Guiteau's Wit.

Guiteau is proving himself so bright and sharp, that his enemies infer that he is not insane now, and probably was not on the second of July. They appear to have forgotten that,

Great wit to madness near is allied

And thin partitions do their bounds divide.

Yet such is, no doubt, very often the fact. A great many men, of extraordinary brilliance of mind, have been insane on some one or more subjects, while rational on others. In regard to other men, of this class, the question has been a doubtful one, whether they were insane, or not. The famous John Randolph, of Virginia, was one of these. His will was contested on the ground that he was insane. And although, if we remember rightly, it was sustained upon the ground that he was sane when he made it, yet it was quite a general opinion that, during the latter part of his life, his mind was not sound; that if he was not absolutely and unquestionably insane, he was so plainly on the verge of insanity, that any clearly irrational act would have been accepted as proof of insanity.


And the same has been true of so many persons, of high nervous temperaments, and brilliant intellects, that if they had committed any clearly irrational or heinous acts, it would have been set down to insanity as a matter of course. And the more heinous, or irrational, the act, the stronger would have been considered the proof that it was committed under an insane impulse or delusion.


It is contrary to nature that sane men, of brilliant minds, should do grossly absurd and irrational acts. The more proof, therefore, that is brought now, to show that Guiteau was ever a sane and rational man, the more proof we have that, when he did a thoroughly irrational act, he was not in possession of his ordinary reason.


If an insane act--an act for which no rational motive can be discovered — be not, of itself, the best proof of insanity, what better proof can we have?


Guiteau is proving, every day, and every hour — apparently to the satisfaction of every body — that he has a very high nervous temperament, and a badly balanced, or rather unbalanced, mind; and that, if he is not absolutely insane, he is on the very verge of insanity; that he is in that condition where any great and unusual excitement would, for the time, upset him. When, therefore, he had done an utterly irrational act, the only rational interpretation of it is that he was insane.

Organization at Chicago.

The late Irish National Convention at Chicago was an assemblage of something like one thousand delegates, who had come together to transact a little plain business. All that was accomplished could have been accomplished in less than two hours on business principles. But the convention lasted three days, and two days out of the three were consumed in effecting what is called "permanent organization," — that is, in appointing a committee on credentials, a committee on rule of order, and a committee on permanent organization. We propose to indulge in a little plain talk on what this "permanent organization" business meant, which may possibly open the eyes of the Irishmen as to what the whole swindle known as organization is intended to effect.

In the first place, a large number of credentials were bogus. The New York delegation — the largest present — was chiefly recruited from the war clubs of New York city, and its members were sent to serve the vile purpose of Tammany Hall. the boon allies of John Kelly's gang were a clique of Chicago politicians, who also cooked up a good supply of bogus credentials. Now, in order to cover up this fraud, it was necessary to so "fix" the committee on credentials as to make the job a success. And it was a sucess, even to the extent of "firing out" almost the only honest organization in Chicago, the "Spread the Light Club," consisting of active workingmen whose only crime was that they could not be bought up and bullied by the Chicago political ring.

The committee on rules of order also wasted a whole day, but the Reverend chairmen knew the main rule of order well, without the assistance of the committee. It was simply to recognize the political bosses, and to feed the machine as had been previously arranged by the leading rogues who were so scrupulous about organization. A most unblushing outrage was committed in the face of these rules of order, - that of ignoring point blank such as had decency enough to protest against the exclusion of the "Spread the Light" men.

To sum up the whole swindle, the purpose of organization at the Chicago convention was in keeping with its purpose almost everywhere. It was to cheat the bulk of honest men who had come there out of fulfilling the very purpose for which they had come. So near did John Kelly's gang come to gobbling up the whole Land League business and making it the property of Tammany Hall that the escape was only due to an accidental and unanticipated alliance of the Ford and Collins parties, aided by the co-operation of the priests.

The organization craze is the chief enemy of progress. It is made the instrument of a conspiracy of the few against the many. The State is simply an organization on a large scale. The professional politician is always great on organization. Organization debauched the Chicago convention, and it will debauch Irish liberty if the Irishmen do not sometime learn that political anarchy is the only road to any national independence that is worth recognizing or laboring for.

Guiteau's "Devilish Depravity."

Some of those sainted spirits, those God-anointed souls, who edit our political papers, and who evidently came down from a higher sphere, to shed the light of their holiness, for a brief period, upon this dark and wicked world; and who know, by their spiritual intuitions, that there is nothing, this side of heaven, so sacred in itself, or so important to mankind, as the government of the United States, have apparently exhausted their illuminating powers, in the effort to make us see and realize the indescribable wickedness of killing a president. To their minds, there has not been, on this planet, another crime so atrocious, or at least eighteen hundred years. The horror, which men anciently felt at the killing of a king, a God-anointed king, was hardly exceeded, or even equaled, by that which these angelic spirits feel at the killing of a president. To describe the act by the simple name of murder, as in the case of common mortals, conveys no idea of its intense wickedness. To speak of it simply as the act of an insane man, exasperates them to fury. It seems to make maniacs of them. That anybody has a right to be so insane as to kill a president, is what they cannot comprehend, and will not listen to. Their ethereal natures seem to realize that if, after they have come down from heaven to earth, to assist and guide in the election of a president, and have succeeded in converting a piece of common clay into a sort of earthly god, and given him power to reward the righteous, who voted for him, and punish the wicked, who voted against him, he can be killed like any common mortal, all their labor in electing him is lost, their plans for governing the world frustrated, their sacred system of rewards and punishment unceremoniously demolished, their own vocation on earth at an end, and they themselves necessitated to return, in disappointment and disgust, to that higher sphere, from which they ought never to have descended.

It does not assuage, but only aggravate, their sorrow, to assure them that presidents are not only mortal, but vulnerable; that nature made them so, and there is no help for it; that the system of rewards and punishments, which they are appointed to administer, is likely to make enemies of friends; that kings - the immediate predecessors of the presidents, and whose duties and powers, with little qualification, have been devolved upon the presidents - have, as a rule, been a very bad set - the robbers, oppressors, and destroyers of mankind; that the presidents have not yet proved, beyond controversy, that they are very much better than the kings; or that they hold their power by a tenure less bloody than did the kings; or that, whether good or bad, they are necessity to the well-being of the world. It serves no purpose to assure them that presidents are neither the fathers nor mothers of the people whom they attempt to govern; that, whether this one, or that one, lives or dies, the sun will still rise and set; that summer and winter, seed-time and harvest, will succeed each other as before; and that we shall, no doubt, have very much left to enjoy, and, if pious, to be thankful for.

All such philosophy as this is wasted upon these consolable editors; and, in fact, upon all others who had expected offices or rewards at the hands of the late president.

One would think that, like reasonable beings, finding that neither their sorrow, nor their anger, could avail to bring back their idol, they would be content, like the ancients, to simply deify him, or demi-deify him; to place him in their political pantheon, and tell their posterity what he was, and what he did.

One might even think that the experience of the last twenty years, and even the last ninety years, with all the blood, and poverty, and misery, with which they have been filled, might lead these serene and philosophic souls to enquire whether our system of governing men by editors , congresses, and presidents, does not cause ten thousand times as much bloodshed and misery as it prevents; and whether something better cannot be devised.

And, finally, one might imagine these angelic spirits, would try to be at least reasonable and just, if they could not be merciful, to the one who took the late president's life; that they would not call so frantically for vengeance, until it was proved that he was a fit subject for it.

But of all this moderation and reason, they seem to be incapable. In the cases of the ordinary homicides, of which they inform their readers, they do not indulge in any violent demonstration of surprise, grief, or anger. They evidently consider them merely common human occurrences, such as are to be expected of weak, or wicked human nature. And they wait very patiently and coolly until courts and juries shall have given their verdicts as to the moral responsibility of the actors.

But, for Guiteau, they have none of this mercy or justice. They have apparently exhausted their vocabularies in the vain attempt to describe the moral nature of the man, who could kill a president. To call him a madman, fanatic, a man mentally diseased, or congenitally malformed, does not satisfy, or even soften their rage. They are not content with describing him by such terms as wretch, monster, assassin; for they see that neither wretch, monster, nor assassin fitly describes a man, who, in open day, before a hundred people, kills another, towards whom he had no personal ill will, and form whose death he could reasonable expect to derive no benefit from whatever.

Puzzled to account for an act, for which they can assign no rational motive, they seem at last to have hit upon a term that describes their general sentiments, by attributing Guiteau's act to his "devilish depravity."

We confess that we may not fully understand the legal meaning of this term. It is associated, in our minds, with certain theological ideas, that are now somewhat stale, if not entirely obsolete. It seems to imply that there is, somewhere in the universe, such a being as a devil, and that he has power to deprave weak human beings, who, but for him, might have been quite innocent, and worthy persons.

If this solution of the mystery is to be accepted as the true one - that is, if there really be a devil, and if he has succeeded in "depraving" Guiteau to the extent supposed - it is evident that Guiteau is one of the most unfortunate and pitiable of the human race; and that all this rage against him is misdirected. We believe that the most dreadful of all theologians, who have believed in a devil, ad in his power to "deprave" mortals, have had some pity on those, upon whom he has laid his spell. We believe that, at least, Edwards and Hopkins, and perhaps John Calvin himself, would have been gratified to know that a man, depraved by the power of the devil, would not be held to the sol responsibility of his acts. But our divinely appointed political editors seems to have less mercy for sins committed, under the instigation of the devil, against a successful political, than Edwards, or Hopkins, or Calvin had for sings committed, under similar instigation, against God.

