“Leaves of Grass.”

Liberty has received from the publishers (James R. Osgood & Co., Boston), and joyfully welcomes “Leaves of Grass,” the collective title of Walt Whitman’s poems. It is a convenient, compact, and tastefully “got up” volume of 382 pages, and contains a number of hitherto unpublished poems, besides those of the earlier editions. “Leaves of Grass” have lost nothing of their original native simplicity, freshness, and vigor from being more carefully arranged and placed in a more artistic, though it may be a more conventional vase. The book will be more readily purchased and read, at any rate; and that is the main point. The titles of some of the poems have been changed, and the table of contents newly arranged and made much more convenient for reference to special passages.

We have not discovered that the book has lost anything of its characteristic outspoken independence, nor that any concession has been made to Mrs. Grundy. It still retains all its naked truthfulness and purity, like its prototype in marble, the Greek Slave.

Walt Whitman is preeminently, above all and before all, the poet of innovation, the poet of change, the poet of growth, the poet of evolution. There is not a drop of stagnant blood in his veins. Every fibre of him quivers with life, energy, and fire. His spirit is at the same time the spirit of content and discontent. He is satisfied with whatever is and as it is — for to-day, but not for to-morrow, nor that for any future to-morrow.

Urge and urge and urge,

Always the procreant urge of the world.

That seems to him to be the key-note of the universe.

A study, “By Blue Ontario’s Shore,” affords a good idea of what he himself considers his mission, and shows how thoroughly one in purpose that mission is with Liberty’s. He shall speak for himself from that poem.

By blue Ontario’s shore,
As I mused of these warlike days and of peace return’d, and the dead that return no more,
A Phantom gigantic superb, with stern visage accosted me,
Chant me the poem, it said, that comes from the soul of America,
Chant me the carol of victory, and strike up the marches of Libertad, marches more powerful yet,
And sing me before you go the song of the throes of Democracy.

The poet, in responding, commences with a striking bit of individual self-assertion, of which we can quote but a few lines:

A Nation announcing itself,
I myself make the only growth by which I can be appreciated,
I reject none, accept all, then reproduce all in my own forms.

We are powerful and tremendous in ourselves,
We are executive in ourselves,
We are sufficient in the variety of ourselves,
We are the most beautiful to ourselves and in on ourselves,
Nothing is sinful to us outside of ourselves,
Whatever appears, whatever does not appear, we are beautiful or sinful in ourselves only.

(O mother — O sisters dear!
If we are lost, no victory else has destroy’d us,
It is by ourselves we go down to eternal night.)

Have you thought there could be but a single supreme?
There can be any number of supremes . . .
All is eligible to all,
All is for individuals, all is for you.

Produce great Persons, the rest follows.

Then comes this attack upon Authority and conservatism:

Piety and Conformity to them that like,
Peace, obesity, allegiance, to them that like,
I am he who tauntingly compels men, women, nations,
Crying, Leap from your seats and contend for your lives;
I am he who walks the States with a barb’d tongue, questioning every one I meet,
Who are you that wanted only to be told what you knew before?

Somewhat changing the theme:

I listened to the Phantom by Ontario’s shore,
I heart the voice arising demanding bards,
By them all native and grand, by them alone can these States be fused into the compact organism of a Nation.

To hold men together by paper and seal or by compulsion is no account,
That only holds men together which aggregates all in a living principle, as the hold of the limbs of the body or the fibres of plants.

Of these States the Poet Is the equable man,
For the great Idea, the idea of perfect and free individuals,
For that the bard walks in advance, leader of leaders.
The attitude of him cheers up slaves and horrifies foreign despots.

Without extinction is Liberty, without retrograde is Equality,
They live in the feelings of young men and the best women,
(Not for nothing have the indomitable heads of the earth been always ready to fall for Liberty.)

For the great Idea,
That, O my brethren, that is the mission of poets.

A few lines to show what he claims for himself:

Give me the pay I have served for,
Give me to sing the songs of the great Idea, take all the rest.
I have loved the earth, sun, animals, I have despised riches,
Claim’d nothing to myself which I have not carefully claim’d for others on the same terms,
I am willing to wait to be understood by the growth of the taste o myself,
Rejecting none, permitting all.

We must find room for our poet’s creed of Individualism, and close therewith our quotations trom this remarkable book:

I swear I begin to see the meaning of these things,
It is not the earth, it is not America who is so great,
It is I who am great or to be great, it is you up there, or any one,
It is to walk rapidly through civilizations, governments, theories,
Through poems, pageants, shows, to form individuals,

Underneath all, individuals,
I swear nothing is good to mo that ignores individuals,
The only government is that which makes minute of individuals,
The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individual — namely to you,
(Talk as you like, he only suits these States whose manners favor the audacity and sublime turbulence of the States,)
Underneath the lessons of things, spirits, Nature, governments, ownerships, I swear I perceive other lessons,
Underneath all to me in myself, to you yourself, (the same monotonous old song.)

I am for those who have never been master’d,
For men and women whose tempers have never been master’d,
For those whom laws, theories, conventions, can never master.
I am for those who walk abreast the whole earth,
Who innagurate one to inaugurate all.

I will not be out-faced by irrational things,
I will penetrate what it is in them that is sarcastic upon me,
I will make cities and civilizations defer to me,
This is what I have learn’t from America — it is the amount, and it I teach again.

(Democracy, while weapons were everywhere aim’d at your breast, I saw you serenely give birth to immortal children, saw in dreams your dilating form,
Saw you with spreading mantle covering the world.)

I will confront these shows of the day and night,
I will know if I am to be less than they,
I will see if I am not as majestic as they,
I will see if I am not as subtle and real as they,
I will see if I am to be less generous than they,
I will see if I have no meaning, while the houses and ships have meaning,
I will see if the fishes and birds are to be enough for themselves, and I am not to be enough for myself.

Play-House Philanthropy.

Among the ablest and most interesting contributions to the columns of the “Irish World” are the sketches of one of its staff correspondents, “Honorius,” in which that writer, week after week, with all the skill and strategy of a born general, marshals anecdote, illustration, history, biography, fact, logic, and the experiences of every-day life in impregnable line of battle, and precipitates them upon the cohorts of organized tyranny and theft, making irreparable breaches in their fortifications, and spreading havoc throughout their ranks. The ingenuity which he displays in utilizing his material and turning everything to the account of his cause is marvellous. Out of each new fact that falls under his notice, out of each new character with whom he comes in contact, he develops some fresh argument against the system of theft that underlies our so-called “civilization,” some novel application of the principles that must underlie the coming true society.

Unless we are greatly mistaken, the latest of his assaults will not prove the least effective, since in it he has improved an excellent opportunity to turn his guns upon enemies nearer home, enemies in the guise of friends. He briefly tells the story of the career of a Yorkshire factory-lord, one Sir Titus Salt, who, through his fortunate discovery of the process of manufacturing alpaca cloth, accumulated an enormous fortune, which he expended in the establishment of institutions for the benefit of his employees and in deeds of general philanthropy. To this man he pays a tribute of praise for various virtues, which, for aught we know, is well deserved. But he supplements it by forcible insistance on the fact that Sir Titus was but a thief after all; that, however great his generosity of heart, it was exercised in the distribution of other people’s earnings; and that his title to exemption from the condemnation of honest men was no better than that of the more merciful of the Southern slave-owners. The importance of this lesson it is impossible to overestimate. Gains are no less ill-gotten because well-given. Philanthropy cannot palliate plunder. Robbery, though it be not born of rapacity, is robbery still. This Sir Titus Salt but serves as a type of a large class of individuals who are ever winning the applause and admiration of a world too prone to accept benevolence and charity in the stead of justice and righteousness.

