Liberty Vol. IV. No. 11.
Not the Daughter but the Mother of Order

“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.

To a correspondent. — I have consulted the passage referred to, and I understand your meaning. But, before complying with your wishes, I prefer to consult your friends as to the advisability thereof, and therefore must postpone till another issue.

“Le Révolté” describes the progress of Anarchy in Australia and compliments Comrade Andrade and his associates. What does this mean? Does not “Le Révolte” know that these Australian fellows are not Communists, but mere bourgeois, like the editor of Liberty?

The speeches of Fielden, Lingg, Spies, Neebe, Parsons, Schwab, Fischer, and Engel, made before Judge Gary on October 7, 8, and 9, have been published by J. M. Foley, 266 W. Randolph St., Chicago. The type is exceedingly small, but the pamphlet is sold at the low price of five cents.

After the “Truth Seeker’s” verdict that, from the standpoint of Anarchism, E. C. Walker’s recent conduct was wrong and my view of it correct, Mr. Walker must find rather cold comfort in the support given him by the “Truth Seeker” from the standpoint of Secularism. The way of the transgressor is hard.

“Our thanks are due to B. R. Tucker,” writes “Lucifer,” “for his apparent efforts to get at the animus of our position on the marriage question, but much regret that he has thus far utterly failed to comprehend or appreciate the real object of our revolt against church-and-state rule in matters of sex.” This regret I share and this failure I confess.

The letter of George W. Searle in another column, warmly commending Lysander Spooner’s “Letter to Cleveland,” must be considered a rather remarkable confession, when it is remembered that the writer is regarded as perhaps the ablest special pleader at the Massachusetts bar and is therefore a conspicuous representative of that profession which Mr. Spooner scores so mercilessly.

Mrs. H. S. Lake writes in the “New Thought” that she is “glad to see that E. C. Walker has apparently renounced the variety views which it has been supposed he hitherto entertained, and that he has taken to himself a ‘life-long-companion,’ it is to be hoped according to the true laws of conjugal union.” What Mrs. Lake is glad to see. I am sorry to see, but the important fact for Mr, Walker is that both of us actually do see it and that many others will see it.

Captain Schaack of the Chicago police force, who boasted of having secured the conviction of the Chicago Communists by causing a suppression of evidence, now says, referring to threatening letters which he claims to have received from Communists: “If any of those fellows attempt the execution of their threats, they will never be tried for it. I will spring some thing surprising on them. The fact is, I will kill them.” There’s law and order for you.

Many of those who have contributed to the Walker-Harman Defence Fund did so before they knew or thoroughly realized the nature of the defence which they thereby helped to support, and, had they known or realized it, they would not have contributed. They had every reason to suppose that the defence would be just the opposite of what it turned out to be. I do not think, that this was a deliberate attempt on the part of Mr. Walker to get money under false pretences, but in its results that is what it comes to.

Those New Political Forces, which John Swinton never refers to except with capital letters, are already by the ears. The committee appointed after the George campaign to find them a common standing-ground gave them for sure foundation “the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.” Such pious platform timber as this was a surprise to the German Socialists, and they promptly objected to its use, but the Irish Catholics who are in the movement under Father McGlynn and the “Irish World” strenuously insist on a recognition of their divine descent. The New Political Forces may not split upon this rock, but others will confront them soon.

A Liberal having refused to contribute to the Walker-Harman Defence Fund for the reason that Walker is trying to load down the American Secular Union with Free Love and Anarchism, Mr. Walker asks him if it has never occurred to him “that an organization is of value only as it incarnates principles, and that the moment it begins to slur its demands, to cover its principles, to veil its record, to obscure its aims in a mist of rhetoric, that moment marks the beginning of an ever-accelerating rush down the declivity of Policy into the fathomless abyss of Dishonor.” Has it never occurred to Mr. Walker that this is as true of an individual as of an organization? What rate of speed has the ever-accelerating rush attained in his case?

The International Publishing Company of London — that is, Henry Seymour — has favored me with a copy of its latest publication, the old Manifesto of the Communists issued by Karl Marx in 1847. I cannot agree with the London “Justice” that “it is well worth buying,” but I can echo that journal’s words when it says that it is most amusing — only I find it shameful rather — “to see advertised inside a whole set of Anarchist publications, when we remember that Marx is the very Beelzebub to Anarchists.” That a professed champion of Proudhon, who writes his biography, sells his portrait, and publishes selections from his works, should also be foremost in circulating a pamphlet in which Proudhon and all who agree with him are classed as “bourgeois socialists” and “hole and corner reformers of the most varied and piebald character” is enough to make every serious Proudhonian hang his head in shame.

In a late number of Liberty H. M. Hyndman was rebuked for confounding the teachings of Liberty with those of Most and Schwab. Now his paper, the London “Justice,” in commenting upon a recent article in Liberty, says: “Evidently the Liberty and Property Defence League, the Manchester school of economists, and the Anarchists are one and the same.” This indicates advancing intelligence. Most and Schwab are much nearer to Hyndman than to Liberty and Anarchism is much nearer to the Manchester men than to Most and Schwab. In principle, that is. Liberty’s aim — universal happiness — is that of all Socialists, in contrast with that of the Manchester men — luxury fed by misery. But its principle — individual sovereignty — is that of the Manchester men, in contrast with that of the Socialists — individual subordination. But individual sovereignty, when logically carried out, leads, not to luxury fed by misery, but to comfort for all industrious persons and death for all idle ones.

When the news of the arrest of E. C. Walker and Lillian Harman was first made known, and as long as it was supposed that they intended to make a fight against legal marriage, they had the sympathy and support of Anarchists generally, and would have had that of Liberty, if a number had been issued in season. At the same time the attitude of the “Truth Seeker” towards them was one of indifference, neglect, or worse. But when they made known their line of defence and their determination to prove their legal marriage, they at once lost the sympathy and support of the uncompromising and unflinching Anarchists, and seriously weakened themselves even with the milder type, and at the same time they won the emphatic support and endorsement of the “Truth Seeker.” The respective attitudes of Liberty and the “Truth Seeker” regarding legal marriage have been well known, and it has also been well known that E. C. Walker has stood squarely with Liberty and against the “Truth Seeker.” Do not these facts throw some light upon the question whether or not E. C. Walker has surrendered?

It now appears that in the community of the Credit Foncier of Sinaloa it will be not only impossible to have two wives, but very dangerous not to have any. It was at first the intention of Owen, the Great Mogul, to tax single men of thirty and over in order to encourage marriage, but he abandoned this idea because the Credit Foncier looks with disfavor upon direct taxation. He says, however: “In answer to whether we are in favor of ‘free love,’ our reply is that we are certainly in favor of unrestricted love — for love not forced — for love free to be wedded and blessed; but when ‘free love’ is interpreted to be the removing of restraint between the sexes, we are opposed. . . . The marriage contract with us will be sacred. Mormonism and bigamy we do not tolerate; and celibacy we regard with suspicion.” In accordance with this idea, every colonist is required to sign a pledge in the presence of two witnesses, whereby he agrees to abide by a creed entitled “Our Principles,” the thirty-fifth article of which is as follows: “Marriage is the foundation of the home and of the State, and its contract should be encouraged and performed, free of charge, by the State; and every man should have one wife, and every woman one husband, and no more.” Yet I know people who are the most pronounced free lovers and who sneer at the monogamic idea, who nevertheless loudly sound the praises of this incipient socialistic marvel. And I know others who profess to be Anarchists, whose names are on the list of stockholders. For instance, no sooner are H. W. Youmans, J. K. Moore, and the Replogles, of Liberal, Missouri, out of trouble in one community on account of their free-love views than they forthwith take shares in another, though warned in advance that they will be proscribed. Is it possible that they have signed “Our Principles”? If not, do they propose to sign it? How many people are there in the world, anyway, that have any ideas which they are not prepared to contradict at five minutes’ notice? The marriage plank is of the same timber as the rest of the platform. Altogether, this Credit Foncier enterprise is the most artificial and authoritarian scheme of social reformation that has been broached since the collapse of the Oneida Community.

The Political Theology of Mazzini And The International.
By Michael Bakounine, Member of the International Association of Working-People.

Translated from the French by Sarah E. Holmes.

Continued from No. 88.

Mazzini must ho very disconsolate. Hardly has he had time to launch his excommunication against the International, when forthwith the archangels of public order set themselves to striking him.

We know what has just happened at Naples. The International Association has just been dissolved by a superior order, “as a permanent offence against the law’s and the fundamental institutions of the country”; and this condemnation, pronounced without trial by the simple good pleasure of the ministry, has naturally been accompanied by minute and fruitless searches and arbitrary arrests. In a word, the public authorities have done their duty, and for the thousandth time, in this century, society has just been saved.

No one can be as much dismayed as Mazzini. For a revolutionist like him, incorrigible idealist though he be, it cannot be an agreeable thing to see a government, of which he certainly cannot be a friend, thus translate his theoretical maledictions into action. It is a great pity! But the principal cause must be sought in the religious and political theories of Mazzini, all the latest manifestations of which have made the entire reactionary press of Italy and Europe leap for joy.

It is more than probable that the deed which has just been done at Naples will be soon reproduced in all the other cities of Italy. All the governments of Europe are plotting today the ruin of the International, and already our adversaries in all countries are beginning to cry, making or not making the sign of the cross: “Thank God! it is dead!”

“The International is dead!” you say. Oh, no; long live the International! And it is you, dear involuntary allies, who are conducting in its favor, by your atrocious persecutions and by your infamous calumnies, a propaganda far more formidable than that which our poor means would ever permit us to carry on.

Notwithstanding the millions that the hireling press attributes with a ridiculous generosity to the General Council of the Association, sitting at London, we must say, alas! that the International is very poor. And whence should it get its millions? Is it not the Association of misery and exploited labor, and has it not all the rich against it? Admit it then, this holy poverty which is a sure, guarantee of its sincerity, of its honesty, a proof of its power. For, if the International is developed and progresses notwithstanding its undeniable poverty, notwithstanding all the machinations of the mighty joined against it, it is because it constitutes evidently one of those grand historical realities, the vitality of which has its causes, not in the artificial and more or less arbitrary combinations of some tens, or hundreds, or even thousands, of interested, ambitious, or fanatical individuals, but in the fatal development of society, the irresistible tendencies and needs of the century; it is because it contains in itself the future.

