of these records of human thought and experience? The factors which have had most to do with the progressive civilization and liberalization of men are business relations, social intercourse, and the advance of knowledge. Women are but beginning to feel the influence of these factors, their educational and industrial experience being but limited, but the future is safely theirs, and their growth and education are assured.

The infant-and-walking analogy is decidedly imperfect. Infants learn to walk and never have any occasion to unlearn it. To become independent, useful members of society, infants must learn to walk. The vote, unlike walking, is abandoned by independent individuals as inconsistent with free manhood or womanhood. Men are outgrowing it, and what we maintain is that there is no occasion for teaching it to those who can have no use for it. The thing is obsolete; its days are numbered. Men acquired it at a time when nothing better was known or possible. Now healthier and truer ideas prevail, and women can be saved from it. That the vote is a benefit to woman, is a proposition which we dispute; but even if it were admitted, the far more important question would remain whether it is a benefit which she may properly claim. A benefit at the expense of others (and a vote is a power to coerce others), is not something we are anxious to confer on any one. Teaching an infant to walk is a pleasure to the parent, a necessity to the infant, and a benefit to society, which needs self-reliant, normal members. So far as the ballot is concerned, women are infants, but teaching them to vote is a menace to society and a necessity or legitimate pleasure to none. Y.

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Since Artemus Ward’s patriotic readiness to send his wife’s relatives to fight for his country, there has been nothing so inspiring as the attitude of the American press on the question of a free press in France. The French government, in fighting dynamite, has found it necessary to deprive the press of the right to report the trials of dynamiteurs. The theory of the imbeciles is that consuming vanity and thirst for notoriety are responsible for the dynamite crusade, and by interdicting all reference in the papers to the sayings and doings of the revolutionists, they expect to rob bomb-throwing of most of its attractions. That the newspapers have some rights in the premises, that the public are entitled to know how trials are conducted, does not seem to have occurred to the statesmen. The French papers are naturally displeased with the little scheme, and the public must be presumed to be still less reconciled to the innovation. The American papers deplore this sad lack of patriotism on the part of the French press and public. “Free speech,” they say, “is doubtless a fine thing, but extraordinary occasions demand extraordinary measures, and if there is no other way of crushing dynamite, you ought to submit cheerfully to the sacrifice demanded of you. Of course, we sympathize with you deeply. Besides the great and sacred principles involved, about which you talk far more eloquently than we can, there is the still more important question of extra editions and additional sales. It is hard to stand the loss of cash, but, dear contemporaries, think of France, think of society, think of civilization, think of the human race, think of the solar system. Dynamite threatens everything; it must be suppressed at all hazards. Submit, therefore, be resigned; the crisis will not last; your freedom and extra earnings will be restored to you.” These sentiments command sincere admiration; they flow from a pure and noble source. But it strikes one as queer that these good and unselfish papers generally manage to put in the parenthetical remark that here, in America, such a provision as that affecting the press in the French law would not be possible or desirable, and would probably be declared unconstitutional if enacted. Is human nature different here from what it is in France; is revolutionary nature different? If our dynamiteurs need the same treatment as those of France, why would anti-press laws be impossible and undesirable here? Are our papers just heroic enough to sacrifice their French contemporaries, but unequal to any greater demand, such as the loss of their circulation? We, who enjoy an intimate knowledge of the character of our press, can never fall into the error of accusing it of want of patriotism; but the French papers, I fear, may misunderstand their American sympathizers, and suspect them of hypocricy, humbug, and selfishness. And that would be too bad, too bad.

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Santo Caserio’s jury found him guilty, of course, and he will die. Even his enemies admire his boldness, courage, and cleverness. The London correspondent of the New York “Times” says “that the inevitable dialogue of epigram and repartee between judge and prisoner did not differ particularly from the ordinary, save in that Caserio seemed to score more than his share of the smart points made.” With the exception of the statement of principles read by Caserio and parts of his advocate’s address, the proceedings were fully reported in the French newspapers, yet the dialogue will do more harm, from the standpoint of law and order, than the suppressed arguments could have caused. When Caserio told the judge that he had as much right to take life as the soldiers of the government, he doubtless found an echo in the minds of a good many non-radicals. The judge’s conduct of the trial was censured by the Chamber of Deputies and the Minister of Justice. On the opening of the session he made an improper speech eulogizing the new President of France, and saying among other things: “Here, through the concourse of twelve citizens, honest, free, and just out from the body of the Nation, we shall punish the crime of yesterday and attempt to put aside, in the measure of our forces, the peril of tomorrow.” This unwarranted remark entitles Caserio to a new trial, but he refused to appeal.

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Liberty was right in averring that the news-paper moralists and quietists could never act upon their own theory regarding the cure for what they call Anarchism. They hold it to be the duty of all good citizens to refrain from denouncing existing social relations and institutions, for such denunciation gives a sort of moral justification to dynamite. Yet day after day they indulge in it, and one who never sees a reform paper cannot help arriving at the conclusion that government is a conspiracy of rascals, frauds, and humbugs. The Republicans have explained the Democratic tariff differences as a war between the iron and coal trusts on the one hand, and the sugar trust on the other. Cleveland’s assumption of virtue was ridiculed as much as Gorman’s pretended devotion to the protective principle. The tariff reform papers told the Senate that it was no better than a highwayman, and that it “held up” the tariff in obedience to the command of its masters, the monopolists. Such talk makes the great papers accessories before the fact to all revolutionist outrages. How would they relish a law compelling them to approve every act of the government and every utterance of those in power?

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The Boston “Advertiser” is a Republican paper whose devotion to law and order is above suspicion, yet it allows itself to use language against a branch of our glorious government which makes it an accessory before the fact to dynamite outrages. Speaking of the Senate, it says: “If there is to be a succession of legislative blockades, engineered by mercenary senatorial speculators, of silver-purchasing scandals and Sugar Trust scandals, of Russian treaty infamies and secret investigations’ that do not investigate, if senatorial courtesy’ is to constantly usurp the place of public duty, and the motto of the Senate is to be in tone and temper, if not in words, ’the public be — ,’ there will pretty soon be a pretty radical change of some sort.” Suppose the radical change should take the shape of a bomb explosion in the Senate chamber: would the “Advertiser” be punished for indirect encouragement of violence? How difficult it is for the champions of law and order to refrain from denouncing their own idol!

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Dana, editor of the “Sun,” has recently returned from Europe. To a reporter he stated that he had found Russia prosperous and quiet, Nihilism being suppressed. Look out for another famine and for another conspiracy against the Czar. The penalty of persistent lying is inability to see things as they are even when there is no motive for misstatement.

The Defence of Jean Grave.

The following is the address made to the jury by Jean Grave’s counsel, M. de Saint Auban, at the former’s trial for the offence of having written a revolutionary book. The address was greeted with applause, the barristers, the prosecutor, and the literary Men present in court crowding round the advocate to congratulate him and press his hand. I copy the translation from London “Freedom.”

Gentlemen of the Jury: — Those of you who have served on the trial of Léauthier will verify my recollections.

Yesterday, at three o’clock, the Attorney General said: “Gentlemen of the Jury, Léauthier is a wretch! Strike him without pity!” And he demanded sentence of death to be passed on Léauthier. Today, at the same hour, — after four and twenty hours of reflection, — the Attorney General said: “Gentlemen of the Jury, you did not condemn Léauthier to death; you have done well. Your clemency is just!”

Which proves that everything in this world is relative, even the addresses of Attorney-Generals.

I fancy that the four and twenty hours which will follow this hearing will produce the same effect upon the brain of the Attorney General as the four and twenty that preceded it.

He will say tomorrow, if business leave him leisure enough: “The gentlemen of the jury did not listen to my pitiless address against M. Jean Grave — they did well I For, in short, it would be an everlasting reproach to me, a modern lawyer, a very advanced man (I mean to praise you, M. Attorney General), to have influenced a jury of our times to condemn a man merely because he thought and because, having thought, he had the courage to write!”

Gentlemen of the Jury, you will avoid this reproach upon the Attorney General. You will acquit M. Jean Grave. You will acquit him for higher reasons, which will, I hope, force themselves upon your conscience and good sense.

It is to your brain that I appeal; it is your thought that mine solicits. Forget all prejudices foreign to the matter under discussion. The thing on its trial today is not a dagger, a revolver, a bomb. The thing is a book. It is a work of intellect; and as I see you are very calm, very kindly attentive, I may, even at the outset of my remarks, recall to you the words of Joubert, who devoted himself to Justice as well as to Criticism: “The things of the mind must be judged by the mind, and not by bile, blood, and humors.

This book is not the phantom, the semblance of a book. It is not a misdemeanor hidden under the cover of a book. It is a real book, accepted seriously by all the people who think and reflect, a book in the doctrinal sense, in the higher sense of the word. Its scientific style, which shuts it off from the vulgar, gives it a rather repellant form, and doubtless at the present hour it would repose learnedly upon the shelves of libraries or in the cupboards of savants if the law — mad with passion — of Dec., 1893, which has long claws, had not gone even into the past to seize it in order to satisfy its craving for persecution.

Here is what a contemporary thinks of it. This is an article by M. Clemenceau. It has this moment been passed to me. I borrow from it some lines which express my opinion.

M. Clemenceau is not suspected of Anarchy; he has no interest in its triumph; for if Anarchy triumphs, it would suppress, simultaneously with the landlords, the deputies, or those who wanted to become such.

“The law against the press,” writes M. Clemenceau,” works to the great satisfaction of M. Raynal. It is now the turn of M. Jean Grave, guilty of having written a book, entitled ‘La Société mourante et l’Anarchie’ [Moribund Society and Anarchy.]

“I do not know M. Jean Grave. I only know what M. Octave Mirbeau has said of him in an article in the “Journal.” He is a working shoemaker, whose soul is moved, whose mind is opened, by the sight of misery and of human degeneracy.