We would mercifully advise these heaven-sent editors, before they return to their celestial abodes, to recall their senses, if they have any, and listen to reason; to reflect that even though their special mission on earth may have proved a failure, the world may, perhaps, get on without them; that if presidents should occasionally be killed by lunatics or others, we have plenty of material of which to make more; that even the government of the United States may continue to stand for quite as much as it is worth and quite as long as it ought to, in spite of all the Guiteaus by whom it may be assailed. A government that is afraid of Guiteau, is not long for this world.

And, finally, let us whisper, in the ears of these editors, that they themselves, and such as they, are doing more to destroy this government and to prove that it ought to be destroyed, than all the Guiteaus they will ever see.

But this is no new occupation with them. Ever since they came on the earth, they have been trying to prove that the government of the United States ought to be destroyed; and, with the aid of presidents, congress, etc., they will doubtless succeed, unless they can be induced to go back to the skies.

About Progressive People.

The wife of Karl Marx, after a long and severe illness, died about three weeks ago.

Prince Kropotkine has arrived in London, where he will remain through the winter and possibly longer.

Mr. Parnell is to receive an elder-down quilt in white satin that has been manufactured in Cork to the order of a London lady. The monogram of Mr. Parnell is worked in the center in gold lace.

Mrs. Annie Basent announces the publication of "God's Views on Marriage as Revealed in the Old Testament," specially intended for the enlightenment of the Bishop of Manchester, who has condemned her previous work on the subject.

Proudhon, who sprang from a family of peasants, has many relatives among the agricultural population of the French village of Chasuans. One of his cousins there, a girl of fourteen, was recently burned to death in a building that caught fire while she was asleep therein.

Capt. Trelawny has a rooted dislike of ecclesiastical ceremonies, and left directions in his will that his body should be burned. Accordingly it was taken to Gotha, and, after it has been cremated there, the ashes were inclosed in an urn and sent to Rome, where they were placed beside those of Keats and Shelley.

Carlo Cafiero, the Italian revolutionary lately arrested and imprisoned by the Swiss police on suspicion of being concerned in a plot of assassination of King Humbert, has been released in the absence if proof. Fears are entertained, however, lest the mercenary cowards and tyrants composing the Federal Council of Switzerland may expel him from Swiss territory as they did Kropotkine.

It will be remembered that the French government not long since menaced with expulsion Mlle. Paule Minck, a Polish lady resident of France and active in the revolutionary movement, and that she declared her intention, in reply, to marry a Frenchmen in order to baffle the government's design. She has lately put her project into execution by becoming the wife of M. Negro, a machinist in Lyons.

In one of the last letters George Elliot ever wrote occur these sentences: "I am very happy. We [Mr. Cross and herself] are sitting on a balcony overlooking the river. The scene is striking and impressive. Dark clouds are rising as if for a storm, yet everything is peaceful in the calm twilight. We are very happy. All that we long for is the impossible. We wish that George Lowes was with us." To appreciate the significance of these words it is necessary to recall that George Lowes was the novelist's dead lover and Mr. Cross her living husband.

John Ruskin has changed his plans with respect to the museum he has founded at Sheffield, and it is his intention to devote the remainder of his life to making it about the most complete institution of the kind in the world. He has decided to send there his unique and almost priceless library from Brentwood, and a portion of the books and plates have already arrived. Plans for the extension of the buildings have been prepared, and a publish subscription, which the Duke of Albany has promised to head, will shortly be opened to defray the coat of the enlargement. In the museum will be hung the large painting of St. Mark's, Venice, for which Mr. Ruskin agreed to pay the artist, John Binney, $2,000. The bust of Mr. Ruskin, subscribed for by his friends in the University of Oxford and to be placed in the Ruskin School of Art connected with that institution, was formally presented to the University on a recent Saturday afternoon, which occasion gave Dr. Aciaed an opportunity to say that, inasmuch as Mr. Ruskin had founded a school as Oxford, "henceforth the pure love of mature, the technical interpretation of it, and their relation to mind and to religion would be taught to all coming generations through the wide foundations he has laid.

On Picket Duty.

It is not surprising to hear that Henry George regards Liberty as "cranky." All the defenders of despotism do.

Since European socialists began to circulate their revolutionary literature in hermetically-sealed cans of condensed milk, that heretofore mild and inoffensive commodity has become a greater terror to the "effete monarchies" than dynamics.

"Irish landlordism," says Nasby, "is condensed villainy." So it is. And landlordism of whatever nationality is villainy also, however diluted or rarefied or tempered. The land question is a universal question, and it is confusing to discuss universal questions from national standpoints.

What must the cultured editors who rave about Guiteau think of Walter Savage Landor, more highly cultured than they, who once told N.P. Willis that he had "a purse of five hundred sovereigns always ready to bestow on any one who will rid the earth of a tyrant - even an American president"?

A good illustration of the wantonness with which States spend their subjects money is seen in Queen Victoria's expenditures of $75,000 in sending special missions to Madrid and Dresden to invest the Kings of Spain and Saxony with the Garter. How long do working people intend to pay tribute to an institution which consumes their earnings thus?

The following is the number of socialists expelled from three important towns in Germany: Berlin, 155; Hamburg and environs, 195; Leipzig, 70; total, 420. Most of these have wives, children, and relations dependent upon them for bread. The majority have emigrated to England or America. Four had been previously members of parliament. Their names are Messrs, Fritzeche, Vahlteich, Reimer, and Hasselmann.

Stephen Pearl Andrews, after comparing us to a "drunken man," complains of our discourtesy in calling him God Almighty, - a title, by the way, which we never applied to him. As Dickens's barber says, we must "draw the line somewhere." Mr. Andrews, it would seem, in the matter of opprobrious epithets, draws the line beyond drunkard and this side of God. It is well to be given some idea, in advance, of the stand and of the courtesy to which members of the Pantarchy will be expected to conform.

Liberty, during its brief young life, has received many compliments, from sources high and low, of which it may well be proud; but nothing has pleased us more than the following simple, but significant words from the letter of a lady who has been procuring subscribers in the mines of Pennsylvania. Sending a fresh list of names, she adds: "More miners promise to subscribe, but they have not had steady work this month and are all poor. The paper is a bomb in the mines. Each fortnight for three months I have had the paper read aloud to the men, and it is beginning to tell, as it always will when it and its like reach the people for whom they are written." News like this is of the most cheery sort. When the common people, as our faithful co-worker truly says, begin to appreciate the principles which Liberty stands for, the welcome Social Revolution is at hand. The coming day, all hail!

Force is seldom justifiable as a method of reform, but the impetuous revolutionists who believe in and uses it is much less vitally in error than the wicked hypocrite who pretends to see no distinction between force used in vindication of rights and force used in their violation.

Only one daily paper within our knowledge, the Virginia City "Chronicle," has told the plain truth about the recent Irish convention. These are its words: "The Irish national convention at Chicago did but one thing worthy of notice, or of benefit to Ireland. It subscribed several thousands dollars for the Irish Land League. The resolutions adopted were tame, commonplace, and - not to put to fine a point on it - cowardly. Designedly silent, as the press of the country is, as a whole, on the subject, and timid as was the Chicago convention, the world will soon have to recognize that fact that Ireland is engaged in a struggled to do away with private ownership of the soil."

The mountebank Talmage, preaching against profanity, soberly told his congregation last Sunday of a man who indulged in it while walking on a railroad track. Suddenly a train came along and killed him. The body, when picked up, exhibited neither bruise or scar, death having resulted solely from the cutting out of the man's tongue by the locomotive. How many members of Talmage's church believe this yarn? How many of them believe that Talmage believes it himself? If any, are they not fools? Are not the others hypocrites? On this showing, is not the Tabernacle congregation made up solely of knaves and idiots? Does its moral and intellectual quality differ from those of other Orthodox congregations otherwise than in degree?

It will be remembered that our discussion with Mr. Babcock on the rightfulness of usury led a friend to suspect that Liberty was willing to deny herself by advocating anti-usury law. A subsequent editorial distinguishing between usury as a  civil right and usury as a moral right quieted his fears. The same editorial, however, has led another critic to accuse us of abandoning our anti-usury ground and making legality the standard of morality. Strangely enough, the ideas entertained by this critic on political and economic questions are substantially identical with Liberty's. The sole trouble with him is that, having accustomed himself to write the English language viciously, he is no longer able to understand it when written well. But may we say to him, once for all, that a man has a civil right to take usury from another, provided he can get it with the other's consent in the face of free competition, but that he has no moral right to take it as a commercial transaction in which he pretends to be governed by the true principles of commercial equity; and, consequently, that wealth acquired by usury under a voluntary regime IS the holder's in the sense that no one is entitles to dispossess him of it, but IS NOT the holder's in the sense that he has acquired it, as the usurer now pretends, by giving him an equivalent for it. It is to be hoped that this language will prove intelligible to our critics, but, if it does not, he may continue his criticism without further attention from us.

The Chicago Congress.

[REPORTED FOR LIBERY BY HER OWN DELEGATE.]

In accordance with the call initiated by the groups which sent delegates from the United States to the congress of the International Working People's Association recently held in London, for a National Socialistic Congress to meet at Chicago, Oct. 21, 22, 23, and in which socialistic groups and sections of all shades, weary of compromise and desirous of accomplishing the social revolution by other means than political action, were invited to participate, I was duly appointed to represent Liberty, and now offer the following report. I arrived at Chicago in time to be present at the afternoon session of Friday, the opening day. The convention had been called to order at 10 A.M., at the North Side Turner Hall, but, after appointing a committee on credentials reported the names of twenty delegates entitles to seats and representing New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Jersey City, Hoboken, St. Louis, Milwaukee and other socialistic strongholds. The following preamble and resolution was then offered by A. Spies of Chicago, and adopted.