We have, then, full confidence in our inevitable triumph, which does not in the least prevent us from understanding how urgent it is to propagate our principles and organize the working-people’s forces. For, if we are convinced, on the one hand, that true ideas, which are such only became they are the faithful expression of the real development of humanity, must necessarily triumph, sooner or later, we know also that they will obtain this triumph only because there are always found at their disposal a certain number of individuals who are profoundly penetrated with them, who are passionately devoted to them, who propagate them, and who aid in the spontaneous creation of new associations formed in their name. Without prejudice to the fatality which presides over all historical developments, the initiative of individuals, conscious or unconscious instruments of the movement which pushes and bears them on, has been and is still necessary to impregnate the creative faculty of the masses.

So, fully assured though we are of the final triumph of the International Association, we are very far from ignoring the urgency of active propagandism and a social organization of the working-people’s forces. But it is precisely in the accomplishment of this duty that our poverty creates for us, alas! too often, insurmountable obstacles.

Strikes ruin us, and yet it is impossible either to anticipate or prevent them. They are never or almost never the result of a plot, of a rash action, of a caprice; they are the forced result of the entire existing economic situation. Each day more and more menaced in the last guarantees of their independence and even of their existence, the workingmen well know that to eminence a strike, for them, means to condemn themselves to inconceivable sufferings. But generally they have no other means of defending their miserable morsel of bread and the shadow of liberty which the economic organization of society allows them. One more step in this path, progressive and prosperous for the happy holders of capital, but retrogressive and disastrous for them, and they would see themselves reduced to the condition of serfs or of negroes. White negroes! such is the name which the workingmen of the United States of America, of that democratic republic par excellence, are now giving themselves. On the other hand, it is evident to all those who can comprehend and see that in this same social organization a fatal law and one which no capitalist can escape without condemning himself inevitably to ruin, forces indirectly all the money-lenders and directly all the conductors of industrial enterprises, to base all their calculations on the progressive diminution of the liberty and the bread of the workmen whom they employ. In the midst of frightful competition, in this struggle of life and death where small and medium-sized capitals are being swallowed up, little by little, in the pockets of the great bank-lords, all profits are made exclusively out of the wages of the proletariat; and if the proletariat did not defend itself with the energy of despair, it would find itself in a state of slavery worse than that of the Middle Ages.

We foresee, then, that strides will become from day to day more universal and more formidable, until the very intensity of the evil shall produce at last the good. And we not only cannot, but we ought not to prevent them. For strikes and all the unheard of sufferings, the keen misery, the hunger, the illnesses and often death which are the inevitable consequences of them, are the most powerful and the most terrible propagators of socialistic ideas among the masses.

Well! the Internationalists have to run to the help of their brothers of all countries, deprived of work. They have to give their last cent, and sometimes even contract debts, to prevent them from dying of hunger. This ruins them.

If it were known how much of their meagre funds they have had to expend, first to save their brothers of the Commune of Paris from the clutches of the bourgeoise Republic, and then to give them hospitality! And all this was done without ostentation, without boasting, as the most natural thing in the world, not for the love of God, but by simple and irresistible human impulse. It was human brotherhood concrete and direct. Such is the practice of the International.

It is the ardent solidarity of a mass of obscure, ignorant, miserable workingmen who, again raising very high the flag of humanity which the privileged and civilized classes had let fall into the mud, are, at the same time, the stragglers, the victims of the present and the founders of the future. It is the daily exercise of real love, founded on the most complete equality and on the respect of all for the liberty and for the human dignity of each. More than all the organizations and the propaganda of principles, this love each day practised by the sections of all countries, without any exception, reassures us concerning the near triumph of the International!

It will be understood, nevertheless, that this practice must leave us very little money for propagandism and the organization of the working-people’s forces. If it were known at what cost and sacrifice we publish our pamphlets, which are, naturally, read and paid for only by workingmen! The journals of the International — and there are many already, thanks to the zeal of our companions in all countries — are supported only by the few remaining cents which the workingmen deduct from the bread of their families.

Such are our means of action. In presence of the immense task which is imposed upon us, and which we have accepted with passion, with happiness, relying less on our forces than on the justice of the cause which we serve, these means seem so ridiculously small that really there are moments when we could despair, if, precisely at these very hours of distress, our enemies and our persecutors did not come generously to our aid.

What has popularized the International in France since 1866, and especially since 1867? The persecutions of the Empire. And today, what has made, and what continues to make, the most powerful propagandism in our favor? First — and here hats off — the heroic Commune of Paris,— the immense fact of this last socialistic revolution, conquered externally for a time, but morally everywhere triumphant. It has roused the popular masses, it has been unanimously greeted by the proletariat of all countries as the announcement of a near deliverance. But what has explained to the masses the true sense, the whole import of this revolution? The official and officious press of all countries, the terror of the privileged classes, the Draconian measures of governments, and, finally, Mazzini himself

Mazzini had doubtless entertained the hardly generous intention of morally annihilating the Commune, which the government had succeeded only in killing in a brutal manner. Has Mazzini attained his object? Not at all; he has, on the contrary, powerfully contributed to exalt the Commune in the opinion of the Italian masses. And today, always fatally bound up with the negative propagandism of the reactionary press, he has just rendered the same service to the International. He wished to destroy it, and he aids us in propagating its principles. Hardly a year ago, except at two or three points isolated and lost in space, the existence of the International in Italy was not even suspected. Now, thanks to the governmental press and thanks to Mazzini above all, no one is ignorant of it.

Mazzini is not contented, like the journals of the reaction, with frightening only the bourgeois. No, he and his partisans, scattered in very little groups in almost all the cities of Italy, go to the workingmen’s associations to say to them: “Beware of the International! It is the Devil!” Poor things! They do not know; then, that the Devil has been in all times the being who has most interested the human race. Ah! the International is Satan in person; we must therefore make his acquaintance as soon as possible!

And thus it is that, thanks to this furious negative propagandism, in Italy, as everywhere, an immense interest in the International is being awakened today among the masses.

Our enemies have ploughed well; now is the time for us to sow.

In all the cities, and even in many of the country places, there will be found one, two, or three intelligent workmen, devoted to their brothers and who know how to read; or else, in default of such, some young people born in the bourgeoise class, but not penetrated with the perverse spirit which now reigns in this class,— in short, to avail myself of an expression consecrated by Mazzini, some apostles inspired with a true love for the holy cause of justice and humanity, and who, the statutes of the International in their hands, will make it a duty to explain to the working-people’s associations:

1. That this pretended Devil claims for each worker the full product of his labor: finding it wrong that there should be in society so many men who, producing nothing at all, can maintain their insolent riches only by the work of others. The International, like the apostle, Saint Paul, maintains that, “if any would not work, neither should he eat.”

The International recognizes the right to this noble name of labor as belonging only to productive labor. Some years ago, the young king of Portugal, having come to pay a visit to his august father-in-law, was presented in the working-people’s association at Turin; and there, surrounded by workingmen, he said to them these memorable words: “Gentlemen, the present century is the century of labor. We all labor. I, too, labor for the good of my people.” However flattering this likening of royal labor to workingmen’s labor may appear, we cannot accept it. We must recognize that royal labor is a labor of absorption and not of production; capitalists, proprietors, contractors, also labor; but all their labor, having no other object than to transfer the real products of labor from their workingmen into their own pockets, cannot be considered by us as productive labor. In this sense thieves and brigands labor also, and roughly, risking every day their liberty and their life.

The International clearly recognizes intellectual labor — that of men of science as well as of the application of science to industry, and that of the organizers and administrators of industrial and commercial affairs — as productive labor. But it demands for all men a participation as much in manual labor as in labors of the mind, suited, not to birth nor to social privileges which must disappear, but to the natural capacities of each, developed by equal education and instruction. Only then will disappear the gulf which today separates the classes which are called intelligent and the working masses.

2. The International declares that, so long as the working masses shall remain plunged in misery, in economic servitude, and in this forced ignorance to which economic organization and present society condemn them, all the political reforms and revolutions, without excepting even those which are projected and promised by the Republican Alliance of Mazzini, will avail them nothing.

3. That consequently, in their own interest, material as well as moral, they should subordinate all political questions to economic questions, the material means of an education and an existence really human being for the proletariat the first condition of liberty, morality, and humanity.

4. That the expedience of past centuries as well as of all present facts ought to have sufficiently convinced the working masses that they can and should expect no social amelioration of their lot from the generosity nor even from the justice of the privileged classes; that there has never been and that there will never be a generous class, a just class, justice being able to exist only in equality, and equality involving necessarily the abolition of privileges and classes; that the classes actually existing — clergy, bureaucracy, plutocracy, nobility, bourgeoisie — dispute for power only to consolidate their own strength and to increase their profits; and that, consequently, the proletariat must take henceforth the direction of its own affairs into its own hands.

To be continued.

Ireland!
By Georges Sauton.

Translated from the French for Liberty by Sarah E. Holmes.

Continued from No. 88.

In vain by touching arguments did the poor woman try to soften the soldier as he moved away. She represented her son Michael to him as a comrade, a soldier also; and perhaps enrolled by chance in the same regiment, they might have become good friends! The soldier, inflexible, automatic, did not slacken his steps or swerve. She invoked his regretted mother, who was doubtless weeping at home over the thought that he was in the war; for, evidently, this was a war, or, if not today, would be tomorrow.

“In the name of that good woman, old like me, and whom you love, and whom you would like to embrace every day, and near whom you wish to stay!” . . . .

“Enough of this!” interrupted the Duke, who thrust her back with a shove into the little room where they had just been talking.

Then, beside herself, she exclaimed:

“One may plunder, kill, unmercifully beat! It is the law of the strongest. But such bargains as this are another matter; they dishonor him who conceives and imposes them even more than those who accept them!”

