Editorials

Liberty has won praise from Sir Hubert. J. M. L. Babcock, the founder of “The New Age,” writes that he “rejoices greatly in Liberty,” which he describes as “a periodical in which the most radical thoughts are radically spoken.” These words fitly describe also the paper which Mr. Babcock conducted. The career of “The New Age” was short, but of such a character that its editor may look back to it with unmixed pride and satisfaction. It was one of the few papers that have ever lived that was not afraid of its subscribers. In many more respects it was a model journal, and, typographically and otherwise, we feel that we owe much to it. We grieved greatly at its death, and are glad of this opportunity to acknowledge that we profited greatly by its life.

Honoring a Great Law-Breaker.

On the evening of Friday, December 2, the twenty-second anniversary of the execution of old John Brown of Ossawattomie at Harper’s Ferry, a festival in honor of the hero’s memory was held at New York in the theatre of Turn Hall. A large audience, made up in part of ladies, was present, including also not a few colored people. The hall was prettily and appropriately decorated with flowers and mottoes. The meeting was held under the auspices of workingmen, and, as was eminently fit, the tributes of the evening to the martyr of oppressed black labor came from the lips of men now among the foremost in championing oppressed white labor,— the speakers being Hugh McGregor, Victor Drury, and John Swinton. The latter made the principal speech of the evening, and nothing could be more appropriate to Liberty’s columns than the following extract from the New York’ “Sun’s” report:


It were hard to tell in what way we should properly estimate the depth and the scope of the influence of this man John Brown upon our country’s history. We know that after ages of ascendancy for American slavery, he was the first man to enter its stronghold and smite it with the sword; and we know how quickly the sword that was struck from his hand brought destruction to American slavery. We know how slavery stood in safety before he delivered his blow; we know how it reeled to ruin under that blow. We know how the South was startled by Harper’s Ferry, and how the North. It was the challenge to battle, the first shot in the war.

It was a new policy that John Brown brought into play against American slavery,— the policy of meeting it upon its own terms and its own field, confronting with force a system based upon force, and establishing human rights by the weapons that upheld public wrongs. In place of the old way of acquiescing in slavery, or compromising with it, or arguing over it, or resisting its extension, he adopted the way of assailing it by the only means that gave any hope of destroying it. John Brown’s way was justified by the event — justified amid flame and smoke by Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation of abolition. . . . . . . . .

I proclaim it here to-night ns my judgment that the man who goes highest in his estimate of the immediate, the far off, and the permanent efficacy of John Brown’s influence, is most nearly right.

Now, then, in this view of his life and work, and from this vantage of the years, I acclaim as Prophet, Hero, Martyr, and Victor, the man John Brown — prophet for half a century, hero for five years, martyr for a day, victor forever — victorious in Kansas with his rifle, victorious in Virginia on his scaffold, victor against slavery in the United States,— victor over the earth and through the ages — his name as a pillar of fire in the sky, guiding men to the Canaan which be himself saw not.

But hark! I hear the drool of Old Legality that John Brown was condemned and hanged under the authority of government and law. Ay, it is true. So we then hold that John Brown was guilty? Nay, nay, nay; but let our guilty system of government and law beware lest his condemnation be its doom.

What is this thing that arrogates to itself the title of law, the records of which are foul with wrong — the hands of which are red with the world’s best blood — the administrators of which were so perfectly described by Zephaniab, the Hebrew prophet, who said “The Judges are wolves, gnawing the bones” — which has supported every powerful culprit and every incorporate monstrosity — which poisoned Socrates, slew the Gracchi, strangled Savonarola, beheaded Vane, burned Servetus, hanged John Brown — ay, crucified the young Galilean himself — the devices of which are the scourge, the rack, the wheel, the stake, the gibbet, the cross, and every invention of torture?

Who are these beloved felons at law arrayed in white, for they are worthy, their names effulgent in the sky, burnishing the dull world? How many of the apostles and prophets of the ages have fallen victims to the fraud misnamed law? The world is to-day as busily engaged as ever it was in sacrificing them. Look at the scaffolds of Russia, the dungeons of Germany. But, my hearers, this will not last forever. As Samson in his death brought down the temple of Dagon, as John Brown in his death shivered the bulwarks of chattel slavery, so every martyr hastens the end of the system under which he is sacrificed.

Well, now, my hearers of to-night, though chattel slavery has been abolished from our country, we have yet other wrongful and destructive things established among us which, in their turn, shall be brought to the judgment of justice. Take notice, then, of a few of the features of John Brown’s revolutionary action:

1. John Brown acted under his own authority, or, as he himself said, “under the auspices of John Brown,” by the power of his own manhood, in behalf of right and man’s rights. He took the responsibility, seeking no sanction other than that of his own conscience. He did not refrain from action because he was weak, nor wait till the majority was on his side. “I acknowledge no master in human form,” said John Brown.