Whereas, The British Government has most outrageously, and in opposition to the usage and customs of that country, as well as in opposition to the spirit of our age, incarcerated and persecuted men who were manly enough to expose the wrongs and robbery committed by that government upon the poor and destitute Irish people; and

Whereas, The British Government thereby sanctions and advocates the perpetuation of the wholesale robbery of the Irish people by unscrupulous and monstrous landlords, and recognize the monopoly and ownership of the resources of life, such as land and means of labor, in possession of a privileged few, while on the other hand depriving the masses of their houses, liberty, and bread; and

Whereas, the ownership of land and means of labor is legal theft, which causes serfdom, destitution, and misery, and which for the universal benefit of mankind should by all means be abolished; and

Whereas, By the recent steps of the British Government, free speech, the expression of deep-felt grievances of the people of Ireland has been suppressed; be it therefore

Resolved, That we, now assembled in congress, hereby condemn and denounce the British Government for the arrest of the Irish land agitators, and that we express our deep-felt sympathy with the Irish people who are now struggling against the oppressive and unnatural system of land ownership and capitalism.

A communication from radical socialists of Boston favoring reorganizing  of the socialists of the United States, abandonment of political party methods, total destruction of existing economic institutions, non-use of force where no force is used to prevent free propagation of socialistic ideas, and objecting to the resolution of the London congress so far as they do not agree with the foregoing, but fully endorsing the resolution to make all possible efforts to spread the revolutionary idea and the spirit of revolt among the masses who do not yet take part in the movement, was, with others from various groups, read and placed on file. The roll was then called, in order to learn what instructions had been given to the delegates. One or two besides Liberty's representatives had none, but were entrusted with absolute freedom. After a brief discussion of various plans of organization, the congress went into executive session. During the session committees on platform, organizations, etc., were appointed, and at 7 o'clock a motion to adjourn until half-past 9 Saturday morning was agreed to.

In the evening the committees were able to finish their labor, and adjourned to 9 A.M. Saturday, at which time your delegate was on hand, but was obliged to wait until after 10 o'clock for all members to appear. The committees occupying the rest of the morning, no session of the congress was held until 3 o'clock P.M., when the committee on platform and principles, of which your delegate was a member, presented a majority report, signed by Justus H. Schwab, Aug. Spins, and A. R. Parsons. P. Peterson, not agreeing to the resolution on independent political action, did not join in the report, although others of the committee equally objected to this plank. Liberty's delegate, after aiding in the preparation of the majority report, dew up a partial report of his own (the limited time not allowing for its completion), which be offered to the congress. As section after section of the majority report was voted, he moved to substitute a section of his own, giving his reasons therefor. The majority platform, as finally adopted, reads as follows:

Whereas, We have certain desires and necessities, upon the satisfaction of which life and happiness depend, and that all means for such satisfaction exist in nature, to wit: air, land, water, and all else exists, as well as all benefits that grow out of nature; association of men: therefore, we declare that any seizure of these great necessities by one or more persons excludes others from their equal use, and, though sanctioned by law and custom, is robbery - and invasion of the inalienable rights of man, resistance to which is the highest virtue.

Whereas, the natural resources and means of production have been and are being converted into private property, by which the working classes are held in dependence and wage slavery, it becomes the right and duty of the despoiled to recover their natural inheritance by every possible means.

The Congress of Socialists assembled at Chicago, Oct. 21 and 22, 1881, recommend:

1. The organization of workingmen and woman (being foremost interested in the solution of the social problem) into local, national, and international associations for the purpose of educating themselves as to the cause and circumstances which led to their enslavement, and to learn the remedies by which the evil may be abolished.

2. The organizations of the revolutionary propaganda and preparation for aggressive warfare to be waged against the system, supports and upholders of exploitation of man by man, and to introduce in its stead free social and industrial cooperation.

The rejected platform offered by Liberty's delegate, which was in my respects similar to the foregoing, read as follows:

Whereas, All humans being have desires and necessities upon the satisfaction of which their life and happiness depend and for the gratification of which the means are supplied in nature, viz., air, land, water, and all else not produced by man, including the natural forced by the discovery and utilization of which through associative effort progress has been and is along possible, we declare that free access to and free use of these means of life are the inalienable right of every human being, and that any seizure of these great necessities by one person, or by any class of persons, that excludes others from equal opportunities, though sanctioned by law and custom, is robbery, — an invasion of these inalienable rights of man, resistance to which is the highest virtue; and

Whereas, These great necessities have been and are being seized and held by some as as to exclude others from equal participation in the use of them, it is the right and duty of the despoiled to gain their natural inheritance, from which they have hitherto been debarred, by every possible means: therefore

We recommend, as the most economic programme of resistance and revolution, the organization of the friends of human right into local, national, and international groups upon the following bases:

POLITICAL PRINCIPLES: individual sovereignty; no government of man by man; anarchy.

POLITICAL METHODS: organized abstention from polls; resistance to taxation; free speech.

SOCIAL PRINCIPLES: cost the limit of price, no exploitation of man by man; equity.

SOCIAL METHODS: organization of credit and exchange; creation of mutual banks; free trade.

A plank in the majority report recommending "independent political action wherever such may be deemed advisable for the purpose of demonstrating to the workingmen the utter wrongfulness and inefficiency of our political institutions and the so-called free-ballot remedy." gave right to a long contest between the Chicago delegates, who urged that its adoption was absolutely necessary to the preservation of the party in Chicago, and the visiting delegates, who, with few exceptions, strenuously opposed it. It was rejected, but at the last session a substitute recognizing independence of each group in politic was adopted. The considerations of the above occupied the afternoon and evening of Saturday.

Sunday forenoon the report of the committee on organizations and resolution, presented by the chairman, Adolph Herben of Jersey City, was adopted.

The name "International Working People's Association" was offered by P. Peterson as a substitute for the name reported by the committee, and was supported by Schwab and Swain. This was one of the hardest contests of the session, your delegate resisting the majority with all resources at his command. The full report on organization, as adopted, reads thus:

This party shall be called the Revolutionary Socialistic party.

It shall be composed of all organized groups recognizing the revolutionary principles adopted by this Congress.

Each groups shall enjoy entire autonomy, and shall judge for itself the right and proper way of propaganda suitable to its locality, provided it be consistent with the platform and resolution of the party.

Each group is advised to call itself after the name of the city in which it is located.

Five members shall be deemed sufficient to form a group.

A bureau of information shall be established in Chicago, composed of a secretary for each principle language spoken, and one for French correspondence; its duty shall be the recording of all existing groups, or organizations, and those hereafter organized; to keep up a correspondence with the secretaries of groups and exchange information; and to correspond with all organized groups of the Old West recognizing the revolutionary principles contained in our platform.

Groups wishing to be recorded must have the endorsement of an existing group near its locality, and must give its membership.

Ten groups shall have the right to call a National Convention.

Applicants for membership shall sign a pledge declaring their conviction in the party principles.

The following resolutions, reported by the same committee, were adopted also:

Resolved, That we hereby ratify the action of the Congress of the International Working People's Association, recently held in London, and, acting upon its advice, we have organized ourselves in the United States in conformity with the conditions and circumstances surrounding us.

Resolved, That we hereby extend, on behalf of the defenders of liberty everywhere, our heartfelt thanks to the Socialists of Russia for their unrelenting warfare upon the evils of Czarism, and they have our unqualified support in employing any and all means to extirpate such monsters from among men.

Resolved, That the Congress assembled recognize the armed organizations of workingmen who stand ready with the gun to resist the encroachment upon their rights, and recommend the forming of like organizations all over the States.

Resolved, That under no circumstances our members are allowed to vote for any person or with any party which does not absolutely approve our platform.

On motion, a committee was appointed to revise the proceeding and prepare them for publication in pamphlet form, after which President O'Meara made a few closing remarks, and at 4 P.M. declared the congress adjourned sine die.

A reception tendered the delegates in the evening at North Side Turner Hall was attended by about three hundred men, women, and children. After the performances of the Socialist Mannerchor and the German Typographical Mannerchor, and a zither performance by Miss Dethmanu and Messrs. Krutse and Cobelli, Justus Shwab, read congratulatory messages from the socialists of New York and Philadelphia, and exhorted friends of the revolutionary cause to remain steadfast, working to their utmost to disseminate the "doctrines of Liberty." He congratulated the delegates that the labors of the congress had been successful enough to warrant all in entertaining the most sanguine ideas of the work in the near future. He further recited a poem in German, about a contest between King of Money and Hunger, in which the later managed to win the prize — Liberty. The formal programme closed with the "Marseillaise," after which dancing began, continuing till a late hour.

In writing this report your delegate has relied largely on his memory. Interesting matter has been omitted, and doubtless some inaccuracies will be made apparent by the revised report when issued. It was the general opinion that no congress of the kind was ever so harmonious, being unmarred by personalities or bitterness. Liberty's delegate, standing alone on the floor as the advocate of American socialism, Josiah Warren's Sovereignty of the Individual, and Proudhon's Anarchy, is glad to acknowledge his cordial reception by his brother socialists, and to testify to their uniform courtesy and patience during the sessions of congress, the time of which he used to no small degree in the presentation of his views. A strong disposition was shown to extend the circulation of Liberty, and it was selected as the English organ of the new party. Evidence was not wanting to show that the socialistic party has developed great strength in Chicago, — in fact, that it is a power not to be ignored or ridden over rough-shod by the industrial kings and barons of to-day.