And, speaking to herself, she added:

“The life of those who trust in you, against the life of your child. Edith! what a shame to believe yourself capable of hesitating! Michael, at such an ignominious price, would refuse with indignation .... My lord, you are an infamous wretch!”

Suddenly a fresh change of view humbled her, and she resumed with more gentleness and calmness:

“Pardon me, I am flying into a passion again. I am sorry. My mind wanders, do you understand? Pity! pity! I drag myself on my knees as I would before God!”

Newington walked the room rapidly backwards and forwards, silent, insensible.

“Pity!” repeated she, “pity!”

He let her follow him on her knees, and, when he hurried his steps, she fell on her face on the carpet.

“Pity!” repeated she again while rising, having only this single word on her lips.

“Look!” simply answered Newington, stopping at last and pointing out to her with his finger, in the park dimly lighted by the glimmer of a lantern, the advancing funeral procession,— the execution platoon, and, in the middle, Michael, his forehead bandaged with linen, and wavering still on his feeble legs.

He marched proudly, and, notwithstanding his mother’s cry, he did not tremble.

“There!” ordered the Duke.

They placed the condemned man against the wall and fixed the lantern on his breast, hanging it on one of the buttons of his uniform.

“Ah! this is horrible!” said Edith, hiding her eyes in her hands.

“Decide promptly!” said the Duke; “bullets travel fast.”

“The abomination!” exclaimed she, unveiling herself now, and looking on in stupor at this spectacle, at which she hoped to die.

“Hurry yourself!” said Newington.

The platoon, taking the regulation range, aligned itself twenty paces from Michael.

“Grace! grace!” cried Edith, whose expiring voice was lost in the command of a sergeant, and whose blood the snapping of the gun-locks froze in her veins.

“Present!” ordered the Duke himself.

“No, no,” said the miserable woman, embracing Newington’s knees.

“Adieu, mother!” cried the young man, in a very firm voice.

For her this was the supreme test, and, going nearer to Newington, she said, in a faltering voice:

“I consent!”

“For sure! Swear it to me!”

“I swear it to you!” she murmured.

The Duke made a sign to the soldiers, who put down their arms.

She rose suddenly, holding out her arms to embrace her child; but the platoon, forming in line again, led away the prisoner; and as she, in her astonishment, reproached Newington bitterly, with a look, for failing in his promise, the Duke exclaimed:

“I keep him as a hostage. He shall leave the castle, free, when I leave Treor’s house.”

“If you leave it, my lord!” whispered in the recess of a door the Duchess Ellen. And she withdrew in haste, satisfied and so radiant that Sir Bradwell, when she again entered the rooms where at last the ball was really being organized after a fashion, stopped her in passing.

“You are the demon incarnate,” he said to her, with a profoundly dramatic air, at which she laughed, with all her heart, finding him comical, a boy, a big ridiculous boy, and inviting him not to borrow the phraseology of the theatre to use with her, and especially of an old-fashioned, superannuated, silly theatre!

Then, changing her tone and manner, she asked seriously:

“Did I take you by force? Did I seduce you by a criminal artifice, tempted by culpable coquetries?”

Sir Richard sighed, evidently in repentance.

“Did I dream of you?” continued she. “All the joy of my new situation, of having attained the object, of my existence, that is to say, as the Duke has reproached me, riches, luxury, power; astonished at my role of lady of the castle, fawned upon, feasted, rendered eager homage on all hands, and surrounded by all sorts of adulation — did I encourage you more than the other suitors? Did I distinguish you even among the crowd of gallants, young or old, who languished around me, strutting about or babbling their frivolities, telling of their hopelessness and gloomily lavishing their compliments?

“Love! I did not dream of it the least in the world. The brilliancy of the receptions, the excitement of the feasts, intoxicated me, fatigued me delightfully; and my heart, my faith, my senses, in the vortex of pleasures, the perpetuity of this joyous and brilliant life, lost their rights, abdicated. Who, then, overturned all this order of things, and obsessed me with his pursuit?”

“I was mad!” said Bradwell.

“And you are mad no longer!” exclaimed the Duchess. “Thanks!”

He protested, but without energy,— out of pure politeness, one would have said; and Ellen, incensed, furious, resumed with panting utterance:

“You are no longer mad, or else you are mad over another. At least, express to me your remorse for your conduct toward me. I was tranquil, happy, very happy.’ A passion is born in you, and, for the satisfaction of your desires, you beset me, you overcome my resistance,— for I defended myself, I struggled, you must admit, and it was by surprise, by violence, that you triumphed!”

“I admit it.”

“After long, useless artifices, seeing that your sighs did not move me, that your tears did not soften me, that your fever did not consume me, one night,” . . .

“I beg of you!”

“One night, during Newington’s absence, you forced the door of my chamber” . .

“Hush! I implore you.” ....

“Exhausted in the struggle, you conquered me at last, and since then, weakening me with your caresses, burning me with your kisses, you have aroused in me the sentiment which slept, you have excited the appetites of my flesh, you have unchained the fury of passion. Submit to the consequences of your madness! No, no: you will not shield yourself there!”

She trembled; her anger, her pain, at once agitated her, and her voice, alternating abruptly, was now mournful and husky, now vibrating in its tones, as her recollections passed before her.

Sir Richard, at first, had listened abstractedly. His saddened gaze wandered, and, faint-hearted and discouraged, his thought roved far off, down towards Bunclody, as always, around Treor’s house. But, in proportion as the Duchess unrolled the picture of the ardent past, of the bold attempts of his incessant love for Ellen, his imagination, his senses, became inflamed. Marian, the angel, vanished, yielding her place to her whom he had called the demon incarnate, and in all his being now reigned the revived criminal passion of which he tried vainly to cure himself.

But to possess again the Duchess, at Cumslen-Park, under the roof where Lord Newington lived, after having grasped the hand of his father, who continued to place in him perfect confidence of which he showed himself unworthy,— no, that, this knavery, this hypocrisy, this treachery, was keenly repugnant to him and filled him with disgust.

“Let us go away!” said he to Ellen. “I have already proposed it to you; we will go to England, to France, wherever you please.”

“No, indeed!” she replied.

“Why?” said he, amazed.

“Because, being as poor one as the other, what of our future? People do not live on air, or dress any longer in green as our first parents did in their earthly paradise. How should we live? You as a clerk, and I as a bar-maid.... I should be homesick for the grand life which I have tasted. Cross, whimsical, I should become as ugly as envy. And you, moreover, even before this metamorphosis, would cease to love me; you already love me less. Did you distinguish me when I was the heiress of a clergyman, under my biblical head-dress, my gowns as flat as one of my honorable father’s sermons? ... It was only when I blossomed cut as a Duchess that I had the good fortune to please you.... I will remain Duchess .... without the Duke.”

“Without the Duke!” repeated Richard, contemplating her with fear. “Without the Duke,” — what could these three words signify, since she refused to go away? They could be explained only by the resolution firmly fixed in her of ridding herself of Newington, and suddenly the repeated attempt to which the general had almost fallen a victim appeared to him in all its horror.

Lady Ellen had inspired it, commanded it, dictated it. The agitation of the young woman the first time at Bunclody; her advice, her pressing entreaties that he should not approach the Duke; her cry: “You wish, then, to be killed in his place!” when nothing had then indicated the presence of the assassin in the vicinity,— all the circumstances confirmed the intuition which he now had of these two attempts.

And the dreadful death of Casper was now illuminated for him with a frightful light; chance and his drunkenness alone would not have caused the filthy fellow to fall into the teeth of the dogs; a hand guided him, perfidious wretch, that of the Duchess. Casper, the clumsy and suspected executioner of the base plots of Lady Ellen, well! she had put him out of the way through anger, for the sake of prudence, in anticipation of future attempts!

So the Duchess, thrice criminal,— in thought, in command, in action,— was projecting the perpetration of fresh misdeeds which she would renew unweariedly until successful and, doubtless, badly seconded by her paid acolytes, she would end by operating herself, without fear, without reluctance, now that, tinged with blood and free evidently from remorse, she had made her début in the career of personal crime.

In disgust and terror he recoiled, with a start, from the Duchess, destitute, however, of the force necessary to break off the tête-a-tête and casting about with an inviting look to find a third party who might deliver him.

With her delicate instinct and clear sight, the young woman divined that, beside these perfectly ostensible movements, he was secretly revolving a decisive project in his gloomy head, behind his eyes fiercely concentrated, and, abruptly, she said to him:

“Richard, what are you plotting?”

“What am I plotting!”

He feigned not to comprehend, despite her piercing in this way his hidden resolutions, and being above all apprehensive that she would turn him aside from a design in which he saw salvation.

Salvation for him, for her, for the Duke!

“Yes,” repeated Ellen, abandoning her tone of armed defence, “you are plotting something!”

And, obliging him to let her decipher the language of his eyes, she read what he was meditating.

“You wish to go away alone!” said she.

Incapable of lying, he confessed that it was so.

He would go very far, would travel, would forget. During this time the fever which ravaged her would gradually cool.

“Do that!” said she, furious and afraid, “do that, and the Duke, the cause of your departure and my abandonment, will die immediately so that I may rejoin you sooner.”

“You confess, then, that you are capable of the crimes of which I suspect you?”

“Of all crimes, if I lose you, and in order to see you again!”

“And I, to escape you, will attempt anything.”

“Happily also,” she said, recovering herself suddenly, as if sure of herself. “I count on your weakness, on the captivating memory of the delights which you have tasted in my arms, for, although it was you that excited me to love, is it not true that I have practised its mysteries divinely? You have crowned me priestess of this religion, but I knew better than all others its secret incantations, and I have bewitched you!”

Calm, insinuating, her voice modulated to caressing music, she enveloped him in a sensuous network, radiating voluptuousness.

“Remember then!” she said to him softly, taking his hands, which he tried to withhold, and burning his cheeks with her warm fragrant breath, which fanned his carnal agitation, “remember then the masses which we have said, the offices which we have celebrated together!”