Perhaps the most conspicuous example of the class referred to now posing before the world is the man referred to by “Honorius” in connection and comparison with Sir Titus,— Godin of Guise, the famous founder of the Familisterre. “The great Godin of Guise,” “Honorius” styles him; and it is precisely because this clear-headed writer, misinformed as to the real facts, makes him the object of exaggerated and misplaced adulation that the present article is written. Of Sir Titus Salt we could not speak, but of the Familisterre and its founder we can say somewhat that may interest and enlighten their admirers. But first the words of “Honorius:”

Sir Titos Salt was the companion, as a noble-souled employer, to that fellow-philanthropist, the great Godin of Guise, who founded the famous social palace known as the Familisterre, although not so grand a character as the renowned Frenchman. Titus Salt was a sectarian. His $80,000 church was for the “accommodation” of his own sect, and those who held to other creeds found no place of worship from his money. Godin was a grand, liberal soul. Though educated a Catholic, he made the most liberal provision for every shade of belief among his working people, and he despised every form of narrowness and bigotry. Godin, too, was too noble a soul to descend to the arts of the politician, and would have despised himself had he solicited a vote from any of his people. So wonderful was the success of his industrial experiment at Guise that Louis Napoleon became jealous of the possibilities for labor which he had demonstrated, and that despicable fraud and royal scoundrel, “Louis the Little,” repeatedly went out of his way to hamper his business, and even sought to disfranchise him.

Let us see how much of this is true,— if this man is really great, or only a pretender and a sham. It was once our privilege to visit the Familisterre. The visit extended through the better part of a week, and occurred at a very favorable time, including one of the two annual fete days (celebrating Education and Labor) peculiar to the institution. But the impression left on our mind was by no means favorable. The establishment seemed pervaded throughout by an atmosphere of supervision and routine, tempered here and there by awkward attempts at the picturesque. The air of buoyant contentment which the glowing accounts given of the Social Palace would lead one to expect did not characterize the members of the large household to any great extent. The workmen seemed to feel themselves and their class still the victims of oppression. A very slight acquaintance with them was sufficient to reveal the fact that their “boss” and “benefactor” does not appear an godlike in their eyes as in those that view him at a distance. In the presence of the inquiring observer their faces assumed an expression that seemed to say: “Oh, you think it’s all very pretty, no doubt; no rags here, no dirt; everything clean and orderly, and a moderate degree of external comfort among us all. But all this has to be paid for by somebody, and it is the outside world that foots the bills. Our master has the reputation of being very kind and generous, but he is our master. We enjoy this material welfare at the expense of something of our independence. Besides, he’s got a soft thing of it,— rolling up his millions year by year and excusing himself by distributing a certain proportion of his stealings among us; but he and the rest of us are living very largely on our fellow-laborers elsewhere, out of whose pockets these immense profits come.”

And actual questioning proved that their faces told the truth. Inability to converse fluently in French prevented us from inquiring closely into details, but from an intelligent young Russian visiting the place at the same time and on much the same mission as ourselves, whose knowledge of French and English was excellent, we elicited information quite sufficient. The more intelligent of the workmen had told him confidentially just what we had read in their faces as stated above, not a few of them confessing that M. Godin, who at that time was a member of the National Chamber of Deputies, held his seat by a method strikingly similar to that which in Massachusetts the Boston “Herald” is wont to apologize for as “civilized bulldozing,”— that is, prior to election day he contrived to have it understood among his employees that a convenient opportunity would be found for the discharge of such of them as should fail to vote for him, no matter what their previous political affiliations or present political beliefs. And yet “Honorius” says (or seems to hint) that he is not ambitious, and “Honorius” is an honorable man. Hundreds and thousands of honorable men share the same delusion,— for a delusion it certainly is.

A strange sort of “philanthropist,” this! A singular “nobility of soul” is M. Godin’s! His religious liberality referred to by “Honorius” evidently does not extend into his business and politics. Here is a man, ingenious, shrewd, calculating, with large executive capacity and something of a taste for philosophy, who discovers an industrial process which, through a monopoly guaranteed by the patent laws, he is enabled to carry on at an enormous profit; he employs hundreds of operatives; for them and their families he builds a gigantic home, which he dignifies by the name of a palace, though it needs but a few bolts and bars to make it seem more like a prison, so cheerless, formal, and forbidding is its gloomy aspect; he distributes among them a portion of the profits, perhaps to quiet his conscience, perhaps to become noted for fair dealing and philanthropy; the balance — more than sufficient to satisfy the ordinary manufacturer subject to competition — he complacently pockets, putting forth, meanwhile, the ridiculous pretence that he holds this fund as a trustee; finally, knowing nothing of Liberty and Equity and sneering at their defenders, he professes to think that he can regenerate the world by the fanciful and unsound schemes of education that he spends his leisure hours in devising and realizing, supporting them with wealth gained by theft, power gained by indirect bribery and bulldozing, and popularity gained by pretence and humbuggery. Nevertheless, for doing this the whole humanitarian world and not a few hard-headed reformers bow down and worship him. Even clear-sighted “Honorius” heaps honors on his head. But “Honorius” knows, and does not fail to emphasize, the true lesson of the man’s life, which is that the impending social revolution has certain fixed principles behind it; that one of these principles is, “Thou shalt not steal;” that any scheme by which a single individual becomes inordinately rich, whether as proprietor or trustee (unless the trust be purely voluntary), is necessarily carried on in violation of that principle; and that whoever prosecutes it as in accordance with that principle thereby proves himself either too ignorant or too insincere to be allowed to serve, much less to lead, in the revolutionary movement. Such a man is of the plunderers, and should be with them. Idol-smashing is no enviable task; but to unmask the pretensions of piny-house philanthropists whose highest conception of distributive justice seemes to be the sharing with a fortunate few of goods stolen from the many is a service that, however disagreeable, is of prime necessity in the realization of that Equity which distributes to each the product of his labor and that Liberty which renders it impossible for one to reap the profit of another’s toil.

____________________________________________________________

Liberty had in type, and intended to publish in this issue, a communication from the central bureau of information at London reporting the progress and growth of the reorganized International Working- people’s Association, and containing a complete list of the groups and sections that have forwarded their adhesions and accepted the platform; but facts have recently transpired that make it dangerous to reveal the existence and location of the French, Italian, and Spanish groups. Therefore, rather than print an incomplete list, we omit it altogether, simply stating that, apart from the numerous sections that prefer to correspond directly with each other, forty-six are in direct communication with the central bureau, working together for the social revolution the world over in harmony substantially complete. The United States is represented by groups located in New York, Jersey City, and Milwaukee. New sections are forming everywhere with great rapidity. The progress of anarchistic socialism in Europe is really wonderful. In Spain, where the working-people are beginning to see the futility of political methods, a recent workingmen’s congress declared, by the voice of one hundred and twenty-eight out of one hundred and thirty-six delegates representing two hundred sections, squarely in favor of anarchy.

____________________________________________________________

A valued contributor strongly defends in another column the attitude recently taken by O. B. Frothingham, viewing it from a transcendental standpoint. We are materialists of the most extreme sort, but do not find it necessary to discuss Mr. Frothingham’s attitude toward revealed religion as if it were an issue between the experiential and intuitional philosophies. The position of Mr. Frothingham seems to us something like this. Years ago he discovered that the Christian edifice, comfortable as it was, stood on a rotten foundation, and that its decaying walls were liable at any moment to tumble about his ears. He wisely hastened to abandon it, and proceeded, in company with others (we do not refer especially to the Free Religious Association), to lay the foundations for a more solid structure. They did their work well, and it is now going bravely on. But, as winter approaches, the cold north winds whistle through the bare framework of the Freethought temple, and Mr. Frothingham begins to shiver. So incomplete is the structure as yet that it is impossible to heat it or to furnish it with those comforts and decorations that make a house a home both for body and soul. So Mr. Frothingham leaves his fellow-workmen, brave builders that they are, to toil on in the cold, and goes off blowing his delicate fingers with the breath from his blue nose. He now sits hesitatingly in the sunniest spot that he can find in the open air, wondering whether he would not do better to return to the edifice which he originally abandoned. “I know it is crumbling,” we can hear him murmur, “but there is a furnace there at least. Shall I not take the risk?” If he succeeds in withstanding the temptation, there is a bare possibility that, when the Liberal structure is completed, he will again seek admission to enjoy its comforts, or even, when summer comes, ask permission to take a band in finishing the work. Others may look upon such a course with what favor they can; but to us it seems weak, childish, petulant, cowardly, ignoble, and faithless.