Another Answer to Mr. Babcock.

Mr. Tucker: — In your issue of October 15 I notice a question by J.M.L. Babcock, and, although you have answered it, yet, I beg to give my answer. The question is this: — "Is a man who loans a plough entitled in equity to compensation for its use?" My answer is, "Yes!" Now then, what of it? Does that make something for nothing right? Let us see. We must take it for granted that the loaning of the plough was a good business transaction. Such being the case, the man who borrows the plough must give good security that he will return the plough and pay for what he wears out. He must have the wealth or the credit to make the owner of the plough whole in case he should break or lose the plough. Now, I claim that this man, having the wealth or credit to secure a borrowed plough, could transmute that same credit or security into money, without cost, and with the money buy a plough, were it not for a monopoly on money. For a monopoly of money implies a monopoly of everything that money will buy.

If people should give to landholders, as a right, what they now give to bondholders as a special privilege, — why, you might loan ploughs for a price, but the price would not include a money cost, as it is inevitable under our present monetary system.

Let us remember that an individual transaction under a system of monopoly does not represent nor illuminate the truth as it would under a natural or just system. Again, superficial ideas do not always harmonize with the central truth.

Briefly, but truly yours,
APEX.

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Tony Revillion, who has shot into notice in Paris as a writer of workingmen's novels and a radical, began his literary career at the antipodes of Belleville life. One of his first efforts was an elegantly written volume of souvenirs of the Fanbourgh Saint Germain.

Capital: What it is and What it is Not.

DEAR MR. TUCKER:  — I have no desire whatsoever to obtrude myself into your controversy with Mr. Babcock, but I cannot help wishing to say a word or two about Bastiat's plane story, which you quote from Ruskin with his own remarks regarding it.

The story itself is, of course, nothing but an economical conundrum; and it would have no point whatever, were it not for the absurd property system which makes it necessary for our "William" to borrow planes and other instrumentalities of labor from our "Jameses." (1)

Mr. Ruskin himself only uses the illustration to ignore it as at all explanatory of the principle of interest (2); and, were it not for the first part of the article that you quote from him, I should derive some hope, from his last sentence, that he has a glimmering idea of the true nature of capital.

He says: "There are, indeed, very many subtle conditions involved in any sale; one among which is the value of ideas,... (the article is not one which modern political economists have any familiarity with dealings in;)" &c. (3)

The point I wish to make relates to his supposition of the, practically, total destruction of "capital" (4), in the passage in the beginning that I have referred to.

He says: "If all the money of all the capitalists in the whole world were destroyed; the notes and bills burnt, the gold irrecoverably buried, and all the machines and apparatus of manufacture crushed, by a mistake in signals, in one catastrophe; and nothing remained but the land, with its animals and vegetables, and buildings for shelter," — well, what then? Why, he says: "the poorer population would be very little worse off than they are this very instant... it is only we who had the capital who would suffer."

I must not ask for space to quote his description of the conditions of the two classes — laborer and capitalist — under the supposed — catastrophe. (The word calamity would not be appropriate to such and event, for, in my opinion, it would be anything but a calamity in its general results.)

Now, it is quite evident to me that Mr. Ruskin, when he wrote those words, has not a correct idea — and I doubt if he has to-day — of the misapplication he was making of the term "capital" And yet the very results which he was partially right in imagining would occur from the catastrophe ought to have taught him that, were all these things which he erroneously called "capital" suddenly destroyed, capital, real capital, would still remain, comparatively unimpaired!

Things that perish almost as fast as they are produced are not capital.

The accumulated and developed thought and experience of the race alone are capital. (5)

It is this thought and experience embodied in material forms that are really that property of "wealth" which makes it an invaluable aid to labor, and which renders wealth, in any other than its private (6) use, a privilege as dangerous to society and to Liberty as we all see it to be.

But the value of capital, embodied in these material forms, is as nothing compared with its value in the form of knowledge stored up in men's minds, and reaching to their fingers' ends. This was the portion of capital that Mr. Ruskin left out of the account (7) in the above supposition, and it would exist in all classes of men in about the same proportions as it does to-day. So that, in the case supposed, Mr. Ruskin would not "starve," for learned teachers like him would be wanted just as much, and, I may add, would be highly appreciated, and command greater influence. But I am encroaching.

[For convenience of comment under Mr. Smart's letter, we have inserted in it parenthetical figures at the points which it is our intention to consider.]

(1.) We made practically the same statement in the following issue of Liberty in these words: "Those who would have the userer rewarded for rendering a service always find it convenient to forget that the userer's victim would not need his service were it not that the laws made at his bidding prevent them from saving themselves." "Apex," one of our valued correspondents, elaborates the same important point in a litter printed in the present issue.

(2.) Not at all! Mr. Ruskin accepts the illustration as explanatory of the principle of interest, and alters only the language in which it is couched, so simplifying and abridging it as to bring the atrocity of that principle more clearly into view.

(3.) In our view Mr. Smart misconceived Mr. Ruskin's meaning in using the phrase, "value of ideas;" though it must be confessed that his meaning seems rather vague. That he had clear meaning, however, need not be doubted.

(4.) Mr. Ruskin makes no such supposition. He supposed the destruction of what is ordinarily called capital — that is, money and machines, — and shows that in that event, the laborers would immediately by the exercise of their wits, — that is, the really important part of their capital, — manufacture new machines and proceed as before. In saying this he should have Mr. Smart's applause (he certainly has ours), for he calls attention to Mr. Smart's pet idea, that capitalistic nature of accumulated thought and experience.

(5.) We quite agree with Mr. Smart that "accumulated thought and experience are capital," but we utterly fail to see why "things that perish almost as fast as they are produced are not capital." Any product that lasts any time at all and is capable of use as an aid to reproduction is capital.

(6.) Mr. Smart's distinction between social and private wealth, calling the former capital to be held in common and the latter personal property to be held by individuals, lies well towards the bottom of his philosophy, but nevertheless is unmitigated bosh based on pure chimera. All wealth is social wealth; all wealth is private wealth. Capital is product, and product is capital. And to the producer belongs product and capital. In the words of Proudhon, "we produce to consume and consume to produce." A man's coat is capital as truly as a steam-engine. The food that we eat is capital; the clothing that we wear is capital; the picture that we feast our eyes upon, provided they are well executed and teach ennobling lessons, are capital. And in just the same sense and for the same reason, — namely that they aid in reproduction, — the spade and the axe and lathe are capital. And any man may own one as well as the other, but neither unless he earns it. And wealth that is earned, whether by labor of brain or labor of muscle, is never a privilege, and cannot, per se, injure either society or Liberty. To be logical, Mr. Smart must either stand for unqualified communism and deny individual possession altogether, or stand for unqualified Liberty and claim for each and every individual the possession of his product or an equivalent of it. His so-called socialism is a hybrid philosophy, incoherent in its structure and unreal in its elements.

(7.) As we indicated above, Mr. Ruskin, instead of leaving this portion of capital out of account, wrote this paragraph in question expressly to emphasize the importance of taking it into account.

Mr. Smart's letter ought to have appeared more promptly, but the character of our reply will probably convince him that the delay was due to no disinclination to grapple with his criticisms. — [EDITOR LIBERTY.]

Guiteau Not a "Child of Liberty."

"The Guiteau Generation" is the title of a recent discourse by Dr. C. A. Bartol.  The printed report is now before us, but a few sentences come readily to our lips, and furnish the suggestion of what we would here say, "Guiteau is our production, a child of Liberty." This is an assumption, based on the fact that he was born in this country and raised under "our institutions." Waiving a moment the rather important question whether "our institutions" do, in any real and effectual way, solve the problem of Liberty; or admitting, for the sake of argument, that "our institutions" and Liberty are in all respects synonymous, — does it, as a consequence, follow that Guiteau is a "child of Liberty." Liberty, if it exists in America inherits the material on which it is at work. The appearance of a man like Guiteau in America has inherited as to what it is in and of itself. Put into one word, what is that inheritance? No one can doubt. It is Force. And Guiteau is a child of Force, Dr. Bartol, not of Liberty. Children, sir, are supposed to resemble and reproduce the character of their parents. They are, in a familiar phrase, "chips of the old block." In what way can Liberty be said to be the sire of Garfield's assassin? In this way only, — the way in which you have said it, — that he was self-prompted to the deed. But that certainly is a most unjust way accusing Liberty. Do you in the same breath call men as Napoleon, Cromwell, the czars of Russia children of Liberty? They were "self-prompted" men. And if to be thus self-moved constitutes a man an heir of Liberty, either of the tyrants named could claim the inheritance by a title more indisputable than Guiteau's. But, of course, Dr. Bartol is ready with the qualifications that one must be moved by a self in harmony with the law of Liberty in order to be Liberty's child. Very well, was Guiteau so moved? Ah, sir! had it been so, Garfield would have been living to-day. Liberty does not invade the right of life in any man. Liberty is without weapons of offense. Her devotees are bound hand and foot in her only law, which hold the Liberty of others as sacred as their own. To kill another is not to set forth the nature of Liberty. The slayer is not Liberty's champion, but Tyranny's. It is the resource of despotism, the triumph of Force.