To be continued

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“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.

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The Neo-est Malthusian of All.

There is a man in New York who can give points to the Chicago police regarding the extermination of Anarchists. He proposes to destroy them, root and branch. He has discovered their origin, and intends to attack them at their source. The name of this discoverer is H. B. Philbrook. He announces his discovery in a fortnightly paper which he edits, called “Problems of Nature.” In the issue of August 15 he begins an article, headed “What is an Anarchist?” by asserting the mistake of those people who suppose that there is any difference between Anarchists, Socialists, Nihilists, and Communists, and that these parties are seeking by different roads a social state which will be advantageous to all. This mistake Mr. Philbrook proceeds to rectify as follows:

When the Anarchist is given opportunity to disclose the purposes and desires of the order, a chance is offered a community of better people to observe what actually gives existence to the person or a class of persons like him. A person can discover that a ferocious beast in human aspect is stalking through a human society, and it can be seen that all persons of such propensities were born in a place infested by bad animals. A community of cats or wolves or bears were occupying the country or place when a class of desperadoes were given existence. In Russia these people are called Nihilists; in Germany and other portions of Europe they are called Anarchists or Revolutionists; in Paris they are called Communists; and in this country each of these names is given them, according to a practice of a newspaper or person in describing them. There is not one of such persons on the globe but what is a cat or bear or wolf given a human form, and there is not one who is not conducting himself or herself as a cat or wolf or bear does, so far as the operation of propensities is concerned.

Having thus shown conclusively that there are no shades of Revolutionists, but that all are equally Red and spring from the same sources, Mr. Philbrook further enlightens us regarding the cause of their appearance at the present stage of social development:

A consciousness of a conquest of all bad practices in the community by the advancing of the people is the provocation for a desperate attempt to destroy both government and society by the bad person.... The outburst of such frenzied persons against society and government is but a final throe of a degraded class to destroy the cause of a greater progress and greater cultivation of a community. It is, in fact, the desperate plunge of the infuriated beast toward a slayer of its kind.... A continual attempt to check the operations of the degraded and vicious classes is the cause of the disclosure of a gang of Anarchists in every great city of the world where a civilization is more than a degradation itself, and of great communities of them in the forests of Russia and Poland. Cats are making Communists in Paris by the hundred, and a wolf and bear are making them in all the portions of Europe where a forest is possessing such beasts. On a plain of our own country where a wild beast has not dwelt for several centuries a destroyer of life and property in a human form is not a dweller unless he is placed there by a migration of bad persons from a forest or foreign city. Only a sneak thief and disgusting sensualist is given an American city by she animals in it at present. A greater want of bread and employment will give the person a desperation of a European Anarchist. Let our readers ascertain the nationality and locality of birth of so-called Anarchists and discover if they can that one was not born either in it city where cats have been breeding for a century or more, or in a country where wolves and bears were in the forests in great numbers.

All this would be as mysterious as it is startling, were we not informed in another part of the paper that this unusual fecundity of nature in the production of Anarchists does not partake at all of the miraculous, but is thoroughly in harmony with our Creator’s plan,— a plan which he never revealed to the world prior to his conversion of some animal — an owl, I fancy — into Mr. Philbrook. Pending that event, it appears, a huge mountain of discredit has been heaped upon the Creator by the incomplete observations of a bull-dog named Darwin. The explanation of this canine exploit is too valuable to be lost.

All that is delaying us in getting the most important fact in the people’s minds is the silly sophistry of a Darwin given to every household as a fact and as an explanation of a person’s or animal’s origin. All the fashionable follies of the world, called scientists, with one or two exceptions, are giving this disgusting and degrading prognostication of a person who was himself but a bull-dog in human form, to a world of people, and they are glorying in the work. A church teacher, and all the newspapers, and every fame-seeking publisher of a worthless account of so-called science wore for a score of years assisting in getting a bull-dog’s conception of creation accepted by the people. The most of them are getting disgusted with this work; the others soon will he disgusted with it. Mr. Darwin was but a bull-dog given conversion into a human object, and by this operation a competent watcher of flies and bugs, and all kinds of animal that are out of the water was constructed. No animal of the water was considered by this person to any extent, and, in his neglect of watching a creature of the water, he overlooked the astonishing fact that where a plenty of water was existing a womb in a creature was not necessary. A start from a land animal was taken in the bull-dog’s observation of animals, and, in going over the countries of the world, every creature a dog would discover was discovered by him. No great attention was paid to birds, as this class of animals are beyond a bull-dog’s jump, and too beautiful for its consideration. Only a crawling or walking animal was of much interest to the starer with the great eyebrows. Every particle of his conclusions upon the origin of animals was given him by a want of understanding of a power of a Creator to give existence and organization to a person or animal, originally or in any operation.

The immense headway gained by the evolution theory, however, could not have been achieved by one dog alone. The dog Darwin required an audience of dogs. Accordingly Mr. Philbrook declares that every person who accepts the Darwinian theory is a dog in human form, and that no person not of canine origin can be made to adopt it. Huxley, he declares, is a sleuth-hound, and Tyndall a clever and active setter. We are left in ignorance as to the precise canine variety to which Herbert Spencer belongs, being vouchsafed simply the information that the dog that bears that name is more combative than those named Huxley and Tyndall and was originally endowed with a larger brain. Some time since, however, disease rendered his brain inactive, and it is now operated by a spirit worker.

In the accomplishment of this vast amount of evolutionary mischief I find fresh confirmation of the wise old saw that “every dog has his day.” Darwin evidently has had his. Now a new day has dawned. And not wholly new, either. Mr. Philbrook, after all, seems to be simply a modern Pythagoras, and his theory a revival, in a reversed form, of the doctrine of transmigration or metempsychosis. He states it briefly thus:

All persons are given origin by objects an animal kingdom gives the atmosphere. A soul of a brute is the object, and one or a couple are actually pulled into a human mother’s womb when conception takes place. A great surprise is in store for every household of the world when the fact is known.

I anticipate that none will share this surprise in a larger degree than the Malthusians. In fact, I fear it would fill them with alarm, were it not that Mr. Philbrook himself is a Neo-, a very Neo-Malthusian, and has discovered a new preventive check,— a sort of contraceptic unknown hitherto to Dr. Foote, Jr. Here is the prescription:

The astonishing truth will be known after a few months more of our pounding of the heads of the people with the fact. When all people have the knowledge, a cat will be slaughtered, and so will all worthless and vicous animals that are anywhere near a human habitation.

Mr. Walker, rejoice! You have only to kill the cats and other worthless and vicious animals, and there will be speedily evolved a select few possessed of sufficient intelligence to solve the labor problem. This knowledge, too, will act as a check, upon the population of hell. For I infer from Mr. Philbrook’s statements that the moment when an animal’s soul is pulled into a woman’s womb is the precise point called to the attention of the Corinthians by Saint Paul as that when “this mortal puts on immortality” and “death is swallowed up in victory.” Now, when all vicious souls have been annihilated by the slaughter of the lower animals in which they are incarnate, there will be nobody to send to hell, and those already there will find partial relief from their torments in the thought that Malthusian Cassandras will find their occupation gone.

I have not space here to point out the many directions in which this now theory throws light. For the present I will only note that it reveals the true character of the Chicago police. If all evolutionists are dogs and all revolutionists cats, I see no reason to doubt that Chicago policemen are rats. If this be so, they need no points from Mr. Philbrook. Chicago rats know that their lives depend upon belling Chicago cats, and that is what Captain Schaack and his men are trying to do.

It must be encouraging to Mr. Philbrook to see that the Anarchists and Revolutionists themselves are beginning to acknowledge the truth of his explanation of their origin. Here is Helen Wilmans, for instance, editor of the “Woman’s World.” She is a Revolutionist, and unquestionably a cat. Yet, while reading Mr. Philbrook’s book, she declares that she can scarcely let it go from her hands long enough to write an article upon it, and confesses that it completely overthrows all her preconceived scientific ideas. And after writing the article, she spends two hours more in devouring the book, which rouses her to such a pitch of enthusiasm that she writes a postscript to announce her belief that “the author has unravelled the whole mystery of creation.” And “Equity” also, that Anarchistic organ published at Liberal, asserts that Mr. Philbrook has completely refuted the evolution theory of the origin of species. The editors of “Equity” are clearly conscious of their feline nature.

Before closing, I ought to warn a friend of mine in New York of the imminent danger in which he stands. I refer to John Swinton. He is a Communist, and therefore a cat. Mr. Philbrook is death on cats. Mr. Swinton publishes his “Paper” at 21 Park Row. Mr. Philbrook’s organ hails from the same street and number. Verb, sat sap.

Are Methods of No Moment?

The Harman-Walker case afforded another occasion to a number of reformers to show how little they understand themselves and the fundamental principles of the cause they profess to champion. It is said that the question as to methods of defence is unimportant; it is sufficient to know that our co-workers in the movement are victimized by the State, which fact alone establishes their claim to our warmest sympathy and support. According to this logic, an Anarchist may humbly and dutifully acknowledge his guilt and repentance of his treasonable anti-Authority ideas, or an Infidel may avow a change of heart respecting the questions of the divinity of Christ and the Bible, and still remain loyal to their respective causes, and still be entitled to the friendship and favor of all true Anarchists and Infidels respectively. What a chance the condemned men in Chicago have thrown away!

To the steadfast and unsentimental men of principle, who do not go into hysterics at the mere sight of suffering, the question of methods is of the utmost importance, these deciding for or against the individual. An Anarchist, in times of danger, when the eyes of the world are upon him and the minds of the people are engaged in the investigation of the thing he suffers for, must be more Anarchistic and uncompromising than ever, must stand firm and draw courage and inspiration from the fact that he is given the rare opportunity of serving his cause in the best way possible,— by example. If the man thus tried is found wanting and proves unequal to the task, we pity him; and, while deeply regretting the circumstance, and regarding it as a misfortune that the lot did not fall to the right man, we do not blame him; but, if he disgraces the cause by his conduct, and non-Anarchistic methods of defence, we are not, only relieved from all obligations to him as a comrade, but we are in duty bound to let him severely alone and make it clear to the world that he is no longer to be looked upon as a representative of our class. Thousands of innocent people receive injustice from the hands of the State almost every day; but, aside from utilizing all such occurrences as evidence against the State, we are never expected to give our money, time, and labor to these victims. We are ready to help Anarchists as such, and we shall stand by everybody that suffers for being an Anarchist; but along with the abandonment of the bond that held us together goes the loss of friendship and respect.