____________________________________________________________

A well-dressed, well-behaved woman in Providence was returning to her home at 3 o’clock a.m. The streets being empty, she lighted a cigar, and, as she sped along, watched the curling smoke dissolve in the moonbeams, very much after the manner of a free and independent citizen of the stronger sex. She was quiet and orderly, and went straight along about her business. Suddenly a policeman turned the corner and roughly confronted her. After some impertinent questions, he laid violent hands upon her, and marched her rudely to the station. There she received a second dose of blue-coated rudeness, and, after many insults, was suffered to go, with officious reprimands. The Woman Suffrage Association was sitting in Providence at that time. Its leaders must have seen the item in the papers, and we humbly suggest to Lucy Stone, Mrs. E. B. Chace, and the other disciples of woman’s rights that this incident was worth more as a text than all that was offered in behalf of suffrage. No half-way decent man would have molested this lady with her cigar. The voting swindle created these police ruffians and their superiors. The State is the real loafer, and true woman will yet learn not to covet its company or keep it alive with votes.

____________________________________________________________

Mr. W. G. H. Smart is about to issue in pamphlet form an address delivered by him, October 2, before the Transatlantic Land and Labor League of South Boston, entitled “The Social Economic System That Is, and That Is To Be.” It will be printed on good paper and arranged in two parts. Dealers and labor organizations, from whom Mr. Smart requests early orders, can obtain the work, at the rate of twenty-five copies for one dollar, or one copy for ten cents, from E. M. Chamberlin, “Echo” Priming Office, Washington Street, Boston, to whom post-office money orders should be made payable. Liberty has little in common with Mr. Smart’s fundamental thought, but has no hesitation in endorsing him as a good writer and sincere student, from whose works a discriminating mind may extract much that is valuable.

____________________________________________________________

The congress of State socialists at Chur, Switzerland, which made so much noise, in advance, proved a complete fiasco. By the confession of P. J. McGuire, the American delegate, all that it did was to resolve to do better next time. A very commendable resolution!

____________________________________________________________

The despatch from Washington announcing that twelve jurors had been drawn to try Guiteau added that they were “all Christians.” Meanwhile Guiteau stoutly declares, as heretofore, that he is not insane, axcept in the “legal sense,”— that is, in the sense that the plea is simply a lawyer’s trick for professional purposes. Now, if twelve Christians can convict Guiteau, they must be frauds. He says that God told him to do the deed, just as He told Abraham to offer up Isaac. The divine command was to him unmistakable. He obeyed it. If he dies at the hands of twelve Christian jurors, he will die a martyr to his faith, while they will go back on theirs. The “gospel train,” however, probably will ignore this religious hot box, but the more thoughtful of the passengers are beginning to fear the consequences and may hasten to get off at the next station.

____________________________________________________________

In the critical comments that appeared in our last number upon some recent utterances of George Chainey we were guilty of a misquotation in attributing the phrase “free and equal” to the Declaration of Independence. It occurs instead, as a kind friend has pointed out to us, in the Massachusetts Bill of Rights. We found fault with Mr. Chainey for carelessness concerning facts. Now we “know how it is ourselves,” and make public apology for our own carelessness concerning quotations.

Michael Bakounine.

As announced in our last number, we present on this page, for the first time in America, a faithful portrait of the founder of Nihilism,— the physical lineaments of an heroic reformer, of whom we are willing to hazard the judgment that coming history will yet place him in the very front ranks of the world’s great social saviours. The grand head and face speak for themselves regarding the immense energy, lofty character, and innate nobility of the man. We should have esteemed it among the chief honors of our life to have known him personally, and should account it a great piece of good fortune to talk with one who was personally intimate with him and the essence and full meaning of his thought and aspiration. In the absence of any direct knowledge of the man and his own interpretation of his life-work we can do no more than publish a brief sketch of his career, gathered from various German and French writings, with such inferences as appear to us just and natural.

Michael Bakounine was born in 1814 of an ancient aristocratic Russian family. His father was a wealthy proprietor of Torchok in the governmental department of Twer. He was at an early age sent to the cadet school of St. Petersburg, and entered as ensign in the artillery. In that day the artillery branch of military service was one in which the most favored aristocracy were enrolled, and it had always been the traditional policy of the czars to permit greater freedom of thought and research in that branch of the service than in any other. The immunities and privileges there enjoyed corresponded with that license which the German monarchs have always suffered in the universities, and it was there that Bakounine first nurtured the germs of those great revolutionary ideas which were destined to make his life so eventful, so heroic, and so significant in the evolution of sociological drifts.

With a deep yearning to thoroughly master the leading philosophical thought of his time, and having been commissioned as commandant of an obscure and isolated district, he became restless and disgusted, and in 1841 quitted Russia, and took up his abode in Berlin in order to become master of the Hegelian philosophy, which had already seized upon the young students and thinkers of Germany with a bewitching fascination. Here he entered assiduously into the whole realm of philosophy, especially the Hegelian, which he characterized as the “Algebra of Revolution,” and visited Dresden, Leipzig, and every other locality where he might exchange thought with the leading progressive spirits of the times. He published numerous philosophical writings over the name of Jules Elisard. In 1843 he visited Paris. Here he became an enthusiastic admirer of Proudhon, who probably seasoned his thought with those anarchistic tendencies that in later days developed his logic into what constitutes the philosophical method of Nihilism, which now appals and confounds despotism and challenges the attention of the whole world.

From Paris he next went to Switzerland, where he remained from 1843 to 1847. Here he entered into the new social movement, being en rapport with the Polish exiles. But already he had excited the gravest suspicions on the part of the Russian government, and his permis to sojourn abroad was rescinded. Instead of obeying, he returned to Paris, and there delivered a public appeal to the Poles and Russians to unite in a grand Pan-Slavonic revolutionary confederation. At the demand of the czar he was expelled in 1848 from France, and ten thousand rubles were offered for his arrest and return to Russia. But the revolution of February soon brought him back to Paris, which he quitted again, however, for Prague to attend the Congress of Slavs. The following year he went to Dresden, and became one of the chiefs of the May revolution and a member of the insurrectionary government. Forced to fly from Dresden, he was captured, sent to prison, and condemned to be executed in May, 1850. His sentence, however, was commuted to imprisonment for life. Escaping into Austria, he was again captured and again sentenced to death,— this time for high treason. But again his sentence was commuted to perpetual imprisonment. Upon repeated threats and entreaties the Austrian government was constrained to deliver him up to Russia.

As if hardly knowing how to dispose of so dear a prize, he was kept for several years in a dungeon in the fortress of Neva, and finally deported to Siberia. He spent several years in a penal colony, suffering the most cruel hardships, but finally succeeded in escaping from Siberia, a feat which he alone, it is said, ever accomplished. After a journey of one thousand miles, under hardships which approach the miraculous, he reached the sea, and obtained passage to Japan. From there he sailed to California, thence to New York, and in 1860, as if descending from the clouds, Michael Bakounine alighted, like a thunderbolt, in London.

