On Picket Duty.

Liberty, Boston Mass., Saturday, September 17, 1881.

Vol. 1, No. 4

Society has no rights.

Morality is the science of mutual rights and duties of human beings.

Liberty attempts to promote unanimity by consent, and succeeds; authority attempts to promote it by compulsion, and succeeds - in retarding it.

"A Socialist," who lately joined in the New York "Truth's" hunt for the "Somebody," is on the right scent when he says that the right of property as defined by Proudhon must be superseded by the right of possession.

Some political philosophers - D. A. Wasson for instance - are carried away with the idea that man's only right is to do his duty. The contrary is the truth. In the political or civil sphere man's only duty is to respect others' rights.

In the Cramer murder trial now attracting so much attention at New Haven, a Mr. Bush, one of the prosecuting counsel, described himself as "the representative of a cruel monster - the State." We are glad to know the State has one servant so well acquainted with his employer.

On the day appointed for public prayer for the president's recovery an aged clergymen of Hingham, Mass., was stricken with paralysis while in the act of supplicating the deity, and died a few days later. Probably a just judgement of Providence on the insinuation that the Almighty does not know his own business.

Emerson has somewhere said: "If you wish to know what a boy will do, strip him naked, place him in a ten-acre lot, and set the dog on him." We quote from memory, but give the pith of the advice. Liberty will translate it to striving mortals that stand about. Don't be so afraid something is going to happen that will bring you death and destruction. Strip for the contest, take all odds, defy the dog, and BE somebody.
The indomitable Felix Pyat, dramatist, radical, and advocate of regicide, banished from France not many months ago for publishing a revolutionary daily newspaper, no sooner finishes his term of exile than he starts another in his beloved Paris. His former journal was called "La Commune." The new one is "La Commune Libre" (The Free Commune). Being a graphic writer, his paper is sure to be interesting; being an earnest thinker, it is equally sure to be valuable.

Has coercion coerced? We fear it has in the case of Mr. John Dillon. Released from prison, he announced his intention of withdrawing for a time from the land agitation, giving as his reason therefor that the Irish people are determined to try the Land Bill, and that it is best to let them try it without interference. We add our protest to the "Irish World's" against this course. If Mr. Dillon is a true man he will not desert at the very crisis of battle, but his voice will be heard in the thick of it, up and down the Irish country, warning the Irish tenantry in unmistakable terms that they will deserve no sympathy if, having beheld the Sun of Justice, they shut their eyes to its splendid rays, and that they cannot too soon be deprived of all the benefits of the land they occupy if they consent any longer to periodically transfer any portion of them to the thieves and loafers who call themselves landlords.

The truly great thinker never shrinks from the consequences of his own thought, but accepts all its conclusions fearlessly. "If your ideas were to be realized," objected a timid soul to a seemingly startling proposition made by Colonel William B. Greene, the author of "Mutual Banking," "They would shiver the planet." "Well, what of it?" answered the colonel, nothing daunted; "there are other planets in plenty, I believe."

The "Magdeburger Zeitung" reports that a younge man was recently sent to Bismark with a letter of recommendation for having successfully played the spy in a family where he had been engaged as private tutor, by stealing the contents of a certain threatening letters to majesty. Commenting on this young man, the "New York Volkzeitmug," in a paragraph which loses half its richness by translation, says: "This patent mutton-head is just the tool whom 'Bismarck, the old stud-horse' Willhelm, and the whole tribe of German Philistines need, to instruct them in the dangerous tendencies of social democracy, to the end of securing severer strictures on its propagandism"

Liberty is sent regularly to the Boston Public Library that it may be placed on file in the reading-room. We are informed that the trustees have voted not to place it in the reading-room, but to hide it away in the recesses of Bates Hall. Despotism is still at its old tricks. It knows that its only chance for continued existence lies in keeping the light from the people. "You shall not learn to read," said the slaveholder to his slaves. "You shall read nothing but lies," says capital and government to their victims. But their efforts are in vain. Light has a penetrating power that is irresistible, and is bound to make its way. Liberty will be seen and read and understood more and more as time goes on, and will eventually force its way to a place of honor on the shelves of libraries everywhere.

The London "Truth" thinks that "the best use to which a woman can be put is to be made the honest wife of a good man, and the judicious mother of healthy children." It is high time that Editor Labouchere, who claims to be a radical, found out that woman is not here to "be put" to any use whatever. Like man, she has her capacities and her preferences, and, like him, she also has the right to put herself to the uses most in accordance with them. Propagation is an important function in which man and woman are factors equally necessary, but one whose usefulness is entirely incident and subordinate to the rest of life. Its vaine depends wholly on upon its power to produce human beings good for something more than the mere perpetuation of the race. The man who should be told that the best use to which he could be put would be to be made the honest husband of some good woman, and the judicious father of healthy children, would consider himself insulted, and with reason. Why should not woman, too, feel the insult of being degraded in others' estimation to the level of a mere sexual animal, with no brain to speak of above her cerebellum?