Regicides and Republicans.

If in Germany, for example, there were a republican movement, and there were a society preaching death to the Kaiser and his officials with the view of establishing the republic, upon an arrest and trial for any violence committed by adherents of the regicidal society would not the monarchical press and tribunals seize upon the occasion to declare that, as the regicides are republicans, the republicans are regicides and their principle is to kill officials? This may serve to show the casual relation between Anarchism and bomb-throwing.

When the Southern States seceded, the Republican party declared that Democracy means secession. When Booth, a Democrat, killed Lincoln, the Republican orators and papers declared that Democracy meant assassination, and that the Democratic party must surrender its name and organization.

Those who fancy that Anarchy is compromised by what has happened at Chicago can draw the comparison.

On the day when the news of Lincoln’s death was flashed to the capital of Iowa, a Republican politician entered a room where over a dozen men were at work and exclaimed: “They have assassinated the president. Now I am in favor of hanging every copper-head!” There were two Democrats present, and one of them had nerve to reply: “You would take a pretty big contract!”

The Democratic party did not disband. Republicanism is not dead by reason of its regicides or of the regicides who are not republicans. The Irish league has not renounced its object because of the incident in Phoenix Park. Free traders are not scared into becoming protectionists because contrabandists have killed revenue officers. Free traders are not required by reason to admit that the violent smuggler is a worse or even as noxious a growth as the government which makes smuggling a crime according to statute. Neither will Anarchists be frightened out of their rational consistency by clamor arising out of conflicts between the police and enemies of the present form of government or of all government,— be the case as it may. One may will an end and yet differ widely as to the means, and different persons may resort to violence with very different purposes, or no purpose that could be classed with relation to social organization,

In scientific Anarchism method is of paramount importance. No ebullitions of passion or acts of violence can really compromise the principle. Governmentalists would certainly not admit that wars and malversation of public funds settle the question whether some sort of government is necessary and useful. If the crimes of governments do not close the discussion against government, the wildest or the most ruthless acts of alleged Anarchists could never close the discussion against Anarchism, the theory of liberty and voluntary mutual assurance as the best substitute for government, alias rulership, alias tyranny. All the attacks of ignorant and starving men upon the police go to impeach government, as symptoms show the disease. Anarchism comes before the people as the science of living and letting live.

Association as a Means of Reform.

Of no persons is it, more true than of the Anarchists that they can find “sermons in stones, books in running brooks, and texts in everything.” My text on the present occasion is drawn from the recent, “falling-out” of the editorial writers for Liberty. The fault, to my mind, lies not in their rupture now, but in their ever having put themselves into the position in which it was possible for such an occurrence as the present to take place. The more I see of life, the more I am convinced of the truth of Josiah Warren’s position,— that at the basis of all true peace lie the separation, the individualization, of responsibilities. True cooperation is secured, not by binding ourselves into organizations, or associations, or editorial staffs, but only in so far as our aims and interests are identical. When our aims and interests are identical, cooperation is secured without any formal arrangement whatsoever. Although there is no association of Anarchists in this country; no organization by which they are bound together, there is no band of reformers in which there is so much true cooperation. At the present time, and probably for all time, in the multifarious concerns of life, it may be impossible to secure this complete separation of responsibilities, but the more we keep this ideal before our minds, the more we strive to live up to it, the nearer are we to true harmony. Association has no benefits in itself, and has nearly always some evil. The chapter of Proudhon’s that I would like to see published everywhere at this time when the country is resounding with the cry of the necessity of workingmen’s organizing to secure their rights, is that on Association in “L’Idée Générale de la Révolution.”

Mr. Appleton shares, as I share, all John Stuart Mill’s dread of the tyranny of public opinion, but he apparently fails to see, as Mill failed to see, that this tyranny is in great part due to the power which it has of erecting itself into an organized form, called the State, and that, with the destruction of this organized form, the very diversity of opinion which would necessarily follow would prevent any part of it exerting the enormous power that it does today. This we already see in the case of the church. The multiplicity of sects prevents any cue sect from having the power which the church formerly possessed. A great part of the power which the church still retains is due to its protection by the State.

Admitting, then, that the State is only part of the governmental power which has to be combatted, and taking Anarchism in its most limited sense, as implying merely the destruction of the State (in which sense, however, it has never, to my knowledge, been used in Liberty), still Anarchism is the most important part of the work for Liberty in which we can engage, as its indirect consequences are almost as great as its direct.

I hope that, if Mr. Appleton has a higher philosophy than this of Anarchism, he will not fail, for our sakes, to promulgate it in Liberty, for of course we are only interested in the discovery and spread of truth. But whether we remain in Anarchism, or ascend into the higher philosophy, we have gained one lesson from this experience, and that is, that neither harmony nor growth is secured by confusion of individuals, and that true cooperation is dependent, not upon the union of men, but of interests.

[So far as this gentle and finely tempered criticism falls upon me, I am disposed to accept it with much thankfulness and some humility. There is vital truth and force in it. The present editorial arrangement is preferable to the former for the very reason that it is not a union of men, but of interests or ideas, and does not involve any connection of responsibilities which cannot be quietly and harmoniously severed. It is an arrangement, in fact, which excludes the idea of permanency, and thereby allows even a temporary disconnection of responsibilities without prejudice to their subsequent reunion. I do not think it correct, however, to blame the union of responsibilities for all, or even the greater part, of the unpleasantness attending the recent rupture. My own sorrow, at least, is much less for the rupture itself than for the fact that an old and valued worker for Liberty has come to regard its mission as comparatively trivial and unimportant, and this sorrow would have been equally intense though he had been a correspondent instead of an editorial writer. Nor is it true, to my mind, that “association has no benefits in itself.” After Liberty, I deem it the most beneficent thing in the world. Association which does not entangle responsibilities beyond the point of easy separation is in conformity with the spirit of Warren’s teachings and both the spirit and the letter of Proudhon’s. In the very work referred to, “L’Idée Générale de la Révolution,” Proudhon outlines an organization of economic forces that is vast and complex. In decision of the question whether Anarchism has been used in Liberty in the sense of destruction of the State, I refer Miss Kelly to the first editorial that ever appeared in Liberty, entitled “Our Purpose.” In that I said specifically that this century’s battle is with the State, and that Liberty’s work is to destroy the State. It is true that I did not there use the word Anarchism, but, as I have steadily advertised Liberty as a “Journal of Anarchism” or “of Anarchistic Socialism,” it is evident that I have used the word Anarchism as expressive of the main purpose announced in my salutatory. And if, from the first number to the present, I have not adhered to the policy originally outlined, I have signally failed of my intent. When Mr. Appleton enlisted, Liberty’s banner was flying in the breeze, and he knew the nature of the conflict. If his new flag is really emblematic of a higher philosophy and a more effective warfare, I join Miss Kelly in the sincere hope that he will “promulgate it in Liberty.” — Editor Liberty.]

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The “Index,” commenting on Huxley’s annual pension of fifteen hundred pounds, says: “It is gratifying to see the valuable services of a distinguished man of science thus rewarded by the English government.” And I suppose it similarly gratifies the “Index” to see this same man of science play the toady to the government that supports him by advocating the extinction of all who question its right divine or absolute.

“Anarchistic Communism.”

Edgeworth has a powerful article in the last number of the London “Anarchist,” in which the absurdities of the so-called Anarchistic Communists are mercilessly dealt with. Communism, he pertinently observes, is not a chronic form of social disease, but only a morbid, reaction-like fever, which is accompanied with delirious ravings. A paradox in sociology and not practically viable, .... it can be enforced only by stringent authority, because it contravenes natural instinct as well as all the habits of education. Mr. Seymour pretends to be amused at the alleged contradiction of having voluntary communism enforced by stringent authority, and remarks that it is a bore to have to continually confute the error invariably made by the Mutualists in confounding authoritarian Communism and Anarchistic Communism.

Mr. Seymour apparently assumes that his readers are mental imbeciles, incapable of understanding the meaning of words, and that he needs only to say something to show that he is not non-plussed, whether there be sense in it or not. In speaking of Communism, Edgeworth clearly has in mind the only form of it that is conceivable, which is compulsory communism, his idea being that voluntary communism is impossible, for no rational body of men, having the freedom of choice, would ever think of settling permanently, or even by way of experiment, under such anti-natural and abnormal conditions. The realization of that foolish and sentimental dream, “to each according to his wants, from each according to his capacities,” would make a soup-house of society,— a perfectly natural ideal for paupers and tramps, but not one calculated to inspire with enthusiasm free and sober-minded men, who are not blinded by passion or driven by oppression. Communism was well characterized by Proudhon as the religion of poverty (and, we may add, superstition); and Edgeworth does not deny that it is quite practicable in religious orders. Every step in advance made by men under Liberty and Equity is a step away from Communism.

In conclusion I will say that, although the evidence is all against Mr. Seymour, I am willing to suspend judgment and give him another chance to explain his exact position. Not inviting him to discuss with me Communistic Anarchism or Anarchistic Communism, I merely wish that he would take the trouble to enlighten us as to what is his meaning of the term Communistic Anarchism. He should have dons it long ago, but late is better than never.

Falsehood, When Force is Lacking.

[Galveston News.]