Experiences like those already suffered would have cooled the ardor of most men, but hardly had Bakounine stepped foot in London when he took up his revolutionary schemes with redoubled enthusiasm. He issued numerous addresses to the Poles and Russians to join in a grand revolutionary confederation of Slavs. Associated with Herzen and Ogareff he published a revolutionary sheet called “The Kolokol” (The Bell). But so grand and deep and searching was his philosophy that he led all his co-laborers beyond their depth. The anarchistic philosophy which he had imbibed from Proudhon permeated all his schemes. He was now precipitated into an ever-deepening conflict with the revolutionary socialists of the Karl Marx school. At the great socialist congress in Geneva in 1870 he took direct and positive issue with the governmental wing of the party. He demanded the abolition of the State and all organized “machines” of social and religious administration. At the congress of the International at Hague in 1872 he was expelled, but succeeded in carrying thirty delegates with him, which body of anarchistic radicals finally waxed strong enough to overthrow the International Association, only to reorganize it later (as they did this last summer) under their own direction. Michael Bakounine now formulated his system of scientific anarchy as fully as his resources would permit. His hope was to crown his life-work by setting in motion a revolution throughout the world, looking to the abolition of the State and the substitution of that natural order which comes of justice, selection, and liberty. His ruling idea was: Given equality of conditions, and organized State and Church become unnecessary. The absence of equality of conditions is due to the existence of the State, and the State alone. Abolish the State! was the banner which he set up to conquer despotism, and erect upon its ruins a reign of true order and natural government. His philosophy and purposes he elaborated in several pamphlets, now very rare, principal among which was one entitled, “Dieu et l’Etat” (God and the State).

Russia, his native country, was the land in which he sought to inaugurate the grand revolution. The result is seen to-day in Nihilism, of which he is the father. Though the flippant, self-sufficient literati of the world may call Michael Bakounine a mad fanatic and visionary, there is one man who sees method in his madness, if not a wisdom akin to his sublime heroism. That man is the czar. Michael Bakounine has doomed the czardom, if not imperialism throughout Europe. His soul is marching on, and his ideas, baptized in living martyrdom, are a terror to all despots, though they may feign iguorance of him.

With hands and heart and brain full of revolutionary material, our hero died at Berne, Switzerland, in 1876. Even a tame sketch of his sufferings and adventures in the cause of liberty would make a tale alike touching and sublime. For several years of his life he was practically outlawed in every land on the planet he sought to redeem. No country would recognize him in a passport, even had he dared to ask for one. He was a refugee and an exile from every land. Despotism had standing rewards for his body. He was early disowned by his family, although his name figures among some of the chief officers near the Russian court to-day. The executioner stood waiting for him in several countries. He was everywhere tracked by spies and detectives. He dared not expose his name on the continent outside of Switzerland. He has no biographer, no authoritative defender, and possibly no authenticated grave. But his thought lives after him, and to the new world of Liberty, Justice, Peace, and Love, to establish which he suffered and died, remains the honor of doing his memory the justice denied him while living. Liberty is not afraid to honor him, being assured that posterity will yet search out his lonely resting-place and bear him from it aloft among the great founders of the new heavens and the new earth.

Order and Anarchy.

[Translated from "Le Revolte."]

We are often reproached with having accepted as a motto the word anarchy, which so frightens many minds. “Tour ideas are excellent,” they tell us, “but confess that your party’s name is unfortunately chosen. Anarchy, in the current tongue, is a synonym of disorder, chaos; it awakens in the mind the idea of clashing interests, of individuals at war with each other and unable to establish harmony.”

Let us begin by observing that a party of action, a party representing a new tendency, is rarely allowed to choose its own name. The Gueux (beggars) of Brabant did not invent that name, which afterward became so popular. But, at first a nickname,— and a very felicitous one, too,— it was taken up by the party, generally accepted, and soon became its motto. It will be agreed, moreover, that the word contained a complete idea.

And the sans-culottes of 1793? It was the enemies of the popular revolution that flung that name; but did it not contain a complete idea, that of the revolt of the people, in tatters and tiled of misery, against all those royalists, soi-disant patriots, and jacobins, dressed well and with scrupulous neatness, who, in spite of their pompons speeches and the incense burned before their statues by the bourgeois historians, were the real enemies of the people, since they profoundly despised the people for their poverty, their love of liberty and equality, and their revolutionary spirit?

And so with the name Nihilists, which so puzzled journalists and was the occasion of so many plays upon words, good and bad, until it became understood that it denoted, not a sect of semi-religious cranks, but a real revolutionary power. Launched by Tourgueneff in his novel, “Fathers and Sons,” it was taken up by the “fathers,” who by this nickname revenged themselves for the disobedience of the “sons.” The “sons” accepted it, and when, later, they saw that it was the source of misunderstandings and tried to disembarrass themselves of it, it was impossible to do so. The press and public were unwilling to designate the Russian revolutionists by any other name than this. Moreover, the name is by no means badly chosen, for it contains an idea. It expresses the negation of the sum total of the facts of the existing civilization, based on the oppression of one class by another: the negation of the present economic regime, the negation of governmentalism and power, of bourgeois politics, of bourgeois morality, of routine science, of art placed at the service of exploiters, or the grotesque customs and usages, often detestable because of their hypocrisy, handed down from past centuries to existing soctety,— in short, the negation of all that the bourgeois civilization venerates to-day.

The same with the Anarchists. When there arose within the International a party denying authority in the bosom of the Association and revolting against authority in all its forms, that party first gave itself the name of Federalist, and later Anti-Stateist or Anti-Autoritaire. At that time it even avoided the name of Anarchists. The word an-archy (for so it was written then) seemed to connect the party too closely with the followers of Proudhon, to whose ideas of economic reform the International at that time was opposed. But for this very reason, in order to induce confusion, their enemies saw fit to use this name, saying, further, that the very name of the Anarchists proved that they desired only disorder and chaos, regardless of future results.

Then the Anarchistic party hastened to accept the name bestowed upon it. It insisted at first on the hyphen between an and archy, explaining that in this form the word an-archy, of Greek origin, signified no government, not “disorder;” but soon it accepted it just as it is, without giving useless trouble to proof-readers or a lesson in Greek to the people.

The word, then, has recovered its primitive, ordinary, common significance, expressed in 1816 in these words by an English philosopher, Bentham: “The philosopher who desires to reform a bad law does not preach insurrection against it. . . . The character of the Anarchist is very different. He denies the existence of the law, he rejects its validity, he excites men not to recognize it as law and to resist its execution.” To-day the meaning of the word has grown in breadth: the Anarchist denies not only existing laws, but all established power, all authority. Nevertheless, its essence remains the same: he revolts — and that is his starting-point — against power, authority, under whatever form it happens to exist.

But this word, they tell us, awakens in the mind the negation of order, and, consequently, the idea of disorder, chaos.

We will try, nevertheless, to understand each other. What order is in question? Is it the harmony that we Anarchists dream of? the harmony in human relations that will freely establish itself after humanity is no longer divided into two classes, one of which is sacrificed for the benefit of the other? the harmony that will spring spontaneously from the solidarity of interests, when all men shall form one and the same family, when each will labor for the good of all and all for the good of each? Clearly, no! Those who reproach anarchy with being the negation of order do not mean the harmony of the future; they mean order, as it is conceived to-day, in our present society. Let us see, then, what this order is that anarchy wishes to destroy.

Order, to-day,— what they mean by order,— is nine-tenths of humanity laboring to maintain a handful of idlers in luxury, enjoyment, and the satisfaction of the most execrable passions.

Order is the deprivation of these nine-tenths of every necessary condition of healthy life and rational intellectual development. To reduce nine-tenths of humanity to the condition of beasts of burden living from day to day, without ever daring to think of the enjoyment which man finds in the study of science and the pursuit of art,— that is order!