2. John Brown did not hesitate to confront the government and all its menaces. He stood by himself against all the established shows of the day — political, ecclesiastical, and pecuniary.

3. John Brown violated law and the laws.

4. John Brown believed in destroying wrongful institutions by the sword, when no other way was available.

5. John Brown believed in fighting for others, in giving his life for the freedom of slaves.

6. John Brown took no heed of self-interest, obloquy, petty prudence, or the condemnation and vengeance of the times.

7. John Brown put his whole soul in his work, and gave it all he had, his own life and his four sons, three of whom fell by his side.

8. Yet withal, John Brown was a practical and sensible man, the attestation of which are his work and his success.

If it be not for us of to-day to imitate John Brown’s action, well were it for us to possess the qualities of soul that underlay it.

Other times need other work and ways of other men. Man rises to each occasion. For every emergency, bountiful nature furnishes the man. . . . . . . . .

According to the song that swelled from our embattled hosts during the years of strife, John Brown was a body and a soul, which became a mouldering body and a marching soul. Behold John Brown in the body — erect, rugged and grim, battling for man and for freedom, closing his career on the gallows. Behold John Brown’s soul, luminous and august, compassionate and benignant, enriching us all by its radiance, raising us all by its puissance, and softening us all by its tender grace, of which he made such sublime display during the closing scenes of his life.

A monument to John Brown here in our city! Would that my fiat could raise it aloft! There is already a monument to John Brown at North Elba, where he is buried; there is, I believe, another at Ossawattomie, on the plains of Kansas; his statue will stand in the Capitol at Washington; and in the quiet Massachusetts town of Concord, you may see, in the Summer School of Philosophy, besides the busts of Anaxagoras, Plato, Pestalozzi, and Emerson, the bust of John Brown. But I should like to see two other memorials or monuments to this man — one of them here in our city, at this gate of the continent; the other at Charlestown, in Virginia, on the site of his scaffold — so that the North and the South, and all the world, would thus again have perpetual reminder that here was a man of our nineteenth century who, accounting his own life and home and treasures as naught, gave himself to battle and death that he might deliver those who were crushed and lost, even black slaves.

How hopeful were the times and the skies, had we among us but a few men — ay, or one man — of John Brown’s conscience, judgment, valor, righteousness, and, above all, of his self-sacrificing life!

Now, as my last words for to-night, I exclaim: Great were John Brown’s life and work and triumph! Worthy, thrice worthy, is John Brown!

In the course of the meeting Prof. Marquand played on the piano a funeral march by Beethoven, “John Brown’s Body,” “The Marseillaise,” and “Marching Through Georgia.”

Editorials.

To prohibitionist legislators:

Why would you make use coolly think?
If you must govern, we must drink.

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A just published anecdote of Chief Justice John Marshall and John C. Calhoun says that Marshall, once meeting Calhoun on the street of Washing, said, "You seems to be in profound thought; of what are you thinking?" Calhoun, replied, "I am thinking of the origin of government." "And on what does government depend?" "On the production and distribution of wealth." "And on what does the production and distribution of wealth depend?" "That is what I have not discovered," said Calhoun.

Editorials.

The Marquis of Waterford, foreseeing the inevitable, is endeavoring to stave it off by posing as a philanthropist and a reformer. He offers his tenants a permanent reduction of their rents, and to those whom he has evicted a reinstatement. If his tenants show themselves base enough to accept this bribe, they will become neither more nor less than compounders of felony, and will win the same disrespect from those who thoroughly understand the nature of theft that is now accorded by those who know only theft as defined by statute to the merchant who compromises with the burglar by whom his safe has been robbed. "Rent under any circumstances is an immoral tax," says Michael Davitt, boldy and truthfully. No compromise with it, then, is the only course for honest men to follow.

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On the strength of the favorable symptoms in the president's case immediately following the so-called "nation's prayer," Dr. J. L. Withrow, who now fills old Dr. Beecher's pulpit at "Brimstone Corner," made the rash announcement last Sunday that the prayer has been heard in heaven and speedily answered, little know that, as the words were leaving his lips, the wires from Long Branch were saying to the newspapers that an abscess had formed on the president's right lung, greatly endangering his chances for recovery. Probably Dr. Withrow will hereafter maintain a judicious reserve until the final designs of Our Lord are manifested in a way that no longer leaves room for doubt.