Mr. E. Aveling, the English lecturer on Socialism, writes a long letter to the Boston “Herald” answering thirteen questions which he states were propounded in writing by Mr. B. R. Tucker, a Boston newspaper man. The questions are rather stupid, and the statement attributing them to Mr. Tucker reflects Aveling’s incapacity and unfairness. Mr. Tucker is a prominent and intelligent opponent, of whose criticisms Mr. Aveling ought not to be wholly ignorant. But, if not utterly misinformed of what, as a Socialist writer, he should know to be the strongest critical opposition to his creed, he must have been able to see at a glance that Mr. Tucker could not be the author of those questions, with their numerous absurd implications, and anonymously! There is much in Aveling that is not scientific, though he is loaded with a “scientific socialism,” which is to solve the economic problem by having the laboring class capture political power and use — force. Those who want to use force will sometimes use falsehood, when they lack force.

The Science of Society.
by Stephen Pearl Andrews.

Part First.
The True Constitution of Government In The Sovereignty of the Individual as the Final Development of Protestantism, Democracy, and Socialism.

What remains to be done, then, for wise men, is clearly this: to attempt to penetrate the future by investigating the past and the present, to ascertain whether there be not elements of calculation capable of fixing with tolerable certainty the precise point in the sidereal heavens of human destiny toward which our whole system is confessedly verging with accelerated velocity. To penetrate the gloom which encircles the orbit of our future progression might, at least, end the torture of suspense, even to those who may be least content with the nature of the solution. “If,” says Carlyle again, “the accursed nightmare that is crushing out the life of us and ours world take a shape, approach us like the Hyrcanian tiger, the Behemoth of Caos, or the Archfiend himself,— in any shape that we could see and fasten on,— a man can have himself shot with cheerfulness, but it needs that he shall clearly see for what.”

It is, then, neither unbecoming nor inappropriate, at this time, to attempt to prognosticate, by philosophical deductions from operative principles the chracteristics of the new society which is to be constructed out of the fragments of the old. It is, perhaps, only right that I should begin by declaring the general nature of the results to which my own mind is conducted by the speculations I have made upon the subject, and toward which I shall, so far as I may, endeavor, this evening, to sway your convictions.

I avow that, for one, I take the hopeful, the expectant, even the exulting view of the prospects of humanity, under the influence of causes which, to the minds of many, are pregnant with evil. I hail the progress of that unsparing criticism of old institutions which is the characteristic of the present age. I hail with still higher enthusiasm a dim outline which begins to be perceived by the keenest vision, through the twilight mists which yet hang upon the surrounding hilltops of a social fabric, whose foundations are equity, whose ceiling is security, whose pillars are cooperation and fraternity, and whose capitals and cornices are carved into the graceful forms of mutual urbanity and politeness. It is just to you that I should announce this faith, that you may receive the vaticinations of the prophet with due allowance for the inebriation of the prophetic rhapsody. I proclaim myself in some sense a visionary; but in all ages there have been visionaries whose visions of today have proved the substantial realities of tomorrow.

I shall make no apology for the rashness of the attempt to trace, with a distinct outline, some of the gigantic changes which will occur in the social organization of the world as the necessary outgrowth of principles now at work, and which are becoming every day more potential, in proportion as forces, which have hitherto been deemed antagonistic, converge and cooperate.

I affirm, then, firstly, that there is at this day a marked convergence and a prospective cooperation of principles which have hitherto resisted each other, or, more properly, a development of one common principle in spheres of life so diverse from each other that they have hitherto been regarded as unrelated, if not positively antagonistic. I assert, and shall endeavor to make good the assertion, that the essential spirit, the vital and fundamental principle of the three great modern movements to which I have already alluded,— namely, the Protestant Reformation, the Democratic Revolution, still progressing, and, finally, the Socialist Agitation, which is spreading in multiform varieties of reproduction over the whole civilized world,— is one and the same, and that this common affinity is beginning in various ways to be recognized or felt. If this assertion be true, it is one of immense significance. If Protestantism, Democracy, and Socialism are merely different expressions of the same idea, then, undoubtedly, the confluent force of these three movements will expand tremendously the sweep of their results, in the direction toward which they collectively tend.

What, then, if this be so, is this common element? In what great feature are Protestantism, Democracy, and Socialism identical? I will answer this interrogatory first, and demonstrate the answer afterward. Protestantism, Democracy, and Socialism are identical in the assertion of the Supremacy of the Individual,— a dogma essentially contumacious, revolutionary, and antagonistic to the basis principles of all the older institutions of society, which make the Individual subordinate and subject to the Church, to the State, and to Society respectively. Not only is this supremacy or Sovereignty of the Individual a common element of all three of these great modern movements, but I will make the still more sweeping assertion that it is substantially the whole of those movements. It is not merely a feature, as I have just denominated it, but the living soul itself, the vital energy, the integral essence or being of them all.

Protestants and Protestant churches may differ in relation to every other article of their creed, and do so differ, without ceasing to be Protestants, so long as they assert the paramount right of private or individual judgment in matters of conscience. It is that, and that only, which makes them Protestants, and distinguishes them from the Catholic world, which asserts, on the contrary, the supreme authority of the church, of the priesthood, or of some dignitary or institution other than the Individual whose judgment and whose conscience is in question. In like manner, Democrats and Democratic governments and institutions may differ from each other, and may vary infinitely at different periods of time, and still remain Democratic, so long as they maintain the one essential principle and condition of Democracy,— namely, that all governmental powers reside in, are only delegated by, and can be, at any moment, resumed by the people,— that is, by the individuals, who are first Individuals, and who then, by virtue only of the act of delegating such powers, become a people,— that is, a combined mass of Individuals. It is this dogma, and this alone, which makes the Democrat, and which distinguishes him from the Despotist, or the defender of the divine right of kings.

Again, Socialism assumes every shade and variety of opinion respecting the modes of realizing its own aspirations, and, indeed, upon every other point, except one. which, when investigated, will be found to be the paramount rights of the Individual over social institutions, and the consequent demand that all existing social institutions shall be so modified that the Individual shall be in no manner subjected to them. This, then, is the identical principle of Protestantism and Democracy carried into its application in another sphere. The celebrated formula, of Fourier that “destinies are proportioned to attractions,” means, when translated into less technical phraseology, that society must be so reorganized that every individual shall be empowered to choose and vary his own destiny or condition and pursuits in life, untrammeled by social restrictions; in other words, so that every man may be a law unto himself, paramount, to all other human laws, and the sole judge for himself of the divine law and of the requisitions of his own individual nature and organization. This is equally the fundamental principle of all the social theories, except in the case of the Shakers, the Rappites, etc., which are based upon religious whims, demanding submission, as a matter of duty, to a despotic rule, and which embody, in another form, the readoption of the popish or conservative principle. They, therefore, while they live in a form of society similar in some respects to those which have been proposed by the various schools of Socialists, are, in fact, neither Protestants nor Democrats, and, consequently, not Socialists in the sense in which I am now defining Socialism. The forms of society proposed by Socialism are the mere shell of the doctrine,— means to the end,— a platform upon which to place the Individual, in order that he may be enabled freely to exercise his own Individuality, which is the end and aim of all. We have seen that the hell is one which may be inhabited by despotism. Possibly it is unfit for the habitation of any thing else than despotism, which the Socialist hopes, by ensconcing himself therein, to escape. It is possible, even, that Socialism may have mistaken its measures altogether, and that the whole system of Association and combined interests and combined responsibilities proposed by it may be essentially antagonistic to the very ends proposed. All this, however, if it be so, is merely incidental. It belongs to the shell, and not to the substance,— to the means, and not to the end. The whole programme of Socialism may yet be abandoned or reversed, and yet Socialism remain in substance the same thing. What Socialism demands is the emancipation of the Individual from social bondage, by whatsoever means will effect that design, in the same manner as Protestantism demands the emancipation of the Individual from ecclesiastical bondage, and Democracy from political. Whosoever makes that demand, or labors to that end, is a Socialist. Any particular views he may entertain, distinguishing him from other Socialists, regarding practical measures, or the ultimate forms of society, are the mere specific differences, like those which divide the Protestant sects of Christendom.

This definition of Socialism may surprise some into the discovery of the fact that they have been Socialists all along, unawares. Some, on the other hand, who have called themselves Socialists may not at once be inclined to accept the definition. They may not perceive clearly that it is the emancipation of the Individual for which they are laboring, and affirm that it is, on the other hand, the freedom and happiness of the race. They will not, however, deny that it is both; and a very-little reflection will show that the freedom and happiness of each individual will be the freedom and happiness of the race, and that the freedom and happiness of the race can not exist so long as there is any individual of the race who is not happy and free. So the Protestant and the Democrat may not always have a clear intellectual perception of the distinctive principle of their creeds. He may be attached to it from an instinctive sentiment, which he has never thoroughly analyzed, or even from the mere accidents of education and birth.

Protestantism proclaims that the individual has an inalienable right to judge for himself in all matters of conscience. Democracy proclaims that the Individual has an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Socialism proclaims that the Individual has an inalienable right to that social position which his powers and natural organization qualify him, and which his tastes incline him to fill, and, consequently, to that constitution or arrangement of the property relations, and other relations of society, whatsoever that may be, which will enable him to enjoy and exercise that right,— the adaptation of social conditions to the wants of each Individual, with all his peculiarities and fluctuations of taste, instead of the moulding of the Individual into conformity with the rigid requirements of a preconcerted social organization.

If this be a correct statement of the essential nature of Protestantism, Democracy, and Socialism, then Protestantism, Democracy, and Socialism are not actuated by three distinct principles at all. They are simply three partial announcements of one generic principle, which lies beneath all these movements, and of which they are the legitimate outgrowths or developments, modified only by the fact of a different application of the same principle. This great generic principle, which underlies every manifestation of that universal unrest and revolution which is known technically in this age as “Progress,” is nothing more nor less than “Sovereignty of the Individual.” It is that which is the central idea and vital principle of Protestantism; it is that which is the central idea and vital principle of Democracy; and it is that which is the central idea and vital principle of Socialism.

