On Picket Duty.

Liberty, Boston Mass., Saturday, August 20, 1881
Vol. 1, No. 2

"Liberty is coming," says the New York "Truth-Seeker." A mistake; Liberty has come.

Hon Elizur Wright was among the callers at the "Index" office last week. - Free Religious Index. The time when this was an occurrence too common to be noted is not yet beyond the memory of man.

Ireland aside, but little is known in America, even among radicals, of the rapid strides and interesting phases of reform and revolution in Europe. As opportunity offers, Liberty's crowded columns will be made a channel for the diffusion of this needed information.

"Bullion" thinks that "civilization consists in teaching men to govern themselves, and then letting them do it." A very slight change suffices to make this stupid statement an entirely accurate one, after which it would read: "Civilization consists in teaching men to govern themselves by letting them do it."

Moneure D. Conway, who has witnessed in West-minister Abbey the funerals of seven great men, - Palmerston, Faraday, Livingston, Peabody, Lyell, Dickens, and Dean Stanley, - says they have all been painful to him by reason of the ceremony, representing ideas of death not believed by any one of those over whom he has heard it read.

The "land question" is too big for Ireland. America must take a turn at it. And she probably will before many decades. And that's what's the matter - with Capital. It prefers to run the country for itself. But the consolation is that, the more it succeeds, the tighter will be it's pinch of the people. There's an end - even for landlords.

The Freethinkers' Association, which will meet at Hornellsville, beginning August 31, announces that any orthodox minister of good standing in his denomination and of sufficient ability to fairly represent the Christian Church, will be welcome to the platform of the convention granted the same privileges and hospitalities as the other speakers, besides having his actual expenses paid.

Mr. Gladstone undoubtedly desires to get his "bill" properly constructed. But he can never do so. He has got a problem in his hand much like that puzzling one of perpetual motion. It is not possible to set aside or act in defiance of the complete justice, if you wish your work to have a "perpetual motion." Mr. Gladstone is not likely to prove himself an exception to the now long list of time-wasting inventors.

Jules Ferry, president of the French Cabinet, state recently, in the chamber of deputies, that the government's action in fixing so early a day as August 21 for the date of the elections was inspired by a desire to restrain electoral agitation as much as possible. It is a fraud confession. In Germany, government, in order to maintain itself, suppressed electoral agitation by law; but Germany, as all know