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Uncompromising Steven Foster, the old-time abolitionist who died the other day at his home in Worcester, was one of the most useful citizens that ever honored this country by living in it. Thoroughly honest, devoid of personal ambition, anxious only for the good of his fellows, fearless, logical, and persistent in his maintenance for their rights, he has left behind him a record that will grow whiter in the eyes of generations better able than this to contrast it with the blackness of the sins against which his life was one long battle. Liberty honors his memory as one of her truest soldiers.

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Liberty knows no difference whatever between the rights of man, and the rights of woman. Therefore it is eternally opposed to woman suffrage.

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A minister has preached an hour; then he remembered: "Another wide field opens from the subject in another direction." Just then an old colored saint ejaculated, "Please, Lord, put up de bars."

Editorials.

The Boston "Advertiser," relict, continues in deep mourning for her long-lost love, the whipping-post. Time cannot assuage her grief nor dry her tears. Sweet are the memories of her halcyon days, - the agonizing shrieks of denuded women in the marketplace, the hissing lash that stained their fair, white skin with blood. The leopard may change his spots, but his thirst for blood is insatiable. The wrinkled dame, to solace her declining days, would have us re-adorn her our public squares, now graced with such momentos of man's growing sense of Liberty and love as the emancipation group, with the antique, chaste, and Christian whipping-post. But really we couldn't, you know. Liberty has too great a regard for the grandam's weak backbone to subject it to such a risk, seeing that those Socialists who are not Anarchists may yet get possession of the government and interpret freedom of the press for themselves, as the masters of the "Advertiser" now interpret it to suit their purposes. It is upon vandals such as mutilate the sentient plants in the Public Garden that she would use the lash, though horrified when crowned, usurpers and assassins are hoist with their own petard. We suspect that the old lady would emigrate to St. Petersburg, chief city of the land of the knout, except for the danger of having to face the dreaded alternative of Siberia or dynamite.

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The Springfield "Republican" is nothing, if not inaccurate. A few weeks ago it announced Dr. Nathan-Ganz as still in jail, and not many days later it crammed three lies into three lines by describing the editor of Liberty as a resident of Princeton and editor of the "Word," calling the latter a "recently deceased journal." Now, the facts about these matters are that Dr. Nathan-Ganz, in absence of evidence against him, was discharged five months ago; that the editor of Liberty left Princeton five years ago; that he is not editor of the "Word;" and that the "Word" still lives. And yet the "Republican" prides itself on being a news paper. Perhaps it gets all its news now from that pseudo-nihilist, John Baker, who supplies its columns with irregular installments of lies about the Russian revolution and revolutionists.

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An omnipresent person necessarily would be shapeless and inert.

Editorials.

Judging by the storm it has raised about our ears, the innocent paragraph in our previous issue noting the downward career of a Chicago siren who lately made common cause with the Chicago "saints," was our trump editorial card. It seems to have given the nation at large, as well as some of our more sensitive friends, a very healthy shock. Saying nothing of the numerous newspapers that have quoted , attacked and denounced it, we have been asked something less than a thousand times: "Would you rather see a sister of yours a prostitute than a church-member?" We are just beginning to appreciate the situation of the abolitionist, who used to be asked so often "Would you like your daughter to marry a nigger?" Our answer has been: "Yes, if thereby she should escape becoming the embodiment of all the vices of the church; otherwise, no." Of course there are very many worthy persons in the church whom it would be an insult to compare with the inmates of a brothel. Our comparison was of institutions, not of individuals. So heavy is the fog of respectability hovering over the church that it has veiled from the eyes of our critics the fact that an institution whose patrons are ministered unto by men who sell their brains, hearts, and souls ought to stand much lower in the social scale than one whose patrons are ministered unto by girls who sell merely their bodies. Nine-tenths of the occupants of Christian pulpits are prostitutes of a far worse order than the unfortunate women whom social conditions force into the service of the lusts of their male parishioners. To be obliged to choose between syphilitic poison and the poison of hypocrisy is not a desirable situation, but, once confronted with so unenviable an alternative, we can conceive of no reason for hesitation.

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The London correspondent of the "Philadelphia Telegraph" thinks that Baker Pasha's military exploits in Turkey largely compensate for the "grave indiscretion" of which, as Lieutenant Valentine Baker, he was guilty several years ago in endeavoring to violate the person of a young lady, his fellow passenger in an English railway train. To this journalist we are indebted for the lesson that a man may retrieve a reputation lost in assaulting an unarmed women by engaging in conflict with armed men. His reinstatement in the Army and Navy Club, says the same writer, shows that English gentleman do not like to "kick a man when he's down." Indeed! But is it, then, characteristic of English gentlemen to prefer as companions men who outrage defenceless women? We would not depreciate any attempt to shield even Baker Pasha from vindictive ostracism, but, if we knew how many of his associates in the Army and Navy Club would be willing to accept a public introduction to the lady whom he assaulted, we should be in a better position to accurately judge the quality of their mercy.