“M. Jean Grave’s book appeared more than a year ago. No one saw in it then anything for prosecution. For a whole year it was exposed for sale in the windows of all our booksellers.

“The bomb epidemic supervenes. M. Raynal profits by the alarm of the deputies to make them vote in their fear for a reactionary political law, which cannot arrest the arm of any bomb-thrower, but which will perhaps one day force some one of disordered mind into an act of criminal violence, out of hatred to a stupid repression.

“It is generally agreed that the laws have no retro-active power. M. Antonin Dubost does not stick at such trifles. M. Jean Grave, in writing his book two years ago, should have foreseen the reign of M. Casimir-Perier. The book is seized. M. Jean Grave is under arrest. He has already done a month of preventive imprisonment for a press offence. When there was a Republican party, that alone would have aroused the most violent protestations.

“I have just read his book, and my opinion of the writer does not differ very sensibly from that of M. Mirbeau. The language is simple, clear, and vigorous. The critical power is truly terrible. Let all who live on ready-made ideas, received from the crowd, refrain from opening such a book. It can only shock them violently, without striking any light in them, owing to the lack of suitable elements. For those, on the contrary, who think for themselves, who have ideas of their own, whatever they may be, who do not fear to subject their principles to the most searching criticism, the most radical revision, all their principles — their doctrines, all their doctrines — this book is good, for it creates thought.

“No doubt his book contains some passages of a disconcerting violence, which most men would refuse to write, not from fear of M. Raynal’s laws, but because they are repugnant to their way of feeling and thinking. How can M. Jean Grave, a man of peaceful and tranquil temper, who lives as an ascetic, and who, it appears, has won the admiration of hardened bourgeois, indulge in observations unacceptable to the plain conscience of mankind? It is because a man capable of making the Cartesian tabula rasa of his mind, of freeing himself absolutely from all received ideas in order to make himself anew, runs the risk of losing in the immensity of his effort not only the prejudices, the false ideas, with their accompanying sentiments, but also that portion of plain good sense, right reason, and human sentiment which our ancestors have unconsciously mingled with them.

“Twelve honest men are going to be asked to express their opinion on the case of M. Jean Grave. It is much to be feared that they have not read his book, and judge only by some extracts cleverly chosen. By such means there is no medical book that could not be condemned for indecency. Now, it is of social medicine the author has attempted to treat. I do not hold by all his therapeutics, but in our century there is no institution, no idea, but should be in a condition to face criticism, every criticism. In short, the intellectual hustling that we get from M. Jean Grave is wholesome for us, in that it tests our powers of resistance, and forces us to make sure of our opinions.

“If the jury read M. Grave’s book from one end to the other, they will doubtless censure it, but they will, at the same time, say to themselves that the slightest refutation will be more efficacious than months or years in prison.”

I have quoted this article, gentlemen, because it Bums up well the universal sentiment, the impression of the workers, of the intellectual and the learned, whose opinion M. Mirbeau, M. Bernard, and M. Paul Adam have reechoed to you.

Yet for this book the Attorney General demands a merciless repression. He regrets he cannot demand a still more merciless one.

Why?

Looking, not from an Anarchist’s point of view, not from my client’s point of view, but from yours, gentlemen of the jury, from the bourgeois point of view, what harm has this book done?

What harm could it do?

The last edition — the only one prosecuted, the only one that can be prosecuted, since the other, the first, is secured by limitation — has been seized before being exposed for sale; it has therefore not been able to incite the soldier to mutiny, nor the worker to murder his employer, since it has not made its way into either barrack or workshop!

I repeat it, the edition has been seized, with the exception of two hundred copies devoted to the use of the press.

But these two hundred copies, if they have incited any one, have incited only journalists. Now reassure yourselves, gentlemen of the jury! First of all, the journalists have but scant time for reading the pamphlets sent them — there are sent too many! Furthermore, if the journalists at times incite others, they are but little sensitive themselves to that kind of incitement; they are blasé! . . . .

Notwithstanding, the Attorney General wants to make this book responsible for all the bombs that have exploded. He shows it to you as the cause of recent outrages. Let us consider. If the book is the cause of the outrage, the outrage will reflect the physiognomy of the book. Now, the book is logical; the outrage is not: therefore, between the outrage and the book there exists nothing in common. If the book inspired the outrage, the outrage would select its victims: it would strike at the heart of society; it would hit at it through its governing classes, its exploiters, those who are in possession; for those are the persons that the book points out and brands. Now, the outrage made no choice; it struck by chance, it blew up a one-eyed landlady of a hotel, or a humble waiter. Therefore the book has nothing to do with the matter; for the book condemns these useless hecatombs.

Up to this but one outrage has been logical — that of Vaillant. Vaillant’s crime belongs to the category of political crimes like Fieschi’s, like Orsini’s. Fieschi aimed at a king; Orsini at an emperor; Vaillant aimed at parliament — a multiple emperor, a king with seven hundred and fifty heads.

But has M. Grave’s book caused Vaillant’s outrage?

Vaillant has quoted his masters to you, the authors who taught him. He has not quoted M. Grave. M. Grave is a young man, and the young men are never quoted; it is only the classics that are quoted.

What classics are these? Spencer, Proudhon, Rousseau, Voltaire! Behold the malefactors that, to be logical, you should make sit upon those benches, M. Attorney General!

Now let us summon them to appear. Those of them that are dead have statues.

Summon these statues. Summon Voltaire’s: his bronze smile will say much more to the jury than all my pleading! . . . .

Has M. Grave’s book incited Léauthier?

Léauthier has read some of M. Grave’s pamphlets, but “Moribund Society and Anarchy” is just the one he has not read!

Besides, it was easy to incite Léauthier. Among the pamphlets which formed his daily entertainment, the “Intransigeant” figured, he says, for his instruction. Now, M. Rochefort’s journals are not Anarchist journals. They are excellent papers. I am forced to believe this, since M. Antonin Dubost, keeper of the seals and hierarchical superior of the Attorney General, used in former days to save them up; he held them in such esteem!

Incitement is altogether relative. It is altogether subjective. It depends upon the brain which is subjected to it. According to your system, M. Attorney General, there is not a page of polemics, or controversial article, but might be looked upon as an incitement. When I denounce the bandits connected with La Haute Banque, the rascals of finance who forget your addresses to the courts, I incite the people to curse them, to bate them. Be logical, therefore; drag me to the defendant’s place, put me in the seat of the accused!

The truth is that the book is not the cause of the bomb; but the bomb and the book are both products of an anterior and superior cause; and this cause is despair, the great disease of the century.

Your Revolution promised happiness to the proletariat; the proletariat have been the victims of a gigantic swindle. The bourgeoisie stole, promising to share with them the outcome of the theft; the bourgeoisie have not kept their word; they kept for themselves all the fruits of their plunderings! Not only did they give nothing to the proletariat, they also found means to further despoil them: they have dried up in their hearts the sources of resignation.

The proletariat saw that to the nobility clad in silk, which formerly succeeded to the nobility clad in steel, had succeeded a third nobility, more merciless and still more oppressive than the other two: the nobility cased in gold.

Deceived and exasperated, the proletariat then uttered a cry of anguish! This cry of anguish is reverberating in all our literature.

It is Heinrich Heine who cries:

“This old society has long since been judged and condemned. Let justice be done! Let this old world be broken in pieces . . . where innocence has perished, where egoism has prospered, where man is exploited by man! Let these whited sepulchres, full of lying and iniquity, be utterly destroyed!”

This is Lamennais who curses:

“We say that your society is not even a society, that it is not even the shadow of one, but an assemblage of beings that can be given no name: administered, manipulated, exploited at the will of your caprices, a warren, a flock, a herd of human cattle destined by you to glut your greed.”

This is Victor Hugo blaspheming:

“What kind of society is it which, at this period, has for its base inequality and injustice? Would it not be well to take the whole thing by the four corners and send it pell-mell up to the ceiling, the cloth, the feast, and the orgy, the gluttony and the drunkenness and the guests; those who have their two elbows on the table, and those who are on all fours under it, to spew the whole lot in God’s face and to fling the whole world at heaven?”

“. . . . The Hell of the Poor makes the Paradise of the Rich.”

“Not only has happiness not come, but honor has fled.”

Flaubert declares:

“With the development of capitalistic production European public opinion has stripped the last rag off conscience and modesty. Each nation glories cynically in all the infamy that goes to hasten the accumulation of capital.”

The same Flaubert ruthlessly sums up the position of the modern world in these terms, which brand and spit in society’s face:

“We dance, not over a volcano, but upon the plank over a latrine which, to me, smells rather badly.”

What would Flaubert have said today, after so much infamy, corruption, and baseness?

What colors this master of style would have found upon his palette to paint his picture of shame and ignominy!

Here are the instigators of both book and bomb! They are the thinkers, philosophers, poets, who have described, who have sung, the despairs of our century. Now let us be logical, M. Attorney General. Let these men take their places in the Court of Assize, for it Jean Grave has only repeated what they have said.

You know well that M. Jean Grave is not the guilty person. You know well that his book has fired no incendiary. But this government imitates its predecessors. Its profits by crime to assassinate the Idea.

In the Idea you may behold the eternal enemy of those in possession. The possessors want to stay where they are: the Idea wishes them to go out. . . .

A dagger struck down the Duke de Berry: immediately the Restoration mounts the tribune and says to a weeping country: “The dagger which struck the Duke de Berry is a Liberal Idea.”

A bomb explodes: immediately the third Republic ascends the same tribune and cries to a weeping country: “The bomb which has just exploded is an Anarchist idea!”

Then, in the midst of the smoke of the bomb, which in our time takes the place of the lightnings from Mount Sinai, M. David Raynal perigee a frightful law, which is nothing else but the resurrection of the old crime of inciting to the hatred and contempt of government. Only the formula is slightly modified; it is the crime of inciting to the hatred and contempt of the bourgeoisie.