Order is misery and famine become the normal state of society. It is the Irish peasant dying of hunger; it is the peasant of one-third of Russia dying of diphtheria, of typhoid fever, of hunger in consequence of scarcity, amid carloads of wheat on their way to foreign countries; it is the people of Italy compelled to abandon their luxuriant fields to roam through Europe seeking some tunnel to dig, where they may run the risk of being massacred after having existed a few additional months. It is the land taken from the peasant for the rearing of cattle to feed the rich; it is the land allowed to lie fallow rather than be restored to him who asks no more than to cultivate it.

Order is woman selling herself to support her children, is the child compelled to be confined in a factory or die of inanition, is the workingman reduced to the state of a machine. It is the phantom of hunger ever present at the doors of the laborer, the phantom of the insurgent laborer at the doors of the rich, the phantom of the insurgent people at the doors of their governors.

Order is a minority of a few, versed in governmental affairs, imposing themselves for that reason on the majority and bringing up their children to fill the same offices later, in order to maintain the same privileges, by stratagem, corruption, force, and wholesale murder.

Order is the continual war of man upon man, of trade upon trade, of class upon class, of nation upon nation. It is the unceasing roar of the cannon in Europe, the devastation of the country, the sacrifice of entire generations on the battle-field, the destruction in one year of wealth accumulated by centuries of hard labor.

Order is servitude, thought in chains, the degradation of the human race, maintained by blood and the sword. It is hundreds of miners buried annually in the mines through the avarice of the owners, and mitrailleused, shot down, and bayoneted, if they dare to protest against these massacres.

Order, finally, is the Commune of Paris drowned in blood. It Is thirty thousand men, women, and children cut to pieces by shells, rained upon by the mitrailleuse, burled in quicklime beneath Parisian pavements. It is Young Russia within prison walls, buried in Siberian snows, its best, purest, most unselfish representatives strangling in the hangman’s noose.

That is order!

And disorder,— that which they call disorder?

It is the people in revolt against this ignoble order, breaking their chains, tearing down barriers, and marching toward a better future. It is all that is most glorious in the history or humanity.

It is the revolt of thought on the eve of revolutions; it if the overturning of hypotheses sanctioned by the inertia of centuries past; it is the birth of a whole flood of new ideas, of bold inventions, of audacious solutions of scientic problems.

Disorder is the abolition of ancient slavery, the insurrection of the communes, the abolition of feudal serfdom, the attempts at abolition of economic servitude.

Disorder is the peasants risen against the priests and lords, burning castles to make room for cottages, leaving their dens in search of tho sunlight. It is France abolishing royalty and dealing a mortal blow at serfdom throughout Western Europe.

Disorder is 1848 causing kings to tremble and proclaiming the right of labor. It is the people of Paris fighting for a new idea, and, though overpowered by massacre, bequeathing to humanity the idea of the free Commune and breaking the war for that revolution whose approach we now feel and which will be known as the Social Revolution.

Disorder — what they call disorder — is the epochs during which entire generations bear up in superhuman struggle and sacrifice themselves to prepare for humanity a better existence by relieving it of the chains of the past. It is the epochs during which the popular genius finds free scope, and in a few years takes those gigantic strides without which man would have remained in the state of ancient slavery, a servile being in abject misery.

Disorder is the flowering of the most beautiful passions and the grandest self-sacrifices; it is the epic history of the supreme love, the love of humanity.

The word anarchy, implying the negation of such an order and invoking the memory of the highest moments in humanity’s life,— is it not well chosen for a party which marches onward to the conquest of a better future?

A Proposal.

I.

The Britons were at Yorktown

Low humbled in the dust.

It was their hardest knock-down;

It knocked heir taxing lust.

Their power to roar oppression

On Columbia’s free soil

The fathers put a stop to,

Their little game did spoil.

“Cornwallis, bring thy sword in

To Washington, the true!

Salute the Rebel’s banner,

The red, white, and blue!”

II.

The Britishers still flourish

And flaunt their “Union Jack,”

While we, their natural offspring,

No Saxon virtue lack;

So, like the dear old mother

We trashed in olden time,

While she is threshing Ireland,—

Oh! impudence sublime! —

We gather up our garments,

Swear force is no more “brute,”

And at consecrated Yorktown

Her sullied flag salute.

III.

The “gracious Queen” doth send us

Condolence for our loss;

Our Arthur o’er the ocean

Love messages doth toss.

A widower our chieftain,

Victoria’s widowed long,—

Why not combine the household,

And make one people strong?

Oh! what a glorious Union!

Pure Saxon blood would flow,

And round the world together

A-conquering we’d go!

Radicalism in Rhyme.

A Good Word for the Devil: Bible Musings by an Infidel. By Simeon Palmer. Boston 1881, pp. 136. See advertisement elsewhere.

Many attempts have been made by persons utterly unfitted for the task to paraphrase in rhyme the absurdities of the Bible, and to poetically satirize the dogmas of theology. But for the most part — yes, universally so far as we know — all these attempts have resulted in witless, vulgar, inharmonious jangles unworthy of the slightest attention. But none of these adjectives can be truthfully applied to “A Good Word for the Devil,” which, upon the whole, is one of the wittiest, cleverest, most skilful satires that we have seen for many a day. This becomes tho more surprising when it is considered that the author is an aged man, entirely inexperienced in literature except as a student. The book is written in the difficult metre adopted by Byron in “Don Juan,” and contains here and there a stanza that would not discredit that master poet. The author has a keen sense of the ridiculous, an extraordinary faculty for happily turning a phrase, und avast fund of information on all subjects connected with Biblical studies. More than this, he is a fearless thinker and outspoken writer. The work lacks method, and is marked at many points by crudities due to carelessness, both of author and printer. But it deals most effectively a rapid succession of keen thrusts and heavy blows at the Christian superstition, and deserves to be widely read. The treatment of the dogma of hell, introducing Joseph Cook I and his ingenious theory of Christ’s birth, fairly samples the faults and excellences of the work: therefore we append it.

I said that Hell had not then been invented.

We have the advantage over Bible times.

They burned or hacked the body, well contented

When death ensued; but when we’ve mocked the limbs

Or burned and buried those who have dissented,

Or won’t conform to our rehglouj whims,

We have the satisfaction of discerning,

With eye of faith, their Hell forever burning.

It would be joy to Jacob could he look

And see his brother Esan writhe in Hell,

Or Elisha see the boys the bruins shook

As a dog shakes a rat, all roasting well;

Or David, paired with Mrs. U., who took

A bath one evening, seeing him who fell

In battle by his act, show her Uriah,

Who feels that God is a consuming fire.

In this we have the advantage. Jon’than E.,

Who wrote the famous treatise on the Will,

Can look from Heaven’s battlements and see

A delicate cinder that, on earth, was El,

Or Eliery Channing. who maintained that three

Were three times one, not one, and now, in Hell

Gets his deserts. And gentle Jon’than E.

Harps louder on his harp to the blest trinity.

And J. Iscariot Cook, who once applied

The microscope to Mary, and explained

The mystery of the birth of him who died

On Calvary; that she was not impregned

By power the highest; and Old Gabriel lied

Or was mistaken; and that Mary feigned,

Or was deceived, when she broke forth in song,

Exultant that her offspring was the long

Foretold Messiah, through whose marvellous birth

All nations and all peoples should be blest,

And she should be proclaimed throughout the earth,

Happy above all mothers. Cook exprest,

Without the slightest tendency to mirth

Among his hearers, who all seemed imprest

With its importance, his belief that Jes-

Jesus was born as drones among the bees.

‘Twas partheno genesis and nothing more.

So said the latest science. Then he quoted

Jaw-breaking German gutturals; — a score

Of men to physiology devoted;

And said the person we’d been taught t’adore,

As the original Grecian word denoted,

Was a subsistence, not a person: three

Subsistences, not persons, were the trinity,

Which was a substance. Now, I cannot see

How a subsistence, which itself was nought

And could do nought, when multiplied by three,

Became the infinite God, transcending thought;

How three noughts added made infinity;

How this subsistence lived on earth and taught,

And walked about, and ate and drank and died;

Died like a man; nay, like a thief, was crucified.