Therefore do we affirm that Guiteau is no child of Liberty, though he is, as we now insist, a child of "our institution," in so far as they rely, not upon voluntary support, but upon Force. Guiteau wished Garfield dead, and he compelled his death. Dead, he desired him, or made over to his idea of what he should be. He would have him dead as he was, and, if he had seen the way to have him so die and yet live among men, we doubt not he would have kept the money that purchased the pistol in his pocket. But he had no such idea. He had the common, prevailing idea, — the idea of the supremacy of Force. He was the child of what you Dr. Bartol, you and the majority of your countrymen,exalt, Law forced — "en-forced," you put it.

And that, sir, is what America has inherited; not what she has invented. No matter about our Forth of July craze; we still live, not on our own genius for Liberty, but on our borrowed capital, — namely, the organization of despotism, whose weapon is Guiteau's pistol.

Is it not so?

Mr. Chainey's Gospel.

Liberty has already had occasion to refer approvingly to the excellent work that George Chainey is doing in Boston at Paine Hall, and throughout the country by his "Infidel Pulpit." That approval it is our desire to emphasize further. He is steadily widening his field, boldly stepping beyond the confines of theological discussion, and wisely identifying his religion (or irreligion) with the whole of human life. His efforts must not lack appreciation. Every Liberal should subscribe to the "Infidel Pulpit," which it is his purpose soon to enlarge and make more attractive then before. And now that we are about it, will Mr. Chainey forgive us if we couple this word of encouragement with a word of criticism? According to a report of his recent lecture on "Irish Liberty and Land," he used these words: "If the landlords of Ireland were Irish, I believe the tenant would be as dumb before them as the sheep before the shearers, because they are so dumb before priests." Does he not know that they are Irish? That they are absentees? In Ireland an English landlord is the exception, not the rule. Mr. Chainey should be more careful of his facts. Again, after expressing admiration of the motto, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," he continues thus: "When I speak of equality, I would not be understood as advocating under that name soul-murdering communism. While every man and woman should be free to enjoy the fruit of his or her labor, equality in the natural opportunities of life is the first principle on which life depends. Through equality alone can we reach liberty. Equality is the root and liberty the flower of existence. From the flowers of liberty comes the perfume of fraternity." Our Declaration says not so. "All men are born equal and free." Jefferson understood the French motto better than Mr. Chainey, who has unwittingly twisted it into the shape that suits Louis Blanc and other advocates of that "soul-murdering communism" which he rightfully deprecates. He would have it read: Equality, Liberty, Fraternity. As Proudhon wittily said, this is like the crucifixion of Christ between two thieves. For compulsory equality and forced fraternity are thieves, and between them there is no life for Liberty. In the face of Mr. Chainey Liberty still flies her flag, not as the daughter, but the mother of order.

At Chicago.

A large portion of Liberty's space is surrendered in this issue to a skeleton report of the proceeding National Socialist Congress at Chicago, submitted by our own delegate, Dr. Joseph H. Swain. The congress appears to have been highly successful and harmonious, and its results are, in the main, eminently satisfactory. Though not adopting the theme of the "International," it has practically made itself the American federation of that body by organizing in accordance with the action of the London congress, and will, if made the most of, contribute greatly to the progress of the world-wide Social Revolution. Dr. Swain made a strong and uncompromising fight for the principle of Liberty, and, though unsuccessful in getting them squarely adopted as the principles of the party, so influenced the action of the majority as to make it acceptable by us. Indeed, so good was the platform submitted by the majority, the he hesitated a little before proposing anything in its place.

The chief fault of the platform as it stands seems to us one of omission. So far as it attacks the monopoly of productive agencies, or what are ordinarily called such, it is splendid; but it ought also to have attacked with equal vigor the monopoly of distributive agencies. Free money is as important as free land; in this country, even more so. Besides this, we disapprove of nothing in the platform or resolution except the phrase "wage slavery" and the recommendation of armed organization. The discussions at the various session showed that the ballot craze has not yet been entirely uprooted, and the advocates of political action, though not carrying their point, succeeded in obtaining a comparatively unobjectionable concession recognizing the political independence of local groups. Liberty feels highly honored at being selected as the English organ of the movement, and accepts the position, but in no sense that impairs its entire independence or alters its editorial policy! Now let the good work go on! Local groups, which are to be the real strength of the movement, should be formed everywhere, until an Anarchistic organization is perfected that shall become even more truly the real government of the United States than the Land League is the government of Ireland.

Ireland's New Saviour.

We admit that the spectacle of reformers fighting each other is not a very flattering one. While the great army of oppressors remains as numerous and audacious that our limited space permits us hardly to touch the outposts in details, it is no very enviable duty to have to turn our scanty ammunition upon the thin ranks of reformers. Sentimentally speaking, the slender forces to which the poverty and ostracism of liberals restrict them ought all to be directed against the flanks of the enemy.

Yet, howsoever good the intentions of a fellow-reformer, he is liable to become a greater misfortune to progress, if his premises and methods are radically wrong, than a whole brigade of the enemy outside our camp. The author of "Progress and Poverty" is said to be a man of no airs, — quiet, plain, unpretending, modest, democratic, — a veritable man grown out of the common people. He has shown the title-labelled numskulls of colleges and other monopolizing haunts of authoritative wisdom that a workingman can write a book which, in spite of their contempt, exictes the wonders and interest of thinkers all over the world.

Mr. George's pen-picture of the "persistence of poverty" amidst ever-increasing wealth and plenty does him immense credit as a literary giant, and his book, in demolishing the Malthusian humbug and setting the old school of economic quacks aright on many important points, is worthy of all the admiration which his friends have bestowed upon it.

Against Mr. George as a man, and against the many able and original points in his book, we have nought to say. But against Mr. George as a writer totally ignorant of the vital problems of Liberty, which overshadows all merely economic considerations, we have something very serious to say, and shall say it without stint. That he would willfully side with despotism it would be ungenerous to surmise, and that man of his acute powers of thinking should season his whole thought with the very essence of tyranny can only be accounted for on the score of absolute ignorance of the governmental problem.

Upon looking into the nature Mr. George discovers that she everywhere furnishes increase not measured by labor. Two men start in to cultivate soil. They have equal capacity, and devote exactly the same labor, each to his  field. But one field, being by nature far less fertile than the other, simply furnishes the bare necessities of life to the cultivator, while the other furnishes a surplus. This margin, represents the varying productiveness of different portions of soil, says Mr. George, makes rent possible and natural, and persons wishing to purchase opportunities to secure nature's will be willing to pay rent in proportion to the ratio of increase which the soil is furnishing to the existing holders. Rent, then, is natural and just.

By an analogous process of reasoning Mr. George justified interest, profits, and the whole range of usury, and proceeds to explain the laws which govern their adjustment. Had his work been confined solely to the chapters on usury, it would have simply been a poor rehash of sophistries which were demolished centuries ago and which the masterly hand of Proudhon scattered into everlasting chaos beyond the shadow of resurrection.

But the master strike of George is left for the last. Usury is just. Nature pays usury. Paraphrased into the "Irish World's" theological terminology: "Our beneficent Creator gave it to all His children as their inalienable inheritance." Since, then, nature gave usury to all men, and since rent represents land-usury, George would let landlordism execute its useful functions; but, when the landlords have gathered up the harvest of land-usury, he would send that sublime bully, the State, among them to confiscate it and distribute it among the whole people. There shall be no "hold the harvest" for them.

It is utterly astonishing, however, that Mr. George fails to see that, by the same reasoning, he is morally bound not to stop with rent, but to pursue the governmental raid into the banks, and confiscate their money-usury. Nor must he stop even there. He must go into the market-places, stores, and manufactories, and confiscate their surplus earnings. Yea, by the inevitable logic of his system the government is bound to seize upon the pay of all wage-laborers and confiscate the margin of increase corresponding to that which represents rent. In short, the enormity of the which Mr. George lays out is only exceeded by its ridiculousness and utter atrocity.

All this insane bosh has its source in ignorance of the rational domain of yours and mine, which is at the bottom of the economic problem. If a piece of land belongs to a man in natural equity because he personally cultivates and occupies it, then the increase which it affords through his labor is his as against all the world. If, on his own merits and independent of governmental coercion, his fellow-men choose to tolerate him in the ownership of land which he does not cultivate and occupy, the rent they may pay him is his, and no combination of men outside of him, under any pretext, have a right to confiscate what his fellow-men have freely and voluntarily given him. The fact is, however, that, in natural equity, his fellow-men would not tolerate it, and rent would become impossible. The State alone creates rent by fortifying the landlord in his ownership of what he does not occupy and improve.  Mr. George's State is a double damnation to Liberty, since it first justifies the theft and supplies its machinery and then confiscates the very increase which it has declared unnatural and just. The fact is that the writer is a governmental socialist, and, along with the rest of those deluded into dangerous foes of Liberty, has taken exactly the moral ground of the Dark Ages in assuming that the Socialistic State can do no wrong, even though it wantonly violate its own standard of justice as applied to individuals: for, with the Socialists, as with the old school Statocrats, individuals have no right which their despotic governmental bully, the Socialistic State, is bound to respect.