Théophile Gautier was right: what does it matter whether it be a sword, a holy-water sprinkler, or an umbrella, which rules us! It is always a stick! . .

How logical your accusation is, M. Attorney General! You charge it Grave with having incited to theft! What, then, is this new crime? Has M. Grave instigated the pillage of your house? No. You declare him incapable of thinking of another’s wealth.

But M. Grave is an upholder of Communism. He wishes to abolish bourgeois property, he believes that the next revolution will have for its mission the abolition of it; it is his doctrine — false, perhaps — but a doctrine, after all, of which he is not the first teacher: Proudhon and many others thought of it before him.

This, however, is the crime with which you charge him!

To dream of a society other than that which exists is to incite to robbery. It is to be a criminal!

Then you must put Jean Jacques Rousseau beside it Jean Grave.

It would pain you to do that, it Attorney General, Jean Jacques Rousseau was the father of the Revolution of which you are the son; Jean Jacques Rousseau is therefore your grandfather; you see, I have you in the family; don’t be afraid, I will always leave you there.

Jean Jacques Rousseau has said:

“The first man having an enclosure, a plot of ground, who took it into his head to say: ‘This is mine,’ was the real founder of civil society. What crimes, misery, and horror would have been spared mankind if some one had pulled away the fences and filled in the ditches, crying out to his fellows: ‘Beware of listening to this impostor; you are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and that the land belongs to no one person.’”

The irony of things! You indict in the Assize Court the man who, faithful to your principles, wants to overthrow the landmarks set up by the usurper denounced by Jean Jacques Rousseau! . . . . You reproach M. Grave with having said that the next revolution will destroy the offices of your attorneys and notaires, that it will burn all the title-deeds of bourgeois property. You forget your Jacobin decrees, you forget your decrees of June 18 and 19 and August 25, ordering the title-deeds of the ruined world to be burned!

You forget the symbolic tumbrel, which carried to the Place de Greve the charters of the vanquished world, the bonfire that was lit, and the dance of the crowd around that bonfire!

You are going, then, after that, if you are sincere, to put Jean Grave into prison!

You wish to give Jean Grave five years in prison for having spoken ill of our native land and the army, for having incited the soldiers to mutiny, for having instigated the murder of an officer.

Here, again, you should distrust the method of the Attorney General; it is more murderous than Grave’s prose. It consists always of searching through the three hundred pages of the book to find two lines which, taken by themselves, would go to hang a man. It consists in presenting to you, as a reasoned-out system, as a cool syllogism, what is in reality the feverish cadence of a period that ends a chapter devoted to the native-land idea.

I am certainly above suspicion, gentlemen of the jury. I am one of those who venerate my country with all my heart; and in the domain of thought I have, by word and by pen, tried to defend it against those who do not desire it, who can no longer believe in it.

But I am forced to acknowledge that brains greater than mine have treated it as a dangerous chimera and a maleficent Utopia.

“When I think,” cries Tolstoi, “of all the evil I have seen and suffered arising from national hatreds, I say to myself that it all rests on a clumsy lie — the love of one’s country.”

Victor Hugo prophesies:

“In the twentieth century war will be dead, the scaffold will be dead, hatred will be dead, the frontier will be dead: man will live!”

I do not plead this cause, gentlemen: I quote the great men who constitute themselves the advocates of it.

Do we then indeed defend our country against the suspicions of thought? Instead of hunting down the writers who criticize it, shall we not do better by hunting down the bandits who dishonor it?

Is it Victor Hugo, is it Tolstoi, is it Jean Grave — if his modesty will allow me to mention his with such great names — who at this moment are thrusting the idea of Native Land into the gravest dangers?

Under the title of “Les Sans-Patrie” (The Men without a Country), my eloquent fellow-member, M. Vivian, the deputy, wrote a fine article. He denounced the Chief Bandits of Finance — these are his own terms — who are about to flood the French market with the hundred millions of Italian stock that could not be sold either in Rome or Berlin.

The Stock Exchange is like those birds of prey that degride everything they touch. It degrades property, it befouls our native land!

Behold les Sans-Patrie! the men without a country, who will transform the citizens of the whole world into Sans-culottes (the un-breeched) in the literal sense of the word, for, as things are going, they will soon be left without a pair of trousers.

1. Viviani added these lines, of which I leave him the responsibility, but which I have a right to reproduce as a document, since he has poured them forth as public property:

“The government does as it likes. It hunts down Socialists, slanders them in its press, dares to reproach them with not loving their country. But it protects the wretches who strip, exploit, betray their country!”

Laws have been passed against evil-doers. When are they going to be applied?

I am not pleading against government, gentlemen of the jury. I have no care for that.

I am not pleading for the Socialists; they have not asked me to do so. But I tell M. Attorney General: we are all conjointly liable. For, under color of hunting down Anarchy, you hunt down human thought. Today you pursue Jean Grave as an Anarchist, tomorrow, you will pursue some Socialists under pretext that they border upon Anarchy; the day after will come the turn of other thinkers, who are neither Socialists nor Anarchists, but whom you will pursue because they are freethinkers, and you will not allow free-thinkers — you, the freethinkers of another kind!

You sit in judgment, you will end by oppressing; for judgment is not a plane surface upon which you can stay motionless: judgment is an incline, and this incline is one that is never ascended — we descend it, we descend it until we arrive at tyranny.

Now, to complete your famous law of December 11, 1893, I look forward to an enactment that will define a criminal as follows: Every man who dares to think that all is not for the best in the best of Republics should be imprisoned as a criminal.

Very well! You may imprison me with the others, M. Attorney General. Without espousing either the doctrine or theory of any one — that is not my business here — I take the liberty of saying to you: You defend property: then when will you hunt down the chief bandits of Finance? You defend our country: when will you hunt down the cosmopolitan octopus, whose hideous tentacles are wound round every nation and suck out all their blood?

I take the liberty of saying to you with my eloquent confrere, M. Viviani, the deputy: You have made laws against criminals, you apply them to the Anarchists of the humbler sort; when will you apply them to the Anarchists of the higher class?

You apply them to the Anarchists of Thought; when will you apply them to the Anarchists of the Stock Exchange? You apply them to those whom you accuse of blowing up buildings; when will you apply them to those who blow up conscience?

Ah! Certain bourgeois who think of our native land as incarnate have strange ways of defending it — our native land!

And we are surprised when our native land is discredited, when writers, thinkers, tend more and more to confound it with the State — that is, with casual laws and artificial conditions, which change every century or every half-century, preserving only their common characteristic of always oppressing the weak for the profit of a few big men, who in our time are only big, for they do not possess any longer even the extenuating feature of being great.

We are surprised when Jean Grave, who bears Tolstoi in mind, sees in our native land only a hypocritical frontage which masks the selfishness of a bourgeois State!

We are surprised that he cries:

“It was a congenial idea of the bourgeois to substitute the authority of the nation for that of the divine law.”

Before him a man, who has not, that I know, been disturbed on account of Anarchist propaganda, the honorable M. Yves Guyot, had uttered the following reflection:

“Faith in the State is a transformation of the religious idea.”

What would you have? The religious idea is being transformed once more — and it is not yet finished, gentlemen who govern! You have killed God in order to make the State his successor. Your successors see that they are being made fools of, and in their turn they send the State to keep company with the old moons.

It is only the first step of necessary evolution.

The further they go, the more the people will break loose from the State.

Chamfort, Mirabeau’s friend, one of the soldiers of the French Revolution, has written:

“A lucky instinct seems to say to the people. ‘I am at war with all those who govern me, even with those whom I myself have just elected.’”

The same Chamfort adds:

“On seeing the brigandage of the men in office, one is tempted to regard society as a wood full of robbers, of whom the most dangerous are the archers who are charged with guarding the others.”

Of course, you understand that the archers in Chamfort’s mind are the police, no matter what uniform they may be tricked out in from the national wardrobe.

Thomas Paine, the illustrious member of the National Convention, author of the “Rights of Man” — another great ancestor, M. Attorney General! for you may remark that I quote only irreproachable men, — members of the Convention, Girondists, members of the Constituent Assembly, Eighteenth Century philosophers! I keep you in the family; do not fear, you will stay there always — Thomas Paine thus completes Chamfort’s thought:

“Within the memory of man the trade of governing has always been monopolized by the most ignorant and the most rascally individuals of mankind.”

You see, gentlemen of the jury, that we have not waited for either M. Elysée Réclus or M. Jean Grave to say that to the people. It is more than a hundred years ago since folks began to tell them this, and, you see, more than a hundred years later it is repeated to them.

The people are convinced about it. They know now that all shades of politicians, whether clad in white, black, or red, will sing them the same anthem and will add a new chapter to the book of human lies already such a long one.

They wish for no more of it. They have undeceived themselves — not more so about one set than the other — about all, whatsoever they be called. What they abhor is politics, that bourgeois science invented to serve as a mask for the bourgeois parliament.

The worst of it is that the disrepute into which the State has fallen necessarily recoils upon the army.

In fact, in time of peace, the army seems like a sort of gigantic police force at the service of the State; and the more the State seems to oppress, the more it breeds a dull hatred against the army, the instrument of its oppression.

These words are not mine. They are not M. Grave’s. They are a charming poet’s, a poet of the Tour d’Ivoire; they are M. Alfred de Vigny’s:

“The modern army, as soon as it ceases to be at war, becomes a sort of police force. It feels as if it were ashamed of itself, and knows neither what to do nor what to desire.”

The word “shame” embraces the word “army.” I know nothing more terrible nor more sacrilegious.

Is not the germ of every mutiny contained therein?

You want to give M. Grave five years imprisonment because, if the soldiers had read his book, it would have been able “to dissuade them from bowing under a brutalizing discipline.”

Will you prosecute the next edition of M. Renan’s “Souvenir de Jeunesee,” in which he relates that he should never have been able to submit himself to military discipline, and that if he had been compelled to become a soldier he would have deserted.