This being so, it is high time that the mutual affinity of these movements should be intelligently perceived and recognized both by the friends and the enemies of the movements themselves. It is high time that the scene of the battle-field should be shifted from the right or wrong of any or all of the partial developments of the principle to the essential right or wrong of the principle itself. The true issue is not whether Protestantism be good or evil, whether Democracy be good or evil,; nor whether Socialism be good or evil, but whether the naked, bald, unlimited principle of the Sovereignty of the Individual, in human government and the administration of human affairs, be essentially good and true or essentially pernicious and false. This is the issue now up for trial before the world, and the definitive decision of which must be had before the final destiny of mankind upon earth can be ever, rough-hewn by the most vivid imagination, and certainly before any thing approximating scientific deduction respecting it can be bad.

You will please to consider yourselves, Ladies and Gentlemen, as a jury empanelled to try this issue. I take my position before you as the advocate of the Sovereignty of the Individual, and the defender of the spirit of the present age. If this principle be essentially good and true, then it may be trusted wherever it leads, and the general drift of what the world calls “Progress” is in the right direction, whatever mistakes may be made in matters of detail. If it is a false principle, the sooner we understand that fact the better; but let it be also understood, in that case, that we have much to undo which has been already done, and which has been supposed to be well done, in these modern times. In that case, Protestantism is all wrong, and Democracy is all wrong; the Whateleys, the Wisemans, the Bronsons, the Windischgratzes, and the Haynaus are philosophers and philanthropists of the right school; and the Luthers, the Channings, the Jeffersons, the Washingtons, and the Kossuths are the world’s worst foes,— the betrayers and scourgers which the wrath of an offended Heaven has let loose upon earth, first to delude and then to punish mankind for their sins.

I will first endeavor to set before you a clearer view of the doctrine of the Sovereignty of the Individual, as based upon the principle of the infinite Individuality of things. I will then show that this Sovereignty of the Individual furnishes the law of the development of human society, as illustrated in the progressive movements of modern times. Finally, I shall endeavor to trace the development which is hereafter to result from the “further operation of this principle, and to fix, so nearly as may be, the condition of human affairs toward which it conducts, especially in that particular department of human affairs which constitutes the subject of investigation this evening,— namely, the government of mankind.

To be continued.

“Irene: or, The Road to Freedom.”

The above novel, written by Sada Bailey Fowler and pubslished by H. N. Fowler & Co., 1123 Arch Street, Philadelphia, has made its appearance. As a review of this book in the columns of Liberty has essentially to do with its bearings upon the problem of sex relations, I will forego any criticisms upon its strictly literary merits and demerits. The former are many, and the latter, while they plainly indicate that the lady is something of a novice in literary art, should be generously overlooked in view of the nobleness, zeal, and self-sacrifice which have adorned her many years of struggle in behalf of the emancipation of her sex.

The story of Irene is that of a woman whose tender soul sent forth in girlish tlashes of inextinguishable light her yearning for liberty and sex autonomy. As her incongruous manifestations of higher aspiration display themselves, the usual brigade of darkness, in the person of father, clergyman, and the regulation array of soul-keepers, is on the alert. Her choice of companions is interdicted, her opinions are asailed, and the usual assumed prerogatives of meddling outsiders are asserted. In all these situations the dialogue is sound, vigorous, and often eloquent and beautiful.

Early in her youthful career the mother of one of her schoolmates, Mrs. Derby, is made the subject of the existing unjust property relations between man and wife. Mrs. Derby, a woman of superior instincts, had by untiring labor; and sagacity put in far more than the other half of the Derby home. For years she had managed it alone, besides watching tenderly over her sick husband for five years previous to his death. Now that he dies, the law suddenly discovers that she is fit to hold but a third of it, and incompetent to administer it at all. His relatives, a cheap and narrow crowd, who are enemies of all the reforms to which Mrs. Derby had hoped to devote her hard earnings, step in and claim the lion’s share of what they had no hand in acquiring. This abomination of the State, by which to rob and keep woman in subjection, is treated with great force and ability by Mrs Fowler.

As the book progresses, each chapter carries its varying picture and situation, but the central theme in each is the marriage question, with that haven of woman’s relief in the background, the cooperative farm. It will be noticed that, while Mrs. Fowler is boundless in her hatred of marriage, she holds persistently to the reservation that perfect sex liberty can only be safely put into practice where the conditions have been prepared for it.

Perhaps the most powerful, eloquent, and effective character in the book is Madam LeRoy, the mistress of a house of ill fame, upon whom Irene and her friend, Mrs. Fleming, make a chance call, for evidence hearing upon a lecherous husband who frequented her house. Upon being taken to task for her occupation. Madam LeRoy, with monumental power and earnestness, draws a picture and institutes distinctions and comparisons within the fabric of our lie-eaten, hypocritical society that are as vivid and grand as anything ever depicted in the English language. That accompaniment of prostitution, the receipt of money for sexual favors on the part of the woman, which to the vulgar eye constitutes its essential definition and iniquity, she disposes of by an appeal to the equities of the case, and shows that hosts of men and wpmen in ordinary married life are engaged in the double damnation of prostitution, coupled with a failure to adjust equitable costs. Well does Irene remark, under the illuminating eloquence of Madam LeRoy: “It isn’t the receipt of money that makes certain relations prostitution, but the conditions under which the act itself is committed.” Because the open prostitute refuses to be made the sewer for a lecherous man, without a settlement of the bill of costs, so far as money will settle it, the prostituted wife and the prostituted yoong woman who lie down to be debauched and swindled in the same act rise up to point the finger of scorn at a “fallen woman.” This chapter, “Madam LeRoy’s Story,” is alone worth the price of Mrs. Fowler’s book, and it ought to reach the hands of married prostitutes and “our girls” everywhere.

But while Irene is ceaseless in her reprobation of the existing order of marriage, site is all the time spoiling to go and do it herself. And it is in her marriage experiences that the chief interest of the book, in its bearings upon liberty and the State, centres. Foolish Irene thinks to be rid of the existing State machine for supervising marriage by drafting her own pet machine in contravention of it, and submitting it to the officers of the State, under forms prescribed by the State, so as to get the seal of the State attached to it. Her scheme, as drafted, is a fair sample of the ordinary schemes of halfhearted free lovers who attempt to fix a compromise with the State, except that the clause which stipulates community of ownership and government in the children is utterly at war with equity. How Mrs. Fowler can appeal for an ownership which is the ownership of woman by herself, minus the contents of her womb, which is the fruit of her labor more sacredly than all things else, is astonishing. Alas! how seductively does communism turn the heads of reformers against themselves everywhere!

As might have been expected, this lying down of Irene’s principle in prostitution with the State proved a swindle and debauch of her integrity. Her patent scheme soon came into collision with the “law” and was trodden under foot by the State. Yet she tries the scheme on a second husband, and is swindled again. By this time she becomes convinced that all patent, schemes of marriage which lie at the mercy of the State’s tyrant heel are fruitless. She resolves to organize a little world of her own, under conditions that will permit, of perfectly natural and free relations between the sexes, What this little world will be will appear in the sequel to the present work, which is promised to be forthcoming.

While Mrs. Fowler’s novel does not appear to have its roots in a well-defined system of social philosophy, and is tinged with Communism to an extent that challenges some incisive criticism I have refrained from inflicting it, because she has never pretended to champion views opposed to the doctrines of Liberty. She is only a woman, but, alas! one who has drunk the bitter dregs of man’s inhumanity through years of sorrow and toil. For truth she has defied law and custom, and stood in the market places to be mocked by the mob of fashion and conformity. Her novel is the picture in story of her life. For that I deal tenderly with its faults, and commend its many merits to those who feel that all paths sanctified by oppression’s tears and illuminated by singleness of devotion to truth shorten the way to final emancipation.

Another View of “Irene.”

The review of Mrs. Fowler’s novel, “Irene,” which appears elsewhere, is a generous tribute from a friendly hand. I have read only bits of the book at random, but, judging from these, my own opinion of it as a romance is better expressed by the following extract from a criticism passed upon it in Moses Hull’s “New Thought”:

To us, about every attempt to blend story writing and radical reform is a failure, and this book is no exception. Reformers, as a class, have little time to read stories; the thing they want is argument,— solid argument. Story readers are seldom greatly interested in reform, and, when they see the drift of such a book as “Irene,” will conclude they have been humbugged into reading reform literature and lay the book down in disgust. Again, story writers are sometimes guilty of the same sin that so often afflicts young orators and young actors; that is, they are inclined to overdo the matter. That is one of the faults with this; there is very little that is natural in it. Every character in the book is a prodigy; every thing done is wonderful. Tlie three young girls with whom the book opens have heads on their shoulders not less than fifty years old. They are not girls; they are mechanics, making trap doors and mysteriously getting into people’s houses, where and when they are not expected. One, Nanie, opens a trap door, and somehow puts her hands through it, and holds a circle with Patrick and Dr. Raymond over poor, sick Irene several nights, and neither of the three know it. These absolute impossibilities occur with so many of the characters and so frequently that one comes to look for them on almost every page of the book.

Spooner to Cleveland.

Dear Tucker:

I received the copy of Mr. Lysander Spooner’s Letter to President Cleveland you kindly favored me with.

I have read it and re-read it more than once. Whoever regards this as a contribution to political literature or party scheming will be mistaken. Mr. Cleveland is, of course, a figure-head, and his inaugural address merely the text from which the author seeks to present a summary of his principles of law and government and the institutions of both, and the rights of men and women under institutions wholly free. You are aware that I have not been accustomed to receive opinions because advanced by any one, or to accept principles on the authority of a name. Spooner is now advanced to the ripe age of seventy-seven. His position in American law and American literature is fixed for good or evil. His good or ill fame in American authorship is a question upon which you and I know opinions widely differ. Some have considered him the enemy of all religion; others as a wise contributor to religion in its best estate. Some have ranked him the foe to temperance, others as its stanchest friend. Some speak of him as no lawyer and less a jurist, while others think that in his view of jury trial and of judge-made and statute-made law and in ids broad and liberal interpretation of the institutions of the common law is contained the kernel of a comprehensive system of natural justice upon which the rights and liberties of all mankind may safely rest. I have never been quite able to agree with the one or the other of these opinions.