Still he is confident, this Joseph C.,

That in some future state, some post-existence,

Translated into heaven, he will see,

While sitting, cheek by jowl, with th’ second subsistence,

The Devil, aided by a score of assistants,

Heaping the coals around poor Theodore P.,

While P., like Lazarus’ friend, begs Joe for water,

And Joe will see him damned first, as he oughter.

Provided always Joe can find some screen

To hang between his past and God Almighty,

So that the damning record can’t be seen.

The black and hideous record sua vita,

He hinted at, when lecturing yestreen,

In the “Old South,” when Standing Bear and Bright-eye

And ghosts, as thick as leaves in Vallambrosa,

“Declared” he must have been damned fast, this Joe, sir.

Proviso 2, that Joseph ia sustained

In his queer notions of the trinity,

By his Triune: for Joseph would be pained

Should it turn out that the Divinity

Is not a triplet; and that he impregned

Miss M., and, proud of his paternity,

Resents the insult that the heir to the throne

Is not one whit superior to a drone.

But Joseph’s dumb; that is, upon this theme.

He’s dropped the subject, never mentions it.

He knocked the key-stone out from the grand scheme;

The brethren were disgusted with it, quite.

The clergy thought him, upon this point, lame.

‘T would bring upon the sect a perfect blight.

Jesus no father? God no son? What next?

Then all religion was but a pretext.

“Cool” Journalism.

Suppose such tory newspapers as the Boston “Advertiser” and “Journal” should apply their Irish philosophy near home. If England knows so much better than Ireland how the latter should be governed, perhaps she is as all-knowing in regard to other nationalities, and could give her old colonies here on the American shore a few points in coercion. Undoubtedly she would relish doing so, and the opportunity would not be wanting if American public sentiment was controlled — as haply it is not in the least — by such journalistic “coolness” as the above-mentioned Boston dailies exhibit.

Our readers perchance need to be enlightened in regard to this “coolness.” Tho patrons of the “Advertiser” for some time past have been treated to little batches of what it was pleased to call “cool reason.” In a word, it has paraded itself as capable of perfectly unprejudiced opinions on all topics affecting, in the remotest degree, human well-being. And it has offered specimens of its “cool” and, as Joseph Cook would say, “absolutely luminous” judgments to the admiring public. It took up tho tribulations of Russia, and found that the Czar had “law on his side,” and hence Nihilism should fill the “cool” heart of the world with horror. It cast its “cold,” penetrating glance upon Ireland, and saw Grandfather Gladstone descending upon its perturbed and rebellious people with “law” good enough for them in one hand, and his flaming, annihilating sword in the other. “Ah, happy people!” it cried (or words to that effect); “why don’t they wilt, and give him three cheers with a tiger? ‘Tis simply incredible that they don’t. Parnell is a fool and so are all the Irish! But Gladstone,— he is immortal!”

Here is “coolness” for you, leader. Do you care for more.

The “cool” “Advertiser” sent a correspondent to Newport, who wrote an extended report of the services at the Channing Memorial Church. Trained, doubtless, ere he went, in the editorial “coolness,” he informs the reader that, in Channing’s lifetime, there were those who thought his name would fade out and be placed in the same limbo with Tom Paine’s and Voltaire’s. What we have to call the serious attention of our readers to is the “coolness” of the epithet “Tom.” Is there not something admirable in the “cold reason” which can so differentiate? Just think how Bill Channing would have sounded, and bless your stars for this “cool” discrimination.

Distressing Problems.

1. Is it worth while for fifty millions of people to prove themselves a nation of fools by hanging a fool for a homicide?
2. Could any one more effectually prove himself a fool than by committing a homicide in the expectation that the government would reward him for it by giving him an office?
3. How much mental capacity, how much power to judge of the moral character and probable results of an act, is it necessary that a man should have to save him from the charge of being a fool, and convict him of being a felon?
4. If a man who, having no malice to gratify and no prospect of gain, commits a homicide upon a peaceable citizen in open day and in the immediate presence of a hundred spectators has any other expectation than that his fate will be to end his days either on the gallows or in a lunatic asylum, can he be said to have sufficient power of judging of the nature and probable results of his act to save him from the charge of being a fool, and convict him of being a felon?
5. If a man who commits such a homicide under such circumstances is not to be considered a fool instead of a felon, what difference is there between him and a man who lays in wait for another, and kills him in cold blood for money?
6. If Guiteau should be hanged, will he be hanged because he is a fool? or because he is a political fool? or because, being a fool and a political fool, he committed a homicide?
7. If all the political fools in the country are to be hanged, or otherwise punished, for acts that are criminal when committed by men of sound minds,— such acts, for example, as advocating and voting for unjust and oppressive laws,— what percentage of the population are to go unpunished? And what is to become of our political parties, and of “our glorious republican institutions”?
8. If we have gained, in this country, no immunity for political fools, or if our government cannot survive the attacks of political fools of all possible grades, does not common sense decree that the sooner the fools put an end to it, the better?
9. Our government, like most other governments, is carried on mainly by two classes of men, knaves and dupes. It would scarcely be an exaggeration to call them felons and fools. If we must hang either of these classes, is it not cruel and indecent to begin with the fools?
10. We have two political parties in this country, and the two are of nearly equal numbers. They are tolerated, and even encouraged, because it is agreed, on both sides, that they are a necessity, in order that they may tell the truth of each other. And they do tell a great deal of truth, although by no means the whole truth of each other. And they are permitted to tell it in the presence of all the fools in the country. Is it to be expected that so much truth can be openly told without causing homicide? A few years ago we had a million of homicides, growing out of the wickedness of the government and the foolishness of the people; yet the government, unless in a single particular, was no worse then than it is now, and the people were perhaps no more foolish then than they are now. Do not these facts teach us that we should either change our government, or keep the truth out of the hands of the people? Can it be expected that a government as bad as ours, and a people as foolish as ours, can get on together without an occasional explosion?

[Lysander Spooner, (unsigned)]

The Philosophy of Right and Wrong.

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 the 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 teaches anything, it is that nothing in this world is a finality.

But upon one thing all schools 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 that usury is wrong. The “Irish World” is the most conspicuous reservoir in America of the protests growing out of that conviction. Yet the burden of the song of every protestant is that usury ought to lie 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 a mutual benefit to individuals, its ultimate results upon society at large are disastrous, and that therefore 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 therefore 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 action. 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 world 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 associative, 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 choose 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 an evil. But the State that could be made to declare such a thing would cease to be the 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 the classes endowed with monopoly.

Finally, the whole range 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.

“Legitimate Mining.”

Some one has favored us with a copy of a very handsome paper called “The Conservative.” The principal tiling that it desires to “conserve” appears to be “legitimate mining.” We are by no means experts in mining, but, in our view, legitimate mining consists simply in digging minerals out of the earth and stilling them to those who desire them for products embodying an amount of labor equal to that which the minerals have cost the miner. If any such business as this is going on in any part of the world, and “The Conservative” is trying to “conserve” it, it is engaged in a very commendable work, in which we join, heart and hand.