This passage is infinitely more dangerous, I assure you, than the one marked out in your indictment. For the prosecuted edition has not got into the barracks; you know that it has only reached the journalists. While in the barracks the books of Renan are sometimes to be found; and the soldier who comes across the lines referred to, to whom eight days of unmerited imprisonment has been given, and who is dissatisfied with his captain, such a soldier will think: “See here! Why, M. Renan is a glory to mankind! The minister said that when unveiling his last bust. If a glory to mankind declares that he could not have submitted to the discipline, and would have deserted to escape from it, why should not I imitate this glorious person?”

The syllogism is of the beet construction, and it might readily produce propaganda by deed, for it is easier for a soldier to desert than it is for him to stick his captain under the fifth rib.

Has M. Jean Grave ever said to a soldier to smite his captain under the fifth rib?

He says, what is quite true that to slay him or to strike him in the face would come to absolutely the same thing; for, if the soldier slay, he will be condemned to death, and if he strike him, he will be equally so, according to the terms of the military code, which we are all unanimous in declaring to be some-what excessive.

But let us once for all be done with this iniquitous method that consists of isolating a couple of lines from an entire book to present as the dominant note of a work which is only the feverish conclusion of a heated period.

If you want to find an incitement to murder for the soldiers of the French army, you should not seek it in Jean Grave; you must look further and higher.

Listen to this page; Victor Hugo is addressing the Belgians: —

“People! There is but one people t If Bonaparte invade you, having at his back . . . that army, . . . those Pretorians those Janissaries who should have been heroes, but whom he has turned into brigands; if he come upon your frontiers, rush for your pitchforks, stones, scythes, for your plough-shares; take to your knives, take to your guns, take to your carbines; do all this!”

These hordes, these janissaries, these brigands, were the French army! For, if the French army is only respectable under the Republic, as we have been for three-quarters of a century under monarchy, we might have despised the French army three out of every four years.

Well, now, I ask you if political hatred, party hatred, has been able to lead a great man to the pitch of crying out to foreigners: “Assaisinate the French army!” what is there astonishing in the social indignation of a young polemical writer having blown to red beat some lines, which are indeed but tame beside the frightful incitement issued from the lips of the great Victor Hugo!

And you want to condemn Grave to five years imprisonment to save the honor of the army. . . .

Oh, the logic of your justice!

You want to condemn Grave to five years imprisonment also because at the end of a chapter in which he recounts the barbarity of certain employers who ill-treat the human machine, who have a stone for a heart, dollars in place of bowels, he supposes that, if the exploited martyrs boldly killed one of those employers, the lesson, perhaps, would serve as an example to others.

The warmth of a thinker you tax with being a justification!

But why do you not prosecute all the other bursts of indignation?

Listen to these lines, M. Attorney General; I take them from a journal which is not the journal “La Revolté”; it is the journal of M. de Goncourt.

On January 18, 1871, he is surprised that the people, dying of hunger, remain quiet, when the bakers — he mentions one I do not name him — are setting before the rich white bread and rolls, and the purveyors are getting game and poultry for them.

His surprise grows into irritation, exasperation, and in the end he cries:

“When I read in Marat’s paper the infuriated denunciations of the ‘People’s Orator’ against the grocer class, I believed them to be the exaggerations of a madman. Now I see that blunt was in the right. For my part, I should see no harm if they hung up to their shop-fronts two or three of these greedy rogues. . . . . Maybe a few murders, committed intelligently, are, in revolutionary times, the only practical means of keeping the rising within reasonable bounds.”

The incitement is a pretty one! The justification equally so.

And when the same de Goncourt thought of all those idle folk who live on the sweat of the people, he cried: “It would be a good riddance to stupid sweildom and elegant imbecility if some fine day an infernal machine would kill all of Paris going round the lake in the Bois de Boulogne between four and six o’clock!”

Does it or does it not incite to murder?

When it concerns de Goncourt you smile: that is Literature! When it relates to Grave you shudder: that is Anarchy!

Well, I tell you, I do not know what it is: but what you are doing is not Justice!

Now, then, let us be frank. Tear away the veil!

They are neither the pleadings nor the incitements of a thought which you arraign before the Assize Court: it is Thought itself.

It is not because M. Grave has written imprudent or criminal words that the Attorney General impeaches him before you. It is because M. Grave has formulated a scientific theory which is in contradiction to the Attorney General’s. Or, if you prefer, M. Grave’s crime consists in the mere expression of his theory.

It is not a man whom you wish to imprison; it is an idea.

The modern jury is asked to condemn a political system just as in the time of Louis XIV. Parliament or the Sorbonne was asked to condemn a treatise on indulgence or transubstantiation.

My comparison does not please you? Then I will change it. The jury is asked to condemn a system which lays claim to being that of the future, just as Parliament or the Sorbonne was asked to condemn those who set forth the principles of modern society a couple of centuries too soon.

The Attorney General says to you: The theory which I indict, if it were realized, would abolish the bourgeoisie.

Precisely as the bourgeois system, by its realization, swept away the nobility.

Whenever a thing is put in the place of another, the first must be removed in order to put the second there.

The Parliament of olden times undoubtedly condemned the principles of modern society.

Can you imprison for principles which are put forward as those of future society?

I say, no.

Why?

Because, in passing sentence, the old Parliament was but logical: its powers rested on right divine.

Whilst you, in passing sentence, do but belie yourselves: your powers rest on free investigation.

You are the sons of a revolution which was effected just to make impossible the thing you are solicited to do today.

You can condemn a man; you can condemn a crime: you cannot condemn an idea.

You can only discuss it, or refute it, if that be possible.

Be calm, gentlemen of the jury, and do not make a monster of M. Grave’s idea. This idea is not the monstrous fungus of which the Attorney General spoke to you just now; that would be spawned, without root, in a fin de sircle delirium. It is not of recent growth. It is two hundred years old. Not only has M. Grave not enriched by his bombs the bourgeois martyrology, he has not even enriched by his book the intellectual repertory of mankind.

What, then, is M. Grave’s idea?

It may be summed up in two propositions: First, if man be bad, it may be imputed to the social apparatus: destroy this apparatus, man will become good; second, to prevent this social apparatus being formed again, it is needful to go as far as the total elimination of the principle of authority.

The total elimination of the principle of authority and the institutions, the powers that maintain it: these are the means and the ends of scientific Anarchy, the aim of which is the realization of the common good by the suppression of competition and by the harmonizing of interests.

I am not discussing. I am not refuting. I am explaining.

Is this new?

Take Rabelais and read his description of the Abbey of Thelema: No more government, no more constraint, individualism substituted everywhere for collectivism; and above the gate, as principle, the sole law: Do what you wish — that is, Do as you ought; for man, having become good, would, by hypothesis, find his will coincide with his duty.

Open Voltaire: His hero, Candide, visits Eldorado, the Eden dreamed of in the philosopher’s mind. As in the Abbey of Thelema: No laws, no constraint; harmony, happiness everywhere.

“Candide asked to see the Court of Justice, the Parliament; they told him they had none, and that they never went to law. He inquired if they had any prisons, and they told him no.”

This is the theory; it is a moral malady! cries the Attorney General.

Ah! When a new idea rises up in the world, do not be so ready to cry: It is a moral malady!

What is occult science? It is unknown science. As soon as unknown science becomes known, it ceases to be occult to become official.

Formerly chemistry was called “alchemy,” and alchemists were burned. Nowadays alchemy has become our chemistry, and the chemists are decorated.

It is with Sociology as it is with all the sciences.

Every idea which is not consecrated, vulgarized, and become part of the impedimenta of our every-day opinions, which conflicts with our custom and our education, seems a monster.

We readily consider it as a moral malady, and we quickly make answer to those who propound it to us: “You are out of your mind!”

If someone had said to an old Roman senator: “Slavery is a disgrace, slavery must be abolished,” the old Roman senator would have replied: “Destroy slavery? You are an Anarchist! Slavery! Why, it is the basis of society! It is the basis of all society! There can be no society without slavery!” . . . . And, with hand upon his code, the old senator would have defended slavery lust as today, with hand upon his law books, the Attorney General defends capital.

None of the institutions defended by the Attorney General today but were formerly indicted as moral maladies.

If any one had predicted to a man of ancient times the society of the Middle Ages, he would have replied “You are a sick person!”

St. Gregory of Nyssa, the immortal thinker of the fourth century, — Gregory of Nyasa was canonized, and he has been quoted by “La Revolté”; with this double recommendation he ought not to be much in sympathy with the Attorney General; no matter, I shall borrow a few words from him. St. Gregory of Nyasa wrote these lines:

“He who would give the name of robbery or parricide to the iniquitous invention of interest would not be very far from the truth. What, indeed, does it signify if you have made yourselves masters of the wealth of another by scaling walls or by killing passers-by, or if you have acquired what belongs to you by the merciless method of the loan” . . . .

If any one had prophesied to St. Gregory as follows:

“A day will come when what thou treatest as robbery and assassination will become the law of the world, and when an Attorney General will indict in the Assize Court the writers who share thy opinion. The whole of society will-be founded upon usury. They will build a temple which they will call the Stock Exchange. This temple will fill the place of thy cathedrals, even as thy cathedrals have filled the place of the temple of Venus or Jupiter. The priests serving in this new temple will be called Levi, Axton, Reined; Hugo Oberndoerffer. They will swindle others out of all the gold that will insure to them omnipotence. They will buy everything that is buyable, and some of the things that are not. And vain revolts against their frightful empire will serve only to make more manifest its terrible solidity!” . . . .

If any one had prophesied that to St. Gregory, St. Gregory, who believed in God, would have joined his hands and cried: “Lord, deliver us from such a moral malady!”

The malady has run its course. From time to time, to testify to its evil virus, it has hatched out Panamas — those tertiary accidents of the body social which shatter and break down; and every day the cancer increases that soon will corrupt us all.

Alas! you do not hasten to say: this is a moral malady!

This, good or bad, this is human Thought.