Twenty of editions of Liberty would not cover one-half of the ridiculous and abominable absurdities which gather at every step around the logic of Henry George's Book. That this dangerous craze should have seized upon so steadfast and sturdy a foe of usury as Patrick Ford should serve as a reminder to the friends of Liberty that, however gentle, modest, and devoted Mr. George may be as a man, it is their imperative duty to fight down his influence in dead earnest at every opportunity. If this insinuating craze is able to capture such papers as the "Irish World" and the New York "Sun" and "Truth," its power for evil is incalculable. The "Sun" and "Truth" are comparatively little consequence, but we earnestly hope that Patrick Ford will ponder long and well before fatally committing the "Irish World" to a system whose logic, carried for its natural outcome, would not only neutralize that journal's splendid work in the past, but would build up a despotism compared with which all that Ireland has ever suffered sinks into insignificance. We are curious to hear how George's New Ireland will look after his prescriptions are sent to the "Irish World," but more curious to know whether Patrick Ford can be seduced into throwing overboard his wits and trimmings his sails for this economic gulf of perdition.

About Progressive People.

Frederick Douglass is writing the reminiscence of his life since he became a free man.

Professor Haeckel, the eminent evolutionist, has arrived at Vienna on his way to Ceylon.

Casabianca, a prominent French anarchist, committed suicide recently at Marseilles.

George Jacob Holyoak is soon to publish the "Life of Joseph Rayner Stephens, Preacher and Political Orator."

Gov. Robert of Texas, declares that "the civilization capable of republican local self-government begins and ends with the plough."

M. Jules Valles, the former communist, is putting the finishing touch to a five-act play, the title of which will be "La Barque."

Prince Kropotkine's wife, who has just passed an examination for the degree of Bachelor of Science at Geneva, intends to graduate in medicine at University College, London.

Mr. Zola has no patience with his critics, and incessantly chafes under their strictures. He declares that he is going to gather all the abuse heaped on him in print, and publish it in one volume, entitled, "Their Insults." This, he says, will be his apology.

In accordance with direction given before his death by the late Professor W. Kingdon Clifford, the young English radical and scientist whose career gave so much promise, his widow has caused the following beautiful inscription to be carved upon his monument: "I was not, and was conceived. I loved, and did a little work. I am not, and grieve not."

Rich men read Henry George's books, which are principally written to instruct the poor and show them how they are oppressed. One of these rich men told George that he much admired his writings, though directed against his interests, but feared them not. "Why so?" said George. "Because," replied the millionaire, "though I read the books you write, the people for whom they are written never look at them."

A Norwegian paper publishes a statement by the Bjoernatjerne Bjoernson, the novelist, and one of the leaders of the Radical party in Norway, in which he says that his party is composed of Republicans, and that they do not confine themselves to being Republicans in theory and in secretly cherishing hopes of establishment of the government of their choice. They are, he says, working to bring about Republic, and they do all they can to forward the cause of national sovereignty against regal authority.

Cipriani, an Italian anarchist, who was expelled from France a few months ago and arrested and imprisoned on proceeding to Italy, has made a daring attempt to escape from the fortress of Millan, in which he is confined. He endeavored to escape from the fortress of Milan, in which he is confined. He endeavored to escape from the window, the bars of which he had industriously filed through, but his design was frustrated at the last moment. The files of which he made use were small ones, furnished by the prisoner's friends, who concealed them inside some cigars they brought to him as a present.

M. Louis Blanc is not only a great orator, but he has charm of manner, is exquisitely courteous, and has a delicate social conscience. He is not wealthy, having only enough to keep up in Paris a modest establishment furnished in this massive English style. The dead wife  he loved so much was attached to her lares and penates, and took to France the furniture of the London home where she and M. Blanc passed the happiest years of their married life. For her sake he clings to the heavy mahogany chairs and tables, and spacious bookcases and sideboards, which they brought with them from England.

Ruskin, in his latest book, "The Bible of Amiens," writing on the homage paid to the Virgin Mary, says: "Neither Madonna worship, nor lady worship of any sort, whether of dead ladies living ones, ever did any human creature any harm; but that money worship, wig worship, cocked-hat-and-feather worship, plate worship, pot worship, and pipe worship, have done and are doing a great deal; and that any of these and all are quite million-fold more offensive to the God of heaven and earth and the stars than all the absurdest and loving mistakes made by any generation of His simple children show what the Virgin Mother could or would or might do for them.

On Picket Duty.

Vol. I, No. 8

Judge Black, in replying to Ingersoll, says: "The most perfect system of human government that ever was invented by the wit of man, and the holiest religion that has revealed to his creatures, when united together, form a monstrous compound highly injurious to the best interests of the human race." To be sure! What else could be expected? Is not the character of a compound determined by the character of its ingredients? Revealed religion is an evil; human government is an evil: how could a mixture of the two be anything but evil? Judge Black's remark strikes deeper than he intended. If the Liberal League is shrewd, it will hasten to seize upon this, the most forcible statement of its central doctrine ever framed, and make it the text of all its propagandism. Coming from the enemy, it will carry more weight.

Months ago Liberty instituted a vigorous search throughout Europe to discover an authentic picture of Michael Bakounine, the founder of Russian Nihilism, in order to reproduce his features for the benefit of her readers. The search has been in progress ever since, and has only just ended in success. We are now in possession of a photograph of the great revolutionist as excellent as it is rare, and a magnificent head and face it represents. It has been placed in the hands of the engraver, and subscribers to Liberty will have the pleasure of seeing an enlarged copy of it on the first page of our next issue, accompanied by an interesting biographical sketch. If they wish to reward our enterprise and effort, they best do so by helping to extend the circulation of the number. We will supply extra copies, for gratuitous distribution at one cent each. Let every subscriber send for as many as he or she can possibly afford to buy, and circulate them among friends. It is desirable that all orders should be in our hands prior to November 23.

At the dinner in honor of Henry George prior to his departure from Ireland he is reported by the "Irish World" to have pronounced himself in favor of the nationalization of land. So far Mr. Ford, editor of the "Irish World," has not only never stated his own position on this point, but has apparently studiously avoided so doing. In the article referred to, Mr. Ford expresses the opinion that that George's views of man's relation to soil are making such rapid progress as to make there adoption only a matter of time. Liberty is interested to learn what ground Mr. Ford occupies, if any, on this question, and, if he agrees with George that the land ought to be nationalized, what he means by this term. Mr. George's doctrine of land may be stated in three propositions: 1, that all human beings have an inalienable right to the equal use of the soil, water, etc. and that no human being has the right to private property in them; 2, that the land of a country belongs to the people of the country, - the community; 3, that the revenue of the State ought to be derived from a land tax upon the basis of the margin of cultivation. He then affirms that the only title to property is rooted in labor. George, further, justifies interested, affirms the right of capital to a share of labor's products, and declares that this right rests upon the same thing as rent, — namely , the margin of cultivation, or the point in production where rent begins, — all of which is part of the land question and George's ideas of man's relation to soil. We affirm that these three points of George's land doctrine are irreconcilable with each other, that only the first is tenable, and that his law of rent, interest, and earnings of capital has no better basis than the law of wages and the Malthusian doctrine which he so ably refutes, — in a word, that it is fiction. Conceding the grand ability of the author of "Progress and Poverty," and confessing our great esteem for him as a man, writer, and reformer, we can not be so unjust to other eminent thinkers and writers as to assent to the statement of the "Irish World" that George's book is the most remarkable work of its kind written in this century and that really great minds have universally acknowledged the worth of his work (as unrivalled), since Proudhon has previously accomplished what George later attempted, and as we hold, failed to do, — namely, exhibit the relation of progress to poverty, though not under the title. The attempt made by George to identify the school of Proudhon with that of Lasalle only demonstrates his utter failure to understand either.

Wendell Phillips, urged by the Land League to visit Ireland and bring the power of his eloquence to the support of the no-rent gospel, declines on account of his health. It is a poor excuse. Imagine Mr. Phillips halting in his anti-slavery work, because of his health! He could give his glorious life a more glorious ending nowhere than on an Irish platform, expending his last breath in persuading the tenants to pay no more rent. So he might make his battle with slavery literally life-long. He sacrifices a grand opportunity. But, in view of a sentence in his letter of declaration, his decision is not to be regretted. He says: "Honest rent is the surplus left after the tenant has lived in comfort, — material, intellectual, personal, and social comfort." The man who says that can do Ireland no better service than to remain on this side of the ocean and keep his tongue in his head silver though it be. As if rightfulness of rent depends, in any sense, upon the condition of the tenant! On the contrary, it is the condition of the tenant that depends very largely upon the rightfulness of rent. The manner of an industrious man's life is not the measure of his earnings, and does not constitute his title to them. He may live like a pauper, if he will, or like a price, if he can; in either case the equitable reward of his labor remains the same. What he produces is his to consume, if he chooses to consume it; and, if he does not so choose, it is still his to keep. But Mr. Phillips says that the producer shall be allowed to consume enough of his product to make him comfortable, but must give the balance to men who produce nothing and whose sole function in the world is to consume and waste and destroy. Out upon such doctrine! It is that of a tender-hearted highwayman, neither more nor less. Ireland already has too many men within her shores who are influenced in this matter of sentiment rather than by principle to need to add another to their number.

Liberty and Method.

The starting-point, from the standard of Liberty, of all sociological investigation is the Individual. How marked and infinite is the diversity of individualities becomes more and more apparent to every close constant observer of men.

Even the best disciplined mind cannot escape seeing right, justice, and scientific method in reform largely from the standpoint of its own organization and environments. The man of theory and abstraction listens in semi-contempt to the elaborately contrived schemes of the practical man whose very purpose is to put the formers own theories directly or indirectly into practice. "No," says he; "you are simply lopping off the branches and wasting your time, and every blow that is not struck straight at the tap-roots is worse than useless. You must strike as I strike and where I strike, or your blow counts for nothing."

