"Alceste," the brilliant French writer who, living in Paris, writes "Letters from Paris" to the newspapers of that city, said in a recent communication:
The administration, the army, the courts, the world of finance the various professions learnedly defended at the Garden of the Hesperides where the dragon guards the golden fruit, all are combined to crush the multitude. And we see the laws on the press itself, through the complicity of governments and the treason of the people's elect to their trust, directed against Liberty.
For Liberty is the great enemy of the privileged classes. Liberty is Justice.
It took me many years of study and observation to discover this identity of Justice and Liberty. The idea of this new world came to me as a presentiment before I clearly saw it. Political economy first led me to put my finger on this truth that Liberty is equal to property, and that to attack the first was to attack the second. Those laws, then, professedly protective of social order were both criminal and unjust. The movement of the English Anti-Corn-Law League finished my enlightenment, and my belief in the complete identity was confirmed by Proudhon, who demonstrated that no Liberty can spring from the absolute and at the same time from it can emanate no Justice. Only by the elimination of the absolute, parent of the regime of authority, can Justice and Liberty be achieved. Denial of the latter is denial of the former.
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