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A German scientist has just invented a machine calculated to replace all our charming methods of applying the death penalty. This interesting invention and the manner of using it are described as follows: In the middle of a hall specially designed for the executions is erected a large allegorical statue of Justice, holding in one hand a sword and in the other a balance. In front of the statue is an arm-chair for the criminal. After pronouncing the sentence, the judge (the machine dispenses with the hangman) throws the baton of justice, which he has previously broken into two pieces, into one of the scales of the balance held by the statue; the scale falls and - human justice is satisfied. For the condemned dies, struck by lightning from a powerful electric battery placed within the statue and started into action by the fall of the scale. Is it the intention of advancing civilization to temper justice by science and arts rather than by mercy?

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The "Renssciaer County Gazette," published at Greenbush, N.Y., remarked the other day that "communism and nihilism embrace nothing but the recrement of the life-blood and the scoria of the industry of the countries they infest." After that we were not surprised to find the next column the following terse but superfluous editorial confession: "We haven't got much brains."

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Liberty lost one of her most cruel enemies by the death of M. Dufaure, the French senator, a few weeks ago, in his eighty-fourth year. As Rochefort wittily said when he died, "Buffon failed to tell us that crocodiles could live so long." Though professedly progressive, he persistently fought every progressive measure, and in 1871 made himself conspicuous by the bitterness of his pursuit of the Paris Communists. He initiated also, we believe, the measure suppressive of the great International Working People's Association. Rochefort's obituary of the deceased was entitled "One Less," and concluded with these words: "The idea of seeing suffering was the sole delight of this wild beast who never sought satisfaction except in the sorrow of another. To the four horses employed for the quartering of Damiens, he with pleasure would've added two. Has he died expressing regret at not having witnessed the tortures of Hessy Helfmann, we should have been but little surprised. He appears to have died of hunger, his stomach no longer being able to bear food. It was just the opposite with the exiles whom he sent to New Caledonia, and who died likewise, but because they had no food, not because they had no stomach." We echo the wish of Paul Leconte, another French journalist: "May Liberty never meet upon her path any more such 'Liberals' as he!"

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Has Boston at last found a successor to Theodore Parker? It really begins to look so. Not, however, in the hall that bears Parker's name, but next door, in the Paine Memorial Hall. There for six months now, every Sunday afternoon, has been heard by a steadily growing audience a discourse from George Chainey, the infidel preacher. Before us, by his courtesy, lies a beautiful volume of 132 pages containing the first eighteen of these discourses, which he published weekly in a pamphlet called "The Infidel Pulpit." Coming to Boston from the West full of enthusiasm for his work, he has imbued others with the same spirit, and has formed a society that is already a powerful and beneficent factor in the work of Liberalism. Each of these lectures shows vigor and breadth of intellect; each line of them breathes earnestness of purpose. They deserve to be read by all thinking people, who can order the volume and subscribe for subsequent issues by addressing Mr. Chainey at 51 Fort Avenue, Roxbury, Boston, Mass.

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That staid London journal, the "Daily News," was sadly upset by Hartmann's letter to the "New York Herald." It was actually forced to the conclusion that "it seems to be possible for an educated person to grow to man's estate on the continent of Europe without the slightest notion that carefully prepared murder, schemes which, if successful, must sacrifice the lives, not only of their objects, but of many other innocent people, are abhorrent to the vast majority of civilized men throughout the world." The "News" did not lose its head entirely, however, but retained sufficient of its equanimity to "not undertake to account by any single fact or any simple explanation for this strange phenomenon of modern life and society." This course speaks volumes for the editor's prudence.

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People taught to depend upon the reliance of authority lose their self-reliance. To reassure a populace excited and bewildered by news of Lincoln's assassination, Gen. Garfield could find no more effective words than those now famous: "God reigns and the government still lives." Once satisfied that they still had masters in both worlds, their security seemed complete. To derive security from oppression is indeed to "pluck the flower, safety, from the nettle, danger."

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The third annual convention of the Union Reform League will be held in the town hall at Princeton, Mass., on the last Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday of this month, and will be addressed by Stephen Pearl Andrews, Col. J. H. Blood, and numerous other speakers.

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We suspect that Mrs. E. D. Cheney has hit upon the origin of "Me Too." She writes in the "Free Religious Index:" "When Louis XIV said, "L'Etat, c'est moi," he obliged the sans-culottes of Paris to answer, "Et moi aussi.