But the careful perusal I have given to this elaborate pamphlet of one hundred and ten pages convinces me that at this, his crowning work, he has embodied and discussed with superb activity and real power the outline of principles which will grow into a system of law and government grounded in pure truth and natural justice, unperverted by statecraft and legal craft remained in a manner which would have reflected credit upon a John Locke, a John Marshall, a John C. Calhoun, a David Webster, or any of the master thinkers and reasoners of this and the other and greater ages. The views expressed in this letter are not entirely new to me, as they are not new to any who have been readers of Mr. Spooner’s previous publications as they have from time to time issued from the press. For he has been an author rich in contributions to original thought and liberal opinions for over fifty years, and, although he has never commanded a constituency of general readers, he has always had a limited body of readers who never failed to see in his pages what was at the least worthy of careful reading, of which last you are aware I have always been one. But these views were new when first presented by him, or at least the stern logic by which he applied his principles to the facts of life and to law and government was new, startling, and unique. The usurpations and crimes of lawmakers and judges and the consequent poverty, ignorance, and servitude of the people are in this document, depicted with the pencil of a genuine artist and a thinker thoroughly in earnest in devotion to his principles of truth and justice.

With him “justice is an immutable, natural principle; and not anything that can be made, unmade, or altered by any human power. It is also a subject of science, and is to be learned, like mathematics, or any other science. It does not derive its authority from the commands, will, pleasure, or discretion of any possible combination of men, whether calling themselves a government or by any other name. It is also, at all times, and in all places, the supreme law. And being everywhere and always the supreme law, it is necessarily everywhere and always the only law. Lawmakers, as they call themselves, can add nothing to it nor take anything from it.” These natural, inherent, inalienable, individual rights he holds to be sacred things. They are the only human rights. But to you, who have doubtless read the pamphlet with as appreciative a spirit as I have, no summary of its great truths can be necessary or useful; and it is pleasing to turn from that topic to what would be the probable consequences, for evil or good, of putting such a system into practical life.

This is a question upon which old fogies in the law and out of it would, by virtue of their office, their education, and their diabolical prejudices, have but one opinion, and that an adverse one; but the world will not in the near future be run by this class of thinkers and reasoners. The liberal, the candid and the just will see in this body of principles the seeds of a new birth for man and a new life under law which is natural justice, having its home, as Richard Hooker, in stately phrase, wrote, in the bosom of God and its voice in the harmony of the universe. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity would have free course and be abundantly glorified under such a system, developed in wise practical detail and prudently applied in practice to the business of life. There is too much law; too much legislation and too little of genuine liberty on this earth. It is simply astounding that, with the vast progress of man in all other sciences and arts, he has made so little advance in the practical application of justice and in the true principles of government. This pamphlet will, I for one believe, do more to pave the way to sounder thought and better principles on the great problems of life, truth, justice, and humanity than any one publication within a century. In this land of free thought no man is bound to accept any farther than he pleases these views of Mr. Spooner in their larger or more limited application. Nor will any one who prides himself upon a decent self-respect reject them, in their entirety, or in any part, without such an examination of them as their importance demands from all intelligent thinkers. This bold and grand discussion of these great principles challenges the attention of every intelligent American citizen who would think and act aright upon the groat problems of social, legal, and governmental science. More I need not say: less I could not say and express adequately the very high estimate I have put upon this last effort of the great thinker, the stern logician, and the brilliant writer.

With regards, yours sincerely,

Moralizing Population.

The eminent successes of moralism in enforcing the decalogue and purifying civilization naturally encouraged it to try its hand on population. It is true that its old friend, the Bible, had said: “Multiply and increase,” but

Temporu mutantur et nos mutumus cum illis.

When you have the indiscretion to be born into an already inhabited world without bringing a proprietary title deed, you are liable to arrest as a vagrant, for fear lest you poach on some respectable domain; so the best you can do is to make yourself scarce, incontinently.

It remained for our moralists of today to make a fioriture upon necessity, or the police, and show how virtuous, how evolutionary, how Anarchistic, it is to moralize your passions and not multiply.

Between such degree of continence as is healthful or potential and such as precludes offspring, there is, however, nothing but the name in common. The facts are in trenchant opposition.

To prevent fecundation is a mechanical affair, requiring only the interposition of a membrane. Prostitution had devised this as a guard against infection, but willingly lends it to her elder sister, Marriage, in return for many favors received from her,— not to speak of existence even under persecution.

Marriage, by excluding competition in love, as expressed in tile poem,

None but the brave deserve the fair,

and in subjecting woman to her owner’s desire, bespeaks an inferior grade of progeny; but the culture of constraint within marriage bonds, otherwise than under the influence of scientific stirpiculture, which will be rather a guided spontaneity, and which does not require marriage at all, is not likely to improve morals. It is not very difficult to train youth to moral cowardice, to make it ashamed of its passions, and to dress up virtue in the corsets, stays, and belts of asceticism, but that style of virtue is a scarecrow for Anarchism.

In marriage or without marriage, self-restraint, carried to a point prohibitory of progeny, will be very uncomfortable to love. Considering Mr. Lloyd’s hints of analeptic diet, I have consulted my billy-goats and my bull — who are strict vegetarians — on this subject, but they do not appear to take the philosophical Malthusian or Origenal view of it. My pasture probably abounds in phosphates.

Now, what happens when you make Love uncomfortable at home? He roams abroad, and then you have your choice of adultery, prostitution, and the harem; or rather, you would have, but for the virtuous Grover Cleveland and the puritan Edmunds; but now you have only the two first resources. They are eminently moral, as Washington, New York, and London, which set the fashions in morality, agree: but less economical than the harem, which is a factory not only of children, but of shawls and other manufactures quoted in the market.

Not even prostitution is to be despised as a safety-valve from practices still more ignoble and disastrous, whether in self-abuse, abuse of wives, or encroachments on the neighbor’s premises. The females who have recourse to it for bread, in forfeiting the respect of personality, acquire a title to the gratitude of wives whom they save from persecution, and in a good State Socialist régime will doubtless be pensioned by government for their services in the preservation of morality. Parson Malthus has no crow to pick with venal love, for it is not prolific.

In a natural order, Love will brook but one form of constraint, viz., in the necessity of obtaining the preference of its object. It is precisely from this salutary constraint, that marriage laws pretend to exempt it. Now, this constraint, maintained by the competition of attractions, is not self-restraint; its influence is exerted towards the development of greater faculty, not to the repression of what we possess; its object is not to control passion, but to ally ambition with love, and to stimulate intellect in its pursuit. Thus there will come to be great artists in love, as in painting or sculpture, and races will improve by their progeny.

The demand of the Alphites and clerical hypocrisy for self-restraint among the married begins by excluding the natural competition of love forces, by establishing an arbitrary privilege, which is a fief or vassalage of the Church, and then begging the proprietary husband not to love his wife to death in the sacred marriage bed,— a request which appears to him preposterous as long as other property of the same sort can be had for the asking. So it will be, until Anarchism establishes woman’s industrial independence, sets a premium upon good stock, and eliminates the bad.

Not in his need to prove superiority in love alone does the Anarchist lover meet those forces which nature opposes to luxurious excess, for love quickens the conscience of providence for offspring. It is true that associations must provide in any case for the industrial education of all children suffered to live in their midst, but dishonor will attach to the parent who fails to render equivalent service, and this dishonor will operate as an obstacle to successes in love. Subject thus to the compound tension of emulation in the love sphere, and of prolific faculty in other departments, there will be little or no occasion left for the introverted exercise of self-control. The social counterpoises to excess suffice; the equilibrium is passional, not moral.

Another thing you don’t consider, Mr. Lloyd, Before folks get too thick to thrive, it makes no difference how many pickaninnies they have, for either they are unhealthy and more than half die, or they are healthy and help more than they cost on a farm before they are twelve years old.

La Place used to find music congenial to the solution of abstruse mathematical problems, but it does not follow that the vocalizations of a very tender age shall be helpful in the solution of the population problem. The philosopher should not, however, fold himself too closely apart in his intellectual egoism to perceive that the demand of the heart in the greater number of women — plain country women, at least — is for babies, and babies, and babies; while they care nothing for his thought-children. Their husbands, though less enthusiastic or absorbed in babyhood, yet take quite as much stock in this kind of life stock some years later, when it is big enough to feed its brother pigs and scratch for a living. It is the fault of the city if children are a drug there.

But there is a superior reason of society even here, for it is not until folks get too thick to thrive in separate families that the solidarities of associative cooperation are studied. Then it is the laboring poor who organize for self-preservation. Man is so organized that he will never organize spontaneously, except either for mischief or for defence. Plunder I include under the head of mischief, as in case of monkeys for plundering orchards, or governments for levying taxes. So when the usual palliatives of population — war and malaria — hold up awhile, and misery relays them: when I finds he cannot make a living, he begins to speculate on what can We do. And when we perceive that what hinders us are the organizations for plunder called Government, then the monkey’s occupation — as jurist, for instance — is gone, and the cats agree to eat their own cheese.

Requisites of an Anarchist Editor.

It is the pride of the editor of Liberty that it has ever been his endeavor to conform his editorial policy to a standard similar to that held up by A. B. Bradford in a recent number of the “Truth Seeker,” as printed below:

As the two requisites of a man who occupied the responsible position of a watchman on the walls of a beleaguered city were, first, that he have good eyesight to see, and, secondly, that he have fidelity of character, so the editor of a Free-thought journal should be a man who takes a large view of things, and who, impartially studying the causes, foresees the effects of them. Mounted on the walls, of course he is expected to see farther than those who are inside, and whose vision must necessarily be limited. Besides the qualification of intelligence and foresight, such an editor must have a heart loyal to the cause he professes to advocate. He must not be turned aside from the pursuit of his object, or be goaded into a compromise of the truth at any crisis, by shortsighted friends who criticise his judgments. Such friends have a right to criticise, and he is glad of any light they can shed on the path of his duty. But if he is fit for the place, he must go, after all, by his own convictions, or resign it to the occupancy of some one else. In times of panic, when men’s minds are generally confused, and when he is liable to be misunderstood, even by his friends and co-laborers, he must still remain firm.