A man may be gifted with giant intellect in certain lines of mental analysis, and yet be all the more prone to that species of mental limitation which, failing to understand an entirely different mental organization, rudely consigns its plans and specifications for the practical application of his own thought to the intellectual waste-basket as utterly useless.

The only man capable of understanding wherein every mind that is willing to work for justice is capable of efficient cooperation in reform is the philosopher, by which is meant that large and fully-rounded man who, having a little of all mental qualities in his composition, can appreciate all. But this rounded balance of qualities is always at the expense of the exceptional power of the specialist, all of whose forces are concentrated upon one method of analysis.

It is quite common to maintain that the well-balanced, rounded philosopher is the intellectually greater man. No type of an, however, represents the great man, - not even that which combines to some extent all types. We wish it distinctly understood that, in the ethics and philosophy of Liberty, there is no provision for great men. The "great man" of history is a standing nuisance, and has no place in our system. There is no great nor small in true social economy. Every man is made for his work, and the only person whom is troubles us to dispose of is the man who, if ever designed for any manner of method of work, refuses to do it. But even the idler is neither great nor small. He goes out of the calculation as a nonentity.

At a recent gathering of thinkers in the line of Liberty this very matter of method came into prominence. There was the same purpose in every member of the company, by a marked mental organization in each differing from every other. One gentlemen of excellent organizing capacity has a scheme on foot for gradually shaming and driving the State out of existence by absorbing its functions into practical cooperation among employers and their help, and thus finally worrying it out through indirect means. To the abstract thinker before whom the scheme was laid, and who, by the way, has perhaps the keenest intellect of his continent in his line, all this indirect circumvention of the State was utterly futile. The State must be openly attacked and defied at its very citadel. Its guns must be dismounted, and its offices, titles, pretensions, and paraphernalia utterly demolished and abolished, before any scheme can acquire Liberty enough to give it an effectual test.

Now, two such positive and diverse organizations as these minds can never be made to see alike through argument. True conviction is simply the result of seeing, and each man will always see through his own glass. All that argument can ever do is to clean the glasses. The fact is that both are right without mutually knowing it. And we say that, if any man has any practical scheme by which to pus the State adrift through individual cooperation, his duty is simply to go straight about its realization. To him, as he is made up, it is the most effectual method. All that we demand is the inexorable condition that his scheme shall entertain no element of compulsion, and that the cost of executing it shall be thrown upon no unwilling shoulders.

As we are made up, we believe that the most manly and effectual method of dealing with the State is to demand its immediate and unconditional surrender as a usurper, and to flatly and openly challenge its assumed right to forestall and crush out the voluntary associative government and regulation of individuals by themselves in all things. But, if others think that indirect methods are preferable, all that they have to do is to set about asserting themselves, as we assert ourselves. By all means accept nobody as authority. All mental popery is impossible in the very essence of our philosophy. Let each man do his work as to him seems good, in right dead earnest. Then, later, as we come to compare notes, we may fairly judge one another by our fruits, and arrive at harmony through its only legitimate channel, - the largest Liberty of action and method.

Liberty, Open Revolution, and Terrorism.

[Excerpted from Liberty, Vol I. No. 7, On Picket Duty.]

...each group autonomous, each free; each composed of varying number of individuals of all ages, sexes, races, equally autonomous and free; each inspired by a common, central purpose; each supported entirely by voluntary contributions; each obeying its own judgement; each guided in the formation of it judgement and the choice of its conduct by the advice of a central council of picked men, having no power to enforce its orders except that inherent in the convincing logic of the reason on which the orders are based; all coordinated and federated, with a minimum of machinery and without sacrifice of spontaneity, into a vast working unit, whose unparallelled power makes tyrants tremble and armies of no avail.

Ireland's shortest road to success: no payment of rent now or hereafter; no payment of compulsory taxes nor or hereafter; utter disregard of the British parliament and its so-called law; entire abstention from the polls henceforth; rigorous, but non-invasive "boycotting" of deserters, cowards, traitors, and oppressors; vigorous, intelligent, fearless prosecution of the land agitation by voice and pen; passive, but stubborn resistance to every offensive act of police or military; and above all, universal readiness to go to prison, and promptness in filling the places made vacant by those who may be sent to prison. Open revolution, terrorism, and the policy above outlined, which is Liberty, are the three courses from which Ireland now must choose. Open revolution on the battle-field means sure defeat and another century of misery and oppression; terrorism, though preferable to revolution means years of demoralizing intrigue, bloody plot, base passion, and terrible revenge, - in short, all the horrors of a long-continued national vendetta, with a doubtful issue at the end; Liberty means certain, unhalting, and comparatively bloodless victory, the dawn of the sun of justice, and perpetual peace and prosperity in the future for a hitherto blighted land.

Right and Individual Rights.

Vol. I, No. 12
January 7, 1882

Until someone shall have formulated and demonstrated a correct science of justice, the way is ever open to constant confusion as regards the subject of right and rights. The columns of a newspaper are not the place to develop such a science; nevertheless, the matter is so important that we have determined, reconsidering our previously-announced purpose to drop it, to once more re-state our position. On several occasions our editorials have been sharply criticized by parties who are supposed to know something of the principles of Liberty; not that they would differ from us, if they carried in mind the distinction that must necessarily be kept in view in discussing the bearing of Liberty upon human acts, but simply that they have got into the habit of carelessly defining acts without reference to the sphere of the individuals acting.

The right to do a thing and the abstract right of a thing involve two essential different principles. For instance, we have defended the right of individuals to make contracts stipulating the payment of usury, and should strike at the very essence of Liberty if we did not; but this defense of individual right by no means carries with it the defense of usury as an equitable transaction per se. In defending the right to take usury, we do not defend the right of usury. He who cannot see this has not mastered the A B C of social analysis. One of our critics, who has twice challenged our defense of individuals who voluntarily choose to be parties to usury, strenuously defends "free rum." Would he like to be accused of saying thereby that it is right, as a matter of principle, to drink rum inordinately? No, he is a sever believer in the wrongfulness of excessive rum-drinking. But he believes that the rum-drinker and the rum-seller have the right to execute a contract involving a practice wrong in itself, and that no third party has the right to step between them by force and dictate the terms of their mutual and voluntary transaction. This is exactly, and no more than, what Liberty affirms with regard to usury. Wherein, then, have we so grievously sinned?

To say that it is absolutely right to do a thing is to say that to do it is to do that which will administer the greatest possible good, when every possible element of transaction is seen and weighed. But who possesses that sublime omniscience which can see and weigh every element, past, present, and future, that enters into a transaction? And even if one could, who is to vouch authoritatively that his weights, measures, and balance are correct? In this dilemma the theologians, of course, find an easy way by setting up a pure fiction labelled "God" and stamped infallible. This trick, however, being "played out" with our critics, how do they propose to get at the absolute right of a thing? Is there, indeed, in practice, any absolute right?

Nor does it solve the matter at all to bring in the cost principle, and say that it is absolutely right which is done and solely at the cost of the individuals who act. There is no mentionable act, not even the dropping of a pin in the middle of the Desert of Sahara, of which it can infallibly be said that it is done solely at the cost of the individuals acting. The loss of that pin as a necessary surgical instrument to treat the disabled camel may cost its life, and with it the lives of the whole party. We believe in the cost principle as a standard, and the best at our service, but its observance can never result in the universality of absolute right, since no man or set of men can ever attain the omniscience of foreseeing the entire bill of costs, or on which side of the scales all the consequents will range themselves. In short, with our human limitations, absolute right practically has no existence.

The only way even to approximately solve the right and wrong of human acts is to leave every individual free to make such contracts with his fellows as to them seem good. The fact of how far given transactions are executed at the cost of others will soon be made evident in every case by the protest of those on whom the cost unjustly falls. If every individual is left free to make contracts and ever free to enter an effectual protest against transactions wherein the cost falls upon his shoulders without his consent, the consequent adjustments will reach the nearest possible approach to absolute justice. The monster that Liberty invites true reformers to help battle down and exterminate is the State, whose purpose is, first, to enforce unjust contracts through forcible defense of monopoly, and, second, to make effectual protect impossible by defending ill-gotten property from natural redistribution which attends tyranny and theft.

Liberty, therefore, must defend the right of individuals to make contracts involving usury, rum, marriage, prostitution, and many other things which it believes to be wrong in principle and opposed to human well-being. The right to do involves the essence of all rights. Perfect liberty to contract for what is wrong is the shortest and surest way to abolish the wrong, provided the State can be made to step down and out and leave the wrong to its merits in a fair fight with no favors. The State, however, almost invariable takes sides with the wrong, and declares the advocates of a fair contest between right and wrong enemies of law and order. The right, losing its head in that most dangerous of superstitions known as patriotism, is stupid enough to take up arms against itself, and everything goes to suit the oppressor.

Given the untrammelled right to take usury on the one hand, and the untrammelled right to protest that its cost shall not be shouldered by the innocent on the other, abolish all State interference, and then usury can work no harm to humanity. The minimum of its harm is measured by the total abolition of the state, and in the last analysis usury is wrong, in practice, solely because the State is suffered to exist. To those who cannot meet us on this ground as radical reformers we respectfully announce that we decline to waste any more time and type over their future shufflings.

The Philosophy of Right and Wrong.