But what is generally known as “legitimate mining” consists, as far as we have observed, in staking off a large tract of land in some abandoned region which nobody by any chance ever visits, paying some alleged mining expert to examine its contents and lie about them in terms sufficiently technical to hide the lie from the unlearned, vesting the ownership of the land in a stock company, electing the original holders as the officers, selling shares at prices corresponding in enormity to the lies that induce people to buy them, using most of the money thus received to pay princely salaries to the aforesaid officials, spending the balance in digging a mine, causing some “accident” to befall it, telling more lies about the wonderful results that the “accident” has prevented, assessing the stockholders to repair damages and keep up the salaries, selling the little mineral that may be brought to the surface at the highest possible prices regardless of the labor-cost, repeating these operations until they are no longer endurable and all the fools have been fleeced, and, finally, going into bankruptcy, and, perhaps, “skipping out” with the remaining funds. There is a plenty of such business as this going on in many parts of the world; but, if “The Conservative” is trying to “conserve” it, it is engaged in a very damnable work, which we fight, tooth and nail. Liberty’s attitude toward these and all other swindles is not at all conservative, but very radical. She would destroy them, root and branch. And their roots are land monopoly and money monopoly.

The Hour of Test.

Ireland has reached the crisis. She needs to-day some Thomas Paine to rise up among her people, warning them that “these are the times that try men’s souls.” “Souls” in a more exclusive sense than in 1776. For Ireland’s warfare, to be successful, must be a moral one. The call for mere physical courage is less pressing within her shores that it was in these colonies one hundred years ago. What she needs is the moral courage and endurance to bear in silent protest injury, insult, indignity, following fast upon one another, until necessity shall drive, and the aroused moral sense of the civilized world shall shame, the authors of her outrages into lifting from her shoulders the iron hand of power.

Mr. Parnell’s arrest and the suppression of the Land League were not unexpected happenings, but the logical results of this moral warfare that Ireland, for three years, has steadfastly and bravely waged. These events are Ireland’s victory, if she knows how to make them such. The aim of the British government has been to drive the people into open revolution, and then, on the pretext that the people first resorted to force, shoot them down without mercy and mutilate them into submission.

But the policy has failed, Not only that,— it has retroacted, and possibly fatally, on its inventors. The government itself has been driven, in order to maintain its rule in Ireland, into a most shameless exhibition of force and tyranny, involving an entire abrogation of all the rights hitherto most sacred in the eyes of British subjects. It is not surprising. Only right knows law. Necessity, on which governments are based, knows none. But in reality, despite these despotic measures, the government is down. Ireland has the knee of moral pressure upon its chest, the grip of moral right upon its throat, and Gladstone and his gang are gasping spasmodically for breath. Will Ireland hold her advantage? Not unless she remembers principles, restrains her passions, acts upon conviction, obeys the advice of her true and tried leaders now in prison, and refuses to strike while refusing to submit.

The first duty to-day of every Irish tenant is to heed the manifesto of the League, and pay no rent whatever. Be that manifesto issued as a war measure, as some say, or, as other and profounder persons think it should be, in pursuance of deep-rooted conviction that “rent is an immoral tax upon industry,” it is equally binding on every true Irish heart. “Not one cent for tribute, but millions for” passive resistance!

Irishmen, remember the words of Parnell and his colleagues: “Against the passive resistance of the entire population military power has no weapon.” Disregard the cowardly priests! Their aim is to relieve you of one despotism only to fasten their own more permanently upon you. The heaviest blow yet struck you comes from their ranks in your hour of sorest trial,— from that one among them all in whom perhaps you placed your trust most confidently, His Dis-Grace of Cashel. Remember him hereafter. Remember now only your duty to yourselves, to your imprisoned martyrs, to your beloved land, to the world at large, and, above all, to the cause of justice, and stand firm!

On Picket Duty.

Ireland’s disgrace: Cashel’s Grace.

Ireland’s lesson: Put not your trust in priests.

Ireland’s Benedict Arnold: the infamous, traitorous, cowardly Croke.

Ireland’s foremost man and real leader: Michael Davitt, the first of her sons at home to ask his countrymen to join with him in the abolition of that “immoral tax,” rent.

Ireland’s chief danger: the liability of her people — besotted with superstition; trampled on by tyranny; ground into the dust beneath the weight of two despotisms, one religious, the other political; victims, on the one hand, of as cruel a Church and, on the other, of as heartless a State as have ever blackened with ignorance or reddened with blood the records of civilized nations — to forget the wise advice of their cooler leaders, give full vent to the passions which their oppressors are aiming to foment, and rush headlong and blindly into riotous and ruinous revolution.

Ireland’s true government: tho wonderful Land League, the nearest approach, on a large scale, to perfect Anarchistic organization that the world has yet seen. An immense number of local groups, scattered over large sections of two continents separated by three thousand miles of ocean; each group autonomous, each free; each composed of varying numbers 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 judgment; each guided in the formation of its judgment 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 reasons 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 unparalleled 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 now or hereafter; utter disregard of the British parliament and its so-called laws; 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 one. Open revolution on the battle-field leans 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 revenues,— 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 future for a hitherto blighted land.

The aim of true labor reform is not to abolish wages, but to universalize them. When all men become exclusively wage-workers, no man’s wages will be eaten up by profit-mongers.

We trust that the friendly critic referred to in our last issue, who feared lest Liberty, in its battle against usury, might favor its suppression by statute and thereby stultify itself, will be relieved of all anxiety on this point by the detailed editorial statement, in another column, of our exact attitude toward that giant wrong. He has our thanks for giving us occasion to develop this line of thought more specifically than before.

There is a gentleman in New York whom we reverently admire for his intellectuality, learning, and breadth of spirit, but whom we are prevented from admiring for his modesty by his use, at least by implication, of the words Pantarch, Stephen Pearl Andrews, and God Almighty as interconvertible terms. He has been much disturbed of late — else his recent writings mislead us — about the Anarchists and their “dread of order,” seeming to delight in comparing them to burnt children who dread the fire. For his benefit, and that of a great many others who share his misapprehension and concern, we print elsewhere an admirable article translated from “Le Revolte,” describing the only kind of “order” that Anarchists dread or have ever felt the consuming heat of. After reading it, he will see that a repetition of this tiresome criticism can come only from the impertinence of stupidity or the wilfulness of perversity. Consequently, being a philosopher who finds his inspiration in neither of these sources, but exclusively in the sincerity of science, he will never repeat it.

The basis on which harmony in the Liberal League has been restored is announced. The majority made overturn by passing a resolution declaring its previously-adopted position in favor of the total repeal of the Comstock laws not binding on the minority. The minority accepted the advances, and wheeled into line. We know that this matter is none of our business; but for once we shall meddle far enough to say that this arrangement does not meet our approval. Not that a minority ought to be bound to anything against its will; only this,— that a body which does not care what its members think about the freedom of the press, but is exceedingly particular to have them endorse such paltry measures as the expulsion of chaplains from prisons and such objectionable ones as the extension of compulsory taxation and the enforcement by law of whatever scheme of morality it chooses to pronounce “natural,” ceases, in a measure, to be interesting to consistent believers in Liberty. These words are written in no spirit of hostility to the League. It contains some of our best and bravest men and women. Not a few of them we number among our valued friends. From its ranks Liberty’s soldiers are to be largely recruited, and through its agency much good liberal work is being accomplished. For these very reasons we dislike to see it take the back track, and hence our summons, “Come up higher!”