Do not put Thought in prison.

It always escapes from it.

Do not kill Thought; it always comes alive again.

See! it has been hanged on every gibbet, it has been nailed to every pillory, it has lighted up all the gibbets with its rays, it has illuminated all the pillories with the fire of its haloes.

They have decapitated it, burnt, tortured, crucified it! Within walls, very similar to ours, magistrates, clad in the same purple and capped with headgear like the Attorney General’s, have crushed it beneath similar social thunderbolts in similar murderous periods, droned in similar inflections of voice, timed by similar see-saw gestures; for, in the midst of evolutions, revolutions, cataclysms, when all things change and when all things crash together, immovable human justice, everlastingly victorious on the eve and always vanquished on the morrow, keeps the same gesture and the same physiognomy.

For Thought the Conciergerie is the antechamber of the Panthéon! And the magistrates cannot go out without passing the statue of one of their victims.

They think to suppress Thought: Thought emits light.

Every day, at the corners of the crossways, in public places, the Etienne Dolets, crowned with immortelles, smile in the morning splendors that greet the awakening of Paris!

Let Thought run its course, gentlemen; do not stop it.

Defend yourselves; do not persecute.

Gentlemen, it is my last appeal that I send forth to you from the depths of thought, with all the energy of my faith and my youth: Jurymen of the end of the century, do not be persecutors!

“The garden of the laws is full of ironical plants, of unexpected Mowers and by no means its slightest charm is this subversion of the natural order, whereby appear at the end of stems and branches fruit just the opposite of that which is promised by the essence of the tree or bush. The apple-tree bears figs, and the cherry-tree medlars: plants yield sweet potatoes, and hollyhocks salsify. It is delicious.” Séverine.

The Beauties of Government.

The readers of Liberty are urgently invited to contribute to this department. It is open to any statement of facts which exhibit the State in any phase of its fourfold capacity of fool, meddler, knave, and tyrant. Either original accounts based upon the writer’s own knowledge, or apparently reliable accounts clipped front recent publications, are welcome.

The Government a Partner in a Mean Swindle.

[American Machinist.]

Sigourney, Iowa, Jan. 5. — Post-office Inspector Mercer yesterday arrested B. H. Wills and William A. Bell, both prominent citizens, and managers of State patent investment companies. The arrest caused a sensation, as both men have been for years transacting a big business. The plan of the concerns was to watch the daily papers and get a list of patents granted. The victim was informed that he could trade his right for a farm, but that it would cost $40 to look up the title. The money was sent, and then, in due time, the victim was advised not to make the trade, as the land was heavily encumbered. — Boston “Daily Journal.” Editor American Machinist:

The only remedy is to teach the possible victims that there is not one chance in a thousand that an offer from a patent-selling concern is anything whatever but an introduction to a “mean swindle,” as mean as, or meaner, than the above.

It appears that “both men have been for years transacting a big business,” and in truth the business is a large and prosperous one, the first and principal partner being the United States Government! The government paves the way, gives the opportunity, refuses to afford the victim simple and cheap means of information, and then sends a post-office inspector to arrest the swindler and fine him a part of his booty. The crop of patents issued each week is about five hundred, and not half of them are for genuine inventions. The bulk are for mere contrivances of lawyers, amateurs, farmers, ladies, boys, and unmechanical people of all sorts, and are not worth a copper each.

Take a sample case, not an imaginary, but a real and frequent case, and follow it through. A brakeman invents a car coupler, but, as every brakeman in the country has invented a car coupler, the subject is worn thin, and there is nothing new to be had in that line. It is easy enough to contrive some new quirk, to add a dingus above or wingwang underneath, but not one patent a year shows an item of the smallest value. Of course, the brakeman applies for a patent, and, of course, he employs one of the “no patent, no pay” solicitors, whose business it is to forge gimcracks into such formal shape that some sort of a patent can be worked over each case. He gets some sort of a patent on the car coupler, good or bad, but it has a red seal and a blue ribbon, and it is all the same to the brake-man. The shyster — and I use that term with care — cannot fail to get a patent on anything presented, he secures his share of the booty, drops the matter, and things are ripe and ready for a third partner — the patent-selling shark. The government has undoubtedly notified the solicitor that there is not the ghost of a shade of difference between the car coupler and dozens of others already patented, but it does not require even that difference to secure a patent. The brakeman never hears of it, because the business is entirely between the government and the solicitor, and such a thing as informing the inventor of the true position of his contrivance is not thought of. The government acts on the cheap fiction that the solicitor is representing the inventor, while he, in fact, is simply beating him.

The shark has various methods, changing his game as fast as found out; and this title-examining dodge is as good as any. It is thoroughly hidden, very simple, apparently very honest, and quite safe. The shark sends out his circulars, and the brakeman, after writing a dozen unanswered letters to railroads and car-manufacturing companies, is tempted to see what he can do through him. A little correspondence follows, and he receives a statement that the patent can be exchanged for a certain farm. Brakeman is not at all astonished at the offer of a farm for his invention, had expected more than that, and tells the shark to go ahead. Shark then writes the brakeman that it is wise to have the title of the land examined, at an advance fee of forty dollars, and the trick often works and yields the shark a “big business.”

The government has beat the brakeman $35, the solicitor $50, the shark $40; all shake hands and proceed to do up the next inventor. George B. Grant.

Extension of the Comstock Laws.

[Dr. Foote’s Health Monthly.]

It is now about twenty years since the Congress of the United States was tricked into enacting a law for the regulation of morals through limitation of postal privileges. It was a new departure in the line of Federal legislation, and one of which the constitutionality is still a fair question for doubt and debate, but the ostensible object was the suppression of means of diffusion of obscene literature, and the disposition to use any effective measure for so good a cause made it difficult to see that a bad principle, method, and precedent was being established. So the “Comstock Mail Laws” went into the “Revised Statutes,” and we have watched their operation ever since, with abundant opportunity to remark, as one abuse followed another, “we told you so.” The Hon. Elizur Wright was one of the first to agree with us that the real object of such legislation was to hamper, limit, and suppress freedom of discussion, — in short, the liberty of the press, — and this was indeed confessed in one of Comstock’s reports in which he congratulated his co-workers on the progress made in their attempts to stamp out the literature of freethought, and discussions of social and sexual affairs. We have reported fully the perversion of this law in its outrageous application to earnest reformers, such as Editors Bennett, Heywood, Harman, Lent, and Caldwell, and cannot take space here even to attempt a brief résumé of these cases; but it will suffice to offer the last case as proof that this law is mainly employed illegitimately as a tool of personal spite.

Mr. J. B. Wise, of Clay Centre, Kan., was engaged in religious controversy with a Rev. Mr. Vennum, each trying to convert the other, and quoting scripture in the effort. Mr. Wise, possibly ignorant of the law, and evidently forgetful that clergymen may be mean and spiteful, was unwise enough to send by mail a quotation from Isaiah mod, verse 12, and Mr. Vennum was venomous enough to put the matter in the hands of United States District Attorney Perry, and thus cause the arrest of Mr. Wise on the charge of sending obscene literature by mail. Mr. Wise is jailed at Leavenworth, Kan., awaiting trial. What the result will be we cannot predict, but this is the last, not by any means the worst or most outrageous, of the cases brought under the “Comstock Mail Law.”

In a celebrated supreme court decision Justice Field argued that this mail law could not be regarded as an abridgment of constitutionally guaranteed liberty of the press, because the mails were not the only means of distribution, that the express and freight transportation left the way open for any matter ruled out of the mails. The fair inference was that any United States law covering both mail and express deliveries would be unconstitutional, because a limitation of the freedom of the press; and now, what have we in prospect but just such a state of the laws! Senate bill 2065 was in June, 1894, favorably reported from the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads, — and passed by the Senate. It is now in the hands of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, and it is, as itself bath said, “a bill to prevent carrying of obscene literature and articles designed for indecent and immoral use from one State or Territory into another State or Territory” by “any express company or other common carrier.”

We doubt that there was any debate on this bill in either the Senate Committee that reported it, or in its passage by the Senate. It probably went through “On its face”; presenting a fair and attractive exterior, the over-busy legislators saw nothing of its interior evil principle or its ulterior consequences. They were not aware that in making this new law it simply remains for the conviction of Mr. Wise (if it is not expected to convict him, why was he arrested?) to exclude the Bible from the mails and all other means of distribution — thus paralyzing the work of the churches and Bible societies. There are other possible consequences that all fair and right-minded folks would acknowledge very objectionable, but we cite just this one as an argument likely to be appreciated by the greatest number.

Died after the Clubbing.

[New York World.]

John Curley supported his mother by delivering newspapers. He lived with her at No. 53 Adams street, Newark. On Friday night he had been drinking. Policeman Long finally arrested him. Curley showed fight and refused to go. Long gave him a few taps on the shins with his club. Then Policeman Smith came along, and what happened is best told by the witnesses.

“I saw the officers club Curley,” said John Manning, of No. 150 Ferry street. “Long wasn’t so bad, but when Smith came along he sailed in and gave him many awful welts. When they got to the police station, Curley stood up in front of the desk and gave his name and address. Then he fell on the floor. They clubbed him as he lay there. After they had him in the cell they gave him an unmerciful beating. You could hear his heart-rending cries blocks away. Curley did not attempt to strike the police. He simply struggled to escape.”

James McCarthy and William Daley were in the police station when Curley was being locked up. They say that Policeman Smith clubbed him on the way to the cell and they heard Curley’s cries after he was out of sight. They protested to the Lieutenant.

Curley died in his cell an hour and a half after being locked up. Lieutenant Lewis immediately sent for Police Captain Daly, who summoned County Physician Elliott and Dr. Thum. The doctors could not find any wounds on Curley’s body that could have caused his death, and so Captain Daly said this was enough to clear the officers. He declared that Curley had assaulted them and tore their clothing, and that they had used no more force than was necessary.