Liberty Vol. I, No. 7
October 29, 1881

The most serious calamity attendant upon false premises in the realm of thought is that the avowed and conscientious enemies of despotism are made to be persistent advocates and defenders of the pivotal agencies upon which it hinges. We do not make this assertion in a spirit of self-sufficiency and conceit, and are aware that those who differ from us will, of course, turn it against ourselves. Naturally, we feel very positive that the philosophy which shapes the teachings of Liberty is correct and unanswerable; but we are fallible, and, if the history of human opinions reaches anything, it is that nothing in this world is a finality.

But upon one thing all school of sociology will agree, - namely, that the very first step in all reasoning looking to human well-being is to fix upon a correct scientific basis of right and wrong. These terms are upon everybody's lips, from the prattling stripling to the hoary theologian and moralist, and yet the average man has no fixed conception of what it is that constitutes an action as right or wrong. At every step we find people disputing and arguing over the right and wrong of a thing, but arrest them in any instance, and ask them what constitutes right and wrong in nature and practice, and they are totally unable to answer. And yet the whole argument in every case is useless and worthless until this point is settled.

The chief mischief attending this lamentable absence of a true scientific standard of right grows out of the universally accepted inference that, as soon as one is convinced that a practice is what he calls wrong, it is his next and imperative duty to set about to interdict that practice by force. For instance, there is a very large constituency among the thinkers of to-day who are convinced usury is wrong. The "Irish World" is the most conspicuous reservoir in America of the protest growing out of that conviction. Yet the burden of the song of every protestant is that usury ought to be crushed out of existence by force. It has no right to live, it should be forbidden and punished, because it is wrong.

Now, assuming that the vague standard of right and wrong adopted by these people is a sort of utilitarian one, based in this instance on the theory that lending on usury in every case works more harm than good (i. e., more injury than benefit), they stand on untenable ground, and are liable to be dropped into a trap at any moment; for it would not be difficult to produce individual instances where the practice of lending on usury, so far from being an injury to anybody, is a practical benefit, not only to the individuals contracting, but to the community at large. By their own standard, then, lending on usury, in such a case, would not be wrong. But, if it be answered that, although lending on usury may often prove an mutual benefit to individuals, its ultimate result upon society at large are disastrous, and that therefor society at large should prevent individuals from doing what they can mutually agree to, then Liberty must, of course, demand an unconditional halt! For that is the very essence of despotism against which we protest, - namely, the right of society at large to interdict individuals by force.

And to fall back, in order to justify such a course, upon the phrase, "moral right," is both unscientific and pernicious. For moral right has no authoritative interpreter, and therefor should not be made, as it so easily can be, a weapon of tyranny. A thing must be right or wrong in accordance with some correct analysis of the natural domain of individual and associative actions. To say "moral right," in the sense above referred to, is to lumber up our conceptions with a mischievous term which has no scientific status.

We sometimes wish that the very terms themselves, right and wrong, were abolished; for, until they are made to have a true scientific meaning, they are a perpetual source of mischief and misdirection. But, until somebody shall give the word a correct scientific terminology, we must tolerate them as best we can, while endeavoring at every opportunity to so direct their application as to make them count for Liberty, instead of for despotism, as they generally do in society as at present governed.

Right and wrong are principles that must ever be defined, qualified, and circumscribed by the individual, in his associative capacity: defined, by a correct analysis of the natural domain of individual action; qualified, by the natural reflex action of other individuals; circumscribed, by the inflexible law that all action, individual and associate, shall be at the sole cost of the party or parties acting.

Under this law all individuals have a right to do anything and everything which they may cheese voluntarily to do at their own cost. Make this law universal, and keep the hands of Church, State, and every other arbitrary, coercive despot away from it, and perfect Liberty will result as naturally as all other things find their level in nature. The practice of usury is a sacred and inviolable prerogative of individuals who choose to contract for its payment. If the cost, in practice, ultimately falls upon the innocent and toiling masses, it is because this prerogative is forbidden to these proscribed slaves by the machine known as the State. Proudhon demonstrates as clearly as any theorem in mathematics could be demonstrated that, if the power to take usury were extended to all men, usury would devour itself, in its very nature. But this is exactly one of the chief purposes of the State, - namely, to cut off a great part of the race from the practice of usury, and confine it to the few, so that they may live in luxury on the toil of their artificially-created slaves.

The same is true of all the other prerogatives which attach to property. Whether property in land be, in itself, right or wrong, it is, in practice, a wrong only because the State is designed chiefly to see to it that property in land shall be vested in a minority instead of all. If the State could be made to declare to-morrow that hereafter property in land should be extended to all, and that all landlords must, in future, secure their holdings on their own merits instead of by force, property in land would cease to be evil. But the State that could be made to declare such a thing would cease to be a State.

We ask the reader to scrutinize carefully the law which we have italicized above, and then bear in mind the following melancholy facts which result from ignoring it, or not knowing it: -

1. Usury is practically wrong because the State creates and defends a monopoly in the practice of it.

2. Property in land is practically wrong because the State was created to defend a minority in the sole enjoyment of it.

3. Rent and interest (forms of usury) are practically wrong because the State necessarily confines the taking of rent and interest to classes endowed with monopoly.

Finally, the whole rang of transactions among individuals results in wrongs because the State assumes the right to stand despotically between individuals and their own mutual interests. The State is the chief curse of humanity, the mother of human wrongs.

"The Land for the People."

Liberty Vol. I, No. 11
December 24, 1881

The natural wealth of the earth belongs to all the people. The land, the coal, the minerals, the water courses, — all that furnishes the basis of the prime opportunities for human well-being should be the common possession of all.
The above proposition is practically accepted by the leading thinkers and agitators of the world. The socialists declare it as the bottom plank of their system. The communists of course avow it. The "Irish World" cries it aloud from week to week. John Stuart Mill affirmed it almost in so many words. Herbert Spencer reiterates it constantly, and even Froude and John Bright have repeatedly accepted it by inference. Liberty affirms it too; so one main and vital proposition is generally admitted by all shades of advanced reformers.

But at the point where this proposition is accepted begins the great socialistic controversy in which we find ourselves at uncompromising war with social democrats, the communists, and the whole rank and file of government regulationists. "By what method do you propose to give every man a fair opportunity to enjoy all these 'natural gifts'?" "How can you best secure this natural wealth to all the people?" These questions which tower in importance above all others which now confront thinking men.

Now, Liberty's way of getting all these good things to the people is to put every man on his own merits. The very purpose of that machine called the State is to set an artificial patent man-trap, by which  the intended servile classes shall be crippled in the race for natural wealth and natural opportunities.

Years ago the natural wealth of the public waters was not interfered with by legislation. Go to the shores of our bays and rivers, and the poor fishermen, if not already starved out or forced into the service of big operators, will recall with a sigh the good old days when all poor men fared alike and could make a living out of the public waters. But since politics have become a thieving trade, legislation has so "put a job" on natural water privileges that the poor are practically evicted and choked off, while the big concerns who dictate the legislation scoop up he fisherman in their politico-industrial nets under the current despotic wage system.

Cease to protect landlords in their monopoly of the land through the State, and the land will readily revert to the people. It will revert, too, speedily, with little expense, and with less violence, injustice, and dissatisfaction than under our boasted law-and-order arrangements. The island of Ireland belongs to the people, as Bishop Nulty and the "Irish World" assert. But why do the people not enjoy it? Simply because their wits are not awakened to their real enemy, the State. Acting better than it knows, the Land League, as a power for Liberty, is only strong in the fact that is has been this expression of practical revolt against the British State. The London "Times," more sagacious than the blind leaders of the League, foresees that a successful strike against that tax known as rent is only a step, which needs to be followed by a strike against that other tax which needs to be followed by a strike against that other tax which is levied to support the State in order that the tap-root of the whole scheme of landlordism may be reached.

And yet the mass of Irishmen are so swallowed up in the delusion that society is impossible without a State that the craze of Irish national independence came near capturing the recent convention at Chicago, and threatens to yet the beneficent work of the Land League movement. The prospective Irish State will be the same machine, under another banner, that now has the Irish tenant by the throat. The American republic is to-day more favorable to landlords than is the government of England. A late editorial in the New York "Tribune" produced unanswerable proof that the laws of this country are vastly more favorable to the landlord and more sever to the tenant than the laws which hold sway in Ireland. Unless Irish human nature is the one exception of the world, the coming Irish republic will be simply a reproduction of the machine which inevitably provides that the land shall not come into the hands of the people. The very purpose of the State is to make the mass of the people the slaves of the privileged classes. The State, in its very nature, cannot be of the people and by the people. It is of the few and by the few by virtue of its organic structure.

Until these bottom facts of despotism can be gotten into the heads of the Irish leaders, the land war will flounder along blindly. The leaders of the movement are to-day ignorant of the only saving grace there is "no rent." When the London "Times" says that "no rent" is but the stepping-stone to "no taxes," it shows a far keener insight into the situation than Parnell and his infatuated companions who cry for Irish national independence. Stop feeding the infernal machine which alone protects the landlord in his piracy, and the game is up with one stroke. To institute another machine in its place is simply to invite the Irish to practice upon their own race what the hated Saxon has been practicing all these centuries, and to substitute the Irish swindle for the English is about the extent of the average Irishman's aspiration. Nothing better can be expected till the agitation shall call forth somebody who has the sense and courage to supplement Michael Davitt's "no rent" with "no taxes" and "no State." Then this now useless cry of "the land for the people" will begin to mean something for Ireland and the whole human race. A sort of blind Providence has driven Ireland into the "no rent" resolve, but her vaunted leaders are ignorant of its real significance. They are mere children besides such men as Michael Bakounine, the founder of Nihilism, and are entitled only to the credit of blindly acting better than they know.