Our Bepuffed Litterateurs

In a recent number of Liberty the writer briefly descanted on Harvard College as a huge local bore, a mere "good-society" institution rather than an Academy truly devoted to knowledge, science, and reflective thought for their own sake. The college is really a local bore, because the mention of it is never absent from the newspapers of this vicinity. In like manner, there is a local literary clique, sometimes called "the Cambridge set," the sound of which is dinned int one's ears perpetually hereabouts, as if its members were altogether transcendent writers. I refer, of course, to Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, Howells, Aldrich, et id omne genus of scribbling emotionalists. Within proper limits one is ready to acknowledge the "readability" and merit of the above list of these litterateurs. They are bright and witty, beyond question. But one tires at last of the damnable literature of their names which is forever audible hereabouts. Not one of those over-popular, outrageously bepuffed litterateurs is a man of really commanding intellect, as distinguished from the emotional nature. They are deft, andriot, highly-scented, and highly-rouged writers merely, felicitous workers-over of current literary material and ideas so superabundant, trickers-out of current thought and themes in pert, studied, ornamental phrase, intent mostly upon style and the tournure of their sentences, and emulating the jackdraw in the borrowed character of their plumage. After the sugar candy and treacle of this Cambridge lot of superfine scribblers, the "yawp" of rough, jaunty Walt Whitman is really refreshing, even with Walt's large liberty of speech on ordinarily forbidden themes. Occasionally a great, original idea crops out of Walt, while out of Cambridge lot only honeyed rhetoric sprouts. Who is Howells? A literary carpet-bagger in New England, a sort of sugar-cured ham from Ohio, who was pickled for a time in the language of Venice. He is a novelette-ist of the Parisian sort, who longest flights are the hops of a sparrow from spray to spray, without length or strength of imaginative wing. Howells and Aldrich are par nobile fratrum, American-born Parisians, hot-house plants which have somehow blossomed on our New England soil, as the famous magnolia tree blossomed in the vicinity of the fishy, stony Gloucester. Howells excels in amorous dialogue or the voicing of the flirtations of lavendered youths and maidens laboring under erotomania. Governor Long, who, besides being a politician, is a nice, lavendered litterateur of the Howell-Aldrich type, exhibited the utter lack of correct literary judgment and appreciation to claim for Whittier superiority as a poet over Virgil, whom he nevertheless tried to translate, — as Bottom was translated however. In "the poet's land," to borrow Schiller's phrase, Virgil has stood for centuries like Teneriffe or Atlas, unremoved, charming with an irresistible spell over new generations and even his sadly uncritical, "down-east" Yankee, gubernational translator, John D. Long. Line after line and passage after passage of Virgil are as deeply carved in the memory of the Indo-European race as are Shakespere's greatest proverbial lines. There are thousands of lines of Virgil which Whittier could no more have written than he could scale the zenith bodily. He is an exquisite song-bird and sentimentalist, but even in the expression of sentiment  he is infinitely below Virgil's mark, while he could not sustain himself for a moment in the higher regions of the imagination in which Virgil's muse takes her flight, breathing with ease "empyreal air." But Whittier does not overestimate himself, and must be annoyed by the fulsome laudation of his admirers. Taken in over-doses of fifty or a hundred consecutive pages, Whittier's poetry cloys with its monotonous sweetness and sameness; but an occasional lyric of his like "My Playmate," for instance, is delightful and medicinal. Litterateurs who are overpraised and constantly, elaborately, and systematically bepuffed are sure, later along, to be unduly depreciated. That is the way the world takes its revenge for having been betrayed into a temporary excess of admiration. An excessive laudation of a few "literary fellers" is gross injustice to others who are as good men as they are.

B.

Liberty Again Defined.

DEAR LIBERTY: — Let me suggest that your new subscriber who says that "perfect liberty is perfect obedience to natural law" probably had the element of choice in his mind, although he did not put it into words, and meant to state that perfect liberty is voluntary obedience to natural law. Obedience not voluntary would not be perfect, and would not be liberty.

It seems to me that Liberty is neither the mother nor the daughter of Order, but the equal mate, the woman of the union of which Order is the man, the product of the offspring of the two being harmonious society of integral individuals.

F. S. C.

[It is more than likely that "F. S. C." is right in regard to our new subscriber. Knowing or man, we felt confident at the time that his meaning was not accurately expressed by his statement. Nevertheless his omission afforded a good opportunity to emphasize an important distinction, and we improved it. But even if his meaning was just what "F. S. C." thinks it was, he was not strictly correct. Liberty is not obedience, compulsory or voluntary, any more than it is disobedience, compulsory or voluntary. Nor is it even the actual choice between obedience and disobedience. It is simply and solely the freedom and power to choose. And as long as moral philosophers of the Free Religious stamp (among whom we include neither "F. S. C." nor our new subscriber) keep on trying to conceal this, the true idea of Liberty, behind such misleading phrases as the "liberty to do right" and such hackneyed and irrational discrimination as that between "liberty and license," we do not mean to often lose a chance to bring it to the light.

As for "F. S. C.'s" sexual distinction between Liberty and Order, we take very little stock in it except as a very pretty and handy figure of speech. The woman's rights people have long maintained that "there is no sex in virtue." We go farther, and doubt if there is any sex in virtues. That Liberty and Order so greatly advance each other by action and reaction that they may be regarded, in one view of the case, as almost cognate principles is not denied; but we insist that, in their relation to modern progress, Liberty comes logically first, and that Order is a result. "F. S. C." unwittingly admits the correctness of our position when he describes the offspring as "a harmonious society of integral individuals." A harmonious society of integral individuals is precisely what we mean by Order; and, if "F. S. C." has a different view of Order, it must be a very narrow one. The logical priority of Liberty to Order cannot be too strongly urged while nine-tenths of the professed friends of Order are pushing schemes to establish it by violations of Liberty. It was for this reason that we chose the grand motto which constitutes the heading of our paper. — EDITOR LIBERTY.]

Mr. Colville Explains

To the Editor of Liberty,

DEAR SIR: — Allow me to inform your readers that, had I thought it objectionable to any of Mrs. Kendrick's real friends, I should not have read any extracts from the Bible at her funeral, as I do not deem reading a necessary part of a funeral service. I am not aware of having used the word of Jesus Christ in the reading, though I quoted the well-known passage from the Apocalypse, "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord." To me the truth itself is the Lord, and I do believe Mrs. Kendrick died in a love of truth, as her life was for many years a willing sacrifice to the truth as she beheld it. I think your readers ought to know that Mrs. Kendrick and I have been warm personal friends; that she frequently attended by lectures in Berkeley Hall, accompanied by her husband and daughter; and that I spoke at her funeral in compliance with the earnest request of the former. It is also due to me to state that no one of her friends instructed me how to proceed, and I read passages of scripture quite innocently, the very same that I had read recently t the memorial service commemorating the departure from earthly life of a daughter of the late Francis Jackson. On that occasion no exception was taken to the proceeding, and, seeing a number of my dearest friends at Mrs. Kendrick's funerals, I acted independently and unconstrainedly. If I have "outraged her memory and insulted her friends," I can only say that she was a very different woman from the Mrs. Kendricks I had the honor of knowing, and her friends must be persond of very perculiar sensibilities, at least. I wish to awaken no controversy, but an attack ought to be replied to by the one attacked in a journal styling itself Liberty.

Yours for the truth, W. J. COLVILLE.

[Mr. Colville errs in supposing that we criticised him for reading from the Bible. That strange book contains many passages which Mrs. Kendrick, in common with all sensible people, ardently admired, and which might have been read with peculiar propriety at her funeral. It was the character of Mr. Colville's selection that aroused our indignation. The keynote of the services was a sentence not only containing the words Christ Jesus (which Mr. Colville certainly used), but directly inculcating the Christian scheme of salvation, for which Mrs. Kendrick entertained no sentiment save that of the profoundest contempt. As one of her most intimate friends, a spiritualist, has since said to us, "a more inappropriate passage could not have been selected." To show Mr. Colville that we are not averse to quoting scripture properly, we call his attention, in answer to his strained symbolism identifying the truth with the Lord, to the seventeenth verse of the ninth chapter of the Gospel according to St. Matthew: "Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottle perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved." It is true that Mr. Colville had no instructions concerning the service, but for the very reason, we suppose, that his intimate acquaintance with the deceased inspired a confidence that he would say nothing inappropriate. We may have erred in imputing unworthy motives in explanation of his conduct, but we had to choose between impeaching his motives or his good sense. That our criticism was substantially correct we have the amplest proof in the thanks and congratulations thereon that continue to pour in on us from Mrs. Kendrick's dearest friends present at the funeral. — EDITOR LIBERTY.]