James McGinn, Curley’s brother-in-law, called upon Chief of Police Hopper during the afternoon, and demanded a full investigation. He gave the chief a list of names of those who had seen the clubbing.

“I don’t blame Policeman Long,” he said; “Smith was the man who did the heavy clubbing.”

County Physician Elliott made an autopsy later on, and found a clot of blood on Curley’s brain, probably caused by a blow. Curley’s friends accept this as positive proof of the truth of their story. The result of the autopsy was reported to the prosecutor.

The “Anti-anarchist” Campaign.

[Press Cable Message.]

Berlin, July 29. — The dissensions of the ministers over the policy to be pursued toward the Anarchists have become acute. Count Botho zu Eulenburg, the Tory premier of Prussia, leads the ministerial group who demand exceptional laws to stop the spread of Anarchic and Social Democratic propaganda. Dr. Hinzpeter, once the Emperor’s tutor, is said to be exerting all his influence in favor of Eulenburg’s proposals. The Emperor is said to be undecided. While inclined to favor repressive laws, he fears to oppose Chancellor von Caprivi, who would undoubtedly resign his office the moment the Eulenburg programme should be adopted. One way out of the dilemma has been suggested — probably at the Emperor’s instance — and that is, to lay the whole subject before the Federal Council, not in the form of a bill, but merely as a matter for discussion. The opinion of the federated governments could be obtained thus without the imperial government being committed to any definite policy.

The new Swiss law against Anarchists went into effect July 25. The first case in which it was applied was that of Paul Sisternas, a notorious Anarchist, who was expelled from France in 1891. He sought refuge in Geneva, and there continued to plot. Under this new law he was expelled. The German newspapers contrast such decisive action of the free little republic in handling revolutionists with the selfish policy of England. The Swiss law is certainly severe enough to please the most reactionary Prussian. It provides five years’ imprisonment for everybody convicted of inciting to acts which imperil human life, or of working to upset the present social and political order. It penalizes heavily the manufacture and the illegal possession of explosives. It gives the government power to expel any native or foreign Anarchist, and to punish anybody failing to denounce those who are known to be plotting Anarchic crimes.

The editors of the German Social Democratic journals printed in Zurich and Basle are preparing to move their offices, probably to London. The conservative journals here praise Switzerland for passing this law, which they regard as an example to Germany.

Compulsory Arbitration.

[New York Sun.]

Washington. — Mr. Springer introduced in the House a bill to create a National Board of Arbitration to settle controversies between employees and employers. The bill is drawn on the lines of President Cleveland’s message of April, 1888.

It establishes in the Department of Justice a National Board of Arbitration, to consist of three members, which shall be charged, among other duties, with the consideration and settlement by means of arbitration, whenever possible, of all controversies between employees and their employers. The members of the board are to hold office for six years and receive $5,000 per annum; and the President may, in his discretion, designate the commissioner of labor for the time being to perform the duties of one of the members of the board, and in that case only two shall be appointed.

Whenever differences or controversies arise between railroad corporations or other transportation companies engaged in the transportation of property or passengers among the States, or with foreign nations, or within the Territories of the United States, or within the District of Columbia, and the employees of said companies, and whenever differences or controversies arise between corporations or companies engaged in the manufacture or mining of articles or products used in or essential to the carrying by such corporations or companies of such commerce, and their employees, which differences or controversies may hinder such transportation of property or passengers, or such interstate or foreign commerce, or which may hinder the transportation of the mails of the United States, and whenever any differences or controversies within said Territories or within the District of Columbia between employees and their employers occur, all such difficulties or controversies may be settled by the National Board of Arbitration created by this act.

Whenever either party to any difference or controversy may desire to submit the same to arbitration, it shall present to the National Board a petition setting forth the facts and praying for the relief it desires. When the board receives such a petition it shall submit a copy of it to the other side, with notice to appear and answer it. In case the party declines to file an answer or refuses to appear in the case, the board is to make an investigation and render a decision, the same as if an answer had been filed. The board is to report the result of its investigations to the President, who shall transmit the same to Congress.

A sufficient sum of money to pay all its expenses under this act, and to carry it into effect, is appropriated for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1895.

A Protected Orthography.

[New York Evening Post.]

We have long been accustomed to distrust the Hon. William E. Chandler in any public capacity, and as a reformer particularly we can but view him with strong suspicion. The American Philological Association, or the friends of its “Twenty-four Joint Rules for Amended Spelling,” do not share our prejudices against the New Hampshire statesman, and are using him as an instrumentality for fastening these rules upon the government printing office. For a scholar in politics they would more naturally have resorted to the Hon. Cabot Lodge, but as a veteran protector of infant industries, Mr. Chandler had superior claims, the amended spelling being avowedly in the interest of infants. This class of the community is not, indeed, passionately addicted to the study of public documents, does not cry for them, and has never complained of the difficulty of reading them on account of our absurd English orthography. Still, for their sake, it is proposed to compel millions of adults, English-speaking and foreign, to learn to read and spell anew in order to avail themselves of the products of the government press. Mr. Chandler, being an adept in class legislation, accordingly introduced in the Senate on February 19, 1894, a joint resolution to that effect, embodying the “Twenty-four Joint Rules,” at full length, and the arguments by which they are supported.

Everyone who has watched the slow progress of the reform knows, of course, that the amenders are aiming at bigger game than the public printer. They hope through him to put the screws on publishing houses and dictionary makers and text-book makers and journalists. The joint resolution quite frankly professes its design, — “to encourage better spelling of the English language, to make easier, more logical, and more rapid the work of pupils in learning to read, and to reduce the cost of printing and writing.” A paternal government which regards it as its province to hold up the price of silver, and to foster manufactures, and to furnish work to the unemployed and a living wage to every worker, may well take a hand in this new business, on an economic pretext.

The Modern Laws of Settlement.

[Boston Globe.]

Portsmouth, N. H., May 13. — This city has a problem in the passage of a law by the Maine legislature. The law is:

Any common carrier that brings into this State any person not having a settlement in the State shall cause the removal beyond the lines of the State of any such person if he or she shall fall into distress within a year, which removal said common carriers are hereby authorized to make, provided such person shall be delivered on board a boat or at a depot of such common carrier by the overseers or municipal officers requesting such removal, and in default thereof such common carrier shall be liable to an action of assumpsit for the expense of the support of such person after such default.

A Maine man well acquainted with the law said: “I am not surprised that the law is beginning to attract the attention of New Hampshire people. I know that the law has been taken advantage of by Maine officials within a short time. To the station agent of the Boston and Maine Railroad at Saco two persons were delivered who had become charges on the city, and a demand was made upon the Boston and Maine to carry them out of the State. The station agent, acting upon instructions from superiors, so it is said, complied with the demand and furnished the couple tickets out of the state, and there is no doubt that they were dumped into Portsmouth, the nearest point.

“I do not wonder that New Hampshire people consider the law unjust. No doubt the Boston and Maine annually carries into Maine, as do all common carriers, many persons who become charges upon different communities within a year. The law gives a loophole for fraud, as there is nothing to prevent a person getting transportation out of the state if he cares to tell the authorities that he is a pauper and was brought into the State by a common carrier within the preceding twelve months.

“A rigid enforcement of the law would be a serious thing for New Hampshire. If the railroads are obliged to haul paupers out of the state of Maine, they must drop them somewhere, and it stands to reason that they are not going to haul them through three states when they can get rid of them by dropping them as soon as they are over the Maine border.”

A well-known lawyer said:

“The law seems as unjust to the common carriers as it is to New Hampshire. When a person buys a ticket over a railroad, the latter has no knowledge of the former’s worldly circumstances. So far as I can see, the only protection carriers could have would be to exact a bond from every purchaser of a ticket to a Maine point. This would hardly be nineteenth-century railroading, and the landlords of Maine would object as seriously as the passengers. If the law mentioned is enforced it must necessarily make trouble all round.”

Uncle Sam’s Queer Business Methods.

[Burlington Hawteye.]

When the government decided on the size of the postal cards to be issued, some one in authority thought he knew what sizes he wanted, and did not propose to have other people’s opinions cut any figure. As a result of this egotism, or whatever it may be called, it might be well to bear in mind that Uncle Sam will not have postal cards of any size but that established by him, and if his cards are cut or mutilated he will have nothing further to do with them. The penny stamp on the corner is an agreement to carry that identical card as it was originally made. They can’t be cut, nor can they be fooled with in other ways.

The trimming of a card, for instance, to get it in an envelope for an answer, is prohibited, although such prohibition is not generally known.

A Quincy business firm sent to the post office 10,000 cards that had been trimmed for convenience’s sake, and Postmaster Montgomery returned them, as they could not be sent through the mails in their mutilated condition. The firm lost a cool $100 by the trimming operation.

[Usually, when you buy something, it is yours to use, mutilate, or destroy. But Uncle Sam sells you a postal card and prohibits you from “fooling with it” in any way. Does Uncle Sam know the reason of this stupid violation of business sense and the right of property? Hardly.]

Pays His Wife for Kissing Another.

[New York Sun.]

Justice Bartlett has granted Caroline Thrall $50 a week alimony in her suit for separation against Edwin A. Thrall, a wealthy Maiden lane jeweller, pending in the supreme court, Brooklyn. Although the suit was begun three years ago, the motion for alimony was only made last week, the understanding between the couple being that no steps were to be taken to prosecute the case as long as Mr. Thrall carried out his agreement to pay to his wife $50 a week. Mr. Thrall, in his answer, accused his wife of kissing an Episcopal minister and a man with whom they boarded, and when the trial comes on interesting developments will doubtless be forthcoming.

Government Protecting from Slander.

[New York Sun.]

To tell a man he “is incapable of speaking other than London English,” is an offence which cost the litigant who thus described the shortcomings of a lawyer’s clerk $750 damages at the hands of a British jury recently. Major Baker, the agent of an American insurance company, was the Man who indulged in the vile slander, and now he is wondering what town he should have named instead of London in order to turn the observation from a reproach to a compliment.

The New Navy’s Record for a Day.

[New York Sun.]

The annual naval manoeuvres have not begun yet, but the mobilization of the fleet has commenced. Already the results are interesting. The Jaseur has broken down seriously. Her place is to be taken by the Dryad, which broke down a few weeks ago. The Onyx, sister ship to the Jaseur, has also broken down. The steering gear of the Medea has gone wrong. The Pearl had signalled “Not under control,” but happily has recovered her faculties again. The Pique has broken down. Two first-class torpedo boats have broken down. The Speedy broke down some days ago and cannot go to sea. This is the list of casualties for one day.

Approve, but Don’t Show It.

[Press Cable Message.]

Franz Held’s tragedy, “Das Fest auf der Bastille,” is about to be produced at the Berlin National Theater. Freiherr von Richthofen, chief of police, has permitted the production on the condition that the piece shall be withdrawn in case the audience be moved to a demonstration by the political sentiments of the characters. The management of the theatre therefore requests all auditors to listen in silence.

Five Dollars for a Clap.

[Minneapolis Penny Press.]

George White, of this city, was up before Judge Williams, of the United States court, on the charge of contempt of court in throwing a rock at a Northern Pacific train. He proved to the satisfaction of the court that he was 150 feet from the train and that the rock could have done no damage, and was thereupon discharged. He was lined $5 for applauding the decision of the court, Judge Williams holding that clapping of hands under such circumstances was contempt of court.

That “Color Line.”

J. William Lloyd, writing in Liberty of July 28, makes an effort to draw the lines taut between philosophical, non-invasive Anarchists, and those who “by deeds of fanatical violence and senseless destruction are filling the gentle with horror,” etc. His effort is not up to his usual standard. Compared with the excellent and logical editorial by Yarros in the same number, it shows a remarkable lack of comprehension of the position occupied by those known as “revolutionary Anarchists,” and also a sort of “back-number” manner of regarding existing conditions.

Carried out as Mr. Lloyd states his plan, I doubt if a dozen “plumb-liners” would step out from the crowd and form under his “heart gules on a field argent.” Judging by conversations held with professed plumb-liners, I come to this conclusion.

First allow me to state the position of those whom Mr. Lloyd calls “militant Anarchists,” and it will be apparent that he does not understand them.

They are not, in the first place, deliberate choosers of violence and destruction; no hater of established authority feels a natural inclination to kill, burn, and destroy, or to see it done, if by peaceable means the prevailing injustice can possibly be abolished. They recognize the fact that in the intellectual age we may hope for final adjustments of human relations without the use of force, and will heartily rejoice when this age shall come. They say, as does the writer above mentioned, “the use of force by the victims of plutocracy may not be wise or just in all cases, but it is natural and inevitable.”

Mark Twain, in “Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,” gives a fine justification of revolts, beginning with these words: “A thousand years of villainy swept away in one tidal wave of blood a half drop of blood for each hogshead of it that had been pressed by slow tortures out of the people in the weary centuries of wrong and shame and misery.”

A long course of brutal oppressions will engender a course of brutal reprisals, as certain as that lightning and storms follow a season of oppressive heat and varying winds. There is no royal road over this stormy passage. The time of philosophic thought and calm consideration may be on the other side, but the whole unhappy, much-abused world cannot jump over to it in a single moment. Such poetic and gentle souls as the inventor of the passive emblem may be so far past that crude, turbulent stage as to see no excuse for its existence; but men who have drudged ten hours of every day from early childhood and borne all the hardships and biting anxieties of bitter poverty, are in no condition, mentally or physically, to reason themselves and their employers into a millennial state of equal freedom. If they are aroused at all, it will be by a shock; and their first effective revolt will be a shock to some one else.

It is perhaps to be regretted that men are not reasonable enough to settle all disputes without recourse to violence. But the cold fact must be admitted — they are not. The human race has had to pass through pain, struggle, storm, stress, violence, suffering of every description, to arrive at the present stage of intellectual development. The earth passed through fire, storms, earthquakes, convulsions of all kinds, before it became a fit place for human habitation. If we had had the ordering of these things, we would have made people wise and good, and the world beautiful, in the first place. But we had not, and so the convulsions and storms were inevitable. No beautiful thing exists now but had its foundation down deep in the soil of earth, or the crude, rough material of nature. The beauty which we hope for in human relations will be built or painful experiences and bitter lessons.

On the other hand, as I understand it, passive-resistance Anarchists are not advocates of peace on sentimental grounds. I never talked with one yet who did not admit that if violent reprisals would bring us any nearer to the time of universal equal freedom he would be glad to see them occur. He will also inwardly rejoice to see a man who is bullying a small boy deliberately knocked down by some lover of justice, and, with precisely the same feeling, he will read of the punishment of some tyrant who has caused women and children to spend their lives in misery. These feelings are natural and cannot be checked even in the gentlest of philosophers. Mr. Lloyd bases his desire for a dividing line on sentimental lines alone. Thus: It is naughty to strike and throw dynamite, so let us all, who love peace at any price, find a nice spot by ourselves and stand under a beautiful red, white, and green flag. How many would care to label themselves as advocating peace under all circumstances, and as always condemning “an appeal to force” from every miserable victim of injustice? With the Quakers, this is part of their religion. Is it a religious principle, a “thus saith the Lord” mandate, with Mr. Lloyd?

I would like to ask my friend to read over his paragraph, “If we do not do this, we shall continue to see, on the one hand, the credit of our good deeds transferred to our dynamiting namesakes; and, on the other, shall ourselves receive the blame of their fanatical outbreaks and follies.”

Doesn’t it sound a bit pharisaical, self-righteous, unfair? Beside it, read that splendid sentence of Yarros: “What is claimed and emphasized is that, when workingmen do retaliate and force down their oppressors’ throats a dose of their own medicine, it is not the business of lovers of equity and justice to denounce them.”

Yes, I have read and admired “No Flag” until tears filled my eyes; and I think the author’s latest effort very inconsistent with that beautiful poem. Lizzie M. Holmes.

The White Flag.

To the Editor of Liberty:

I most heartily agree with Comrade J. Wm. Lloyd in his views on the name Anarchist, as expressed in Liberty of July 28. I have experienced the displeasure of friends to whom I sent some copies of the paper, and in my opinion it was simply because they confounded philosophical Anarchy with the red-flag Anarchy, which is a most deadly poison to our progress. The sooner we make the distinction clear the better. The design of the white flag proposed seems very appropriate as far as it goes; but I would suggest that the red heart be placed in the centre of a diamond of green in the middle of the flag, horizontally, with the lettering over and beneath the diamond as Mr. Lloyd proposes, only leaving out “is,” Our Country the World, or the Planet Earth. The green diamond conveys more forcibly all we recognize in this color, — youth, hope, growth, prosperity, healthy vision, etc., and the cutting quality of the diamond, known to cut the hardest substances in existence, in addition, — this last being symbolical of the true cutting power of the principles of philosophical Anarchism, — and asserting our integrity of purpose, power, and confidence.

Respectfully submitted to our friends, C. J. Zeitinger.

No Stilts for Women.

To the Editor of Liberty:

I, a woman in favor of equal rights for both sexes, protest against the use of the ballot by women. I emphatically say with “y” that woman suffrage would mean “more Comstock laws, more prohibition, more meddling, more cant and hypocricy, more bigotry and intolerance, more reform by force.” I have seen women voters at work in Wyoming; what have they accomplished there? Why, they have learned the art of selling their votes, that is all.

The only sensible thing that I have read from Mrs. Dietrick on the subject, is her picture of the politician. Why cannot she understand that the low level American politicians have reached is due to the form of our government? Although she clearly sees the depth of degradation reached in this country, by rulers and ruled, she insists on the necessity of putting into the hands of women this most treacherous weapon, the ballot, or majority rule. Her great argument, that mothers teach their infants to walk at the risk of broken noses and bruised limbs, is too utterly absurd. Does she mean that the State must play the part of a mother toward its political infants? The good lady ought to understand that the comparison is decidedly faulty. A mother teaches her child to walk, not on stilts, but on its feet. The ballot, like stilts, is a fictitious help; hence the frequent stumbling and slow progress of those who use it on the road to liberty and happiness. Why cannot Mrs. Dietrick see that? I am afraid she is intoxicated with her great erudition. She cannot find her way and equilibrium in this plain matter-of-fact world called the American Republic: hence her useless display of rhetoric and learning. Caroline de Maupassant.

Anarchist Letter-Writing Corps.

The Secretary wants every reader of Liberty to send in his name for enrolment. Those who do so thereby pledge themselves to write, when possible, a letter every fortnight, on Anarchism or kindred subjects, to the “target” assigned in Liberty for that fortnight. All, whether members or not, are asked to lose no opportunity of informing the secretary of suitable targets. Address, Stephen T. Byington, East Hardwick, Vt.

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The “Home Advocate” published four of our letters, besides two letters indirectly connected with our work.

Suggestion No. 9. — When a paper containing a letter from one of the corps falls into your hands, clip it out and use it as a tract.

Target, section A. — Dr. John Kaye, northeast corner Twenty sixth and Brown streets, Philadelphia, Pa. He is president of the Friendship Liberal League of that city. In a woman-suffrage lecture he said: “The difference between Anarchism and this government is that the Anarchists would allow all to act at their pleasure, provided they do not interfere with the liberty of one another, the actor being allowed to decide upon the point of interference; while the principles of this government grant to each the right to do as he or she pleases as long as that person does not interfere with the action of any one else; but we, the people, draw the line of interference in each case.” It is suggested that he be shown the injustice of majority rule.

Section B. — Henry Heaton, Atlantic, Iowa, has a letter on currency in the “Voice” of July 26. He says that to increase the volume of money would not make it permanently more plentiful, because the increased volume would be offset by increased cheapness; that “there is only one sound position on this question upon which all honest men can agree,” to wit. “We demand that so far as is possible the money question shall be so handled that the purchasing power of our circulating medium shall not vary from month to month nor from year to year.” He would like legal-tender government paper, redeemable in precious metal at rates regulated by a commission, varying when the purchasing power of the metal varies. Stephen T. Byington.

Bastiat’s Candlemakers’ Petition.

[London Personal Rights.]

This remarkable jeu d’esprit, which, if it stood alone, ought to redeem economics from the appellation of “the dismal science,” is usually regarded as a mere parable. M. Fréderic Paasy has recently shown that it has a solid substratum of fact. Three-quarters of a century ago, some manufacturers and cultivators of the Department of Le Nord, growers of colza and oil factors, complained to the government that people were beginning to use, for lighting purposes, a product which, they admitted, was indigenous and even extracted from the subsoil of their own region, but of which they were not the producers, and which threatened them with serious competition. Gas — to call this new production by its name — gave, according to the petitioners, a better and cheaper light than could be obtained by the employment of vegetable oil. Here was a plain case for government interference. If — as was difficult to believe — government could not prevent individuals from preferring the light of greater illuminating power, it could, at least, interdict its employment in government offices and works, and refuse to companies which sought to perturb the industry of the country, by supplying the public with the new illuminating medium, the necessary permission to constitute themselves. — The French Chamber of Peers seriously debated this petition.

Law and Sexual Evil.

[Melbourne Liberator.]

As for acts of Parliament and police supervision; as for a law fixing the age of consent — phew! Get out, you quacks and hypocrites! Go and make laws for the tides or the rotation of the seasons! Let girls be honestly taught by their mothers just what they need to secure their own safety, and let boys be early taught to respect their own sisters and early playmates; let them be taught their own nature and responsibilities; and, above all, let them be taught how cowardly it is to deceive or entrap or take advantage of girls, and if this does not rectify sexual evils, nothing will.

“The Trial of the Thirty” in Paris.

Thirty Anarchist-Communista are now on trial in Paris. The reports sent to American newspapers are very meagre and fragmentary, but the following extracts from a letter to the New York “Evening Poet,” written a week or two prior to the opening of the great trial, will convey some idea of the accused and the offences charged against them. It appears that the prisoners, or some of them, are defended by M. de Saint Auban, whose remarkable address to the jury in the previous trial of Jean Grave is published in this issue of Liberty.

The great trial in August will be carried on under the old laws. The thirty persons under indictment are all accused in common either of being affiliated with an association formed with the end of preparing or committing crimes against persons or property, or of having participated in an understanding (entente) agreed upon with the same end in view. This word “understanding” was introduced into the law last December, to prevent the technical evasion of its provisions by Anarchists, who seldom, if ever, have any formal association. Even this has proved ineffective in the cases of the solitaires. The new law accordingly includes the expression of criminal Anarchism (incitement to violence) even in private conversation and correspondence. Some anxiety is felt as to the arming of government with such inquisitorial powers. The coming trial will test the practical character of the old law; the difficulty lies precisely in proving the “understanding” which it supposes to exist among Anarchists. If the mere talking of Anarchy (rather violent at times) should be considered enough to constitute such an understanding, it would be impossible for any law-abiding citizen to frequent half the literary and artistic circles of Paris.

The list of the accused is headed by Jean Grave, who was sentenced to imprisonment last spring for his book on “Dying Society.” . . . .

Paul Réclus, styled “engineer,” is also down on the list for trial, with the significant mention en suite. This flight of the most active and intelligent leader of French Anarchists — and perhaps of the foreign comrades as well — is one of the most mysterious happenings of the year. He disappeared only after his association with Valliant, who had just committed his crime, had become perfectly well known. Since then his name has come up in connection with nearly every Anarchist attempt, that is, as having known or sheltered or been the correspondent of all these militant Anarchists. He can hardly be charged with any actual complicity in their crimes, but his associations are more than compromising. He escaped from Paris when the police were fully alive to the importance of his capture. The Spanish police have looked for him in Barcelona, which — after London — is the centre of Anarchist plots, and he has been signalled elsewhere. People are getting to look on him as another “old man of the mountain.” It is said openly that his escape until now must be due to the protection of the Réclus family in high quarters.

Bernard, who is safely in prison, was active in Barcelona at the time of the explosion in the Teatro Liceo. He was suspected of a hand in the affair; but this could not be proved. He has been a friend, however, of all the French comrades who have come under the law. He is on the indictment as a “commercial agent.” Maths, who is down as “publicist,” is another of these general friends of Anarchist criminals. He is also closely connected with theorists of the movement, like Fenton. The trial of all these men ought finally to show where theory ends and practice begins. For this reason it is to be hoped that the newspapers will not be shut off from a knowledge of any disclosures that may be made. It is already next to certain that the ill-success in tracing the underground workings of the Anarchist movement comes from the persistence of the police, the press, and the general public, in regarding it as a secret society with an outward organization. The present trial has all the missionary elements of the movement and should show its religious character and methods.

Ortiz (without profession, accused also of theft) is the companion of Emile Henry. Sebastian Faure, who has spent much time in prison lately, is the eloquent and dissolute excleric and half-lawyer who has been a chief preacher of the movement through the South. Léauthier was one of his direct pupils, as appeared from letters found after the attempted assassination of the Berrien minister in the restaurant of the Avenue de l’Opéra. Valliant left his daughter in charge of Faure, who has been showing her in the drinking-shops, which are the common resort of the comrades. Faure first brought out an Anarchist almanac; by a ludicrous lapse into old habits, he inserted the saints’ days in the calendar. Before the indignation of the comrades all these pages had to be torn out, and the almanac appeared — without a calendar.

Emile Puget, “publicist,” was the associate of Louise Michel in the pillage of bakers’ shops in 1883. He served his years of imprisonment and was released with her and Kropotkin in 1886. He founded the “Pere Peinard,” written in Parisian argot. It rose to a circulation of from 10,000 to 15,000 weekly. On its suppression he escaped and has not yet been arrested. Alexandre Cohen is the Dutchman who translated Gerhart Hauptmatm’s plays for the Parisian jeunes, among whom he had many friends. He was told to cross the frontier last spring and went off to London. Then the police captured some hundreds of letters in his rooms, from Anarchists in every quarter, especially in Germany. It was too late to rescind the decree of expulsion, which he had obeyed only too quickly. So he, too, is down for trial as a “publicist — en suite.”

Constant Martin, the proprietor of the milk-shop, who was mixed up with Valliant’s affairs, is also out of reach of the French police. He is the author of the “Ça ira,” scattered everywhere in 1888. Ledot and Chatel are also “men of letters,” and Agneli, a Swede, is a pupil of the Beaux-Arts. There are a printer, a lithographer, a machinist, a tailor, a cabinetmaker, and a coffee burner. There are four women, of whom three are Italians. Eight of the accused (three women) are also accused of theft.

Finally, sixteen of the thirty are under thirty years of age, while the leading men — like Paul Réclus, Fénéon, Faure, and Bernard — are not yet forty. In education, activity, way of life, they present together a fair epitome of the Anarchist movement in France.

Officialdom Objecting to Criticism.

[New York Evening Poet.]

“Die Grenzboten,” a weekly periodical published by Grunow at Leipzig, contains, in the number for July 12, some sharp and quite significant remarks on “Beamtenbeleidigung,” in which the writer animadverts on the growing tendency of imperial prosecuting attorneys to shield government officials from public criticism by rendering such censure a punishable offence, and thus creating a delictum sui generis hitherto unknown to the statutes of the realm. An insult offered to the Emperor or to any of the confederated sovereigns is recognized by the criminal code of the German Empire as “Majestätsbeleidigung,” or lese-majesty; and the frequency, and in many cases the frivolity, with which in late years prosecutions have been instituted under this clause, and the gross abuse of the legal protection properly granted to the dignity of rulers, have given rise to much injurious comment and provoked bitter feeling even in the minds of loyal subjects and good citizens, who are instinctively inclined to show due respect to the “powers that be.” The consciousness of their official importance, and the habit of exercising absolute authority over submissive and often servile subalterns, have now excited in the higher class of public functionaries in Germany the desire to have a like protection extended to themselves, especially as regards strictures emanating from the press. Hence the attempt to revive the obsolete distinctions between grand and petit as formerly applied to treason and larceny, and thus to establish a new delict known as “kleine Majestätsbeleidigung,” or petit lese-majesty, for the safeguard of all servants of the State.

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Don’t keep Liberty to yourself, share it with others!

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Liberty’s Library

Leonard E. Read: Accent On The Right: To Frederic Bastiat (1801–1850), who sought for truth rather than outcome and never witnessed the fruits his labor bore. Obedience to conscience was his first rule; we witness the results.

Leonard E. Read: Anything That’s Peaceful: Many favor peace but not many favor the things that make for peace. — Thomas à Kempis

Leonard E. Read: Awake for Freedom’s Sake: Finally, share with others. Forget about “reforming” them! The more we share, the more we learn. This is in the interest of self and freedom!

Leonard E. Read: Castles in the Air: If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; there is where they should be. Now put foundations under them. — Henry David Thoreau

Libertarian Anarchy: Against the State: Political philosophy is dominated by a myth, the myth of the necessity of the state. The state is considered necessary for the provision of many things, but primarily for peace and security. In this provocative book, Gerard Casey argues that social order can be spontaneously generated, that such spontaneous order is the norm in human society and that deviations from the ordered norms can be dealt with without recourse to the coercive power of the state.

Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers: Murray Rothbard: Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) was an economist, historian, philosopher, and legal theoretician. His work was unified by a passionate and resolute commitment to a libertarianism that may be characterized as ‘anarcho-capitalism’ and which implied a belief that even the legal system may be provided privately without the need for a coercive collective authority. Hence, anarcho-capitalists envisage a society where the traditional role of government is wholly subsumed by private, profit-making enterprises and all social relationships are ultimately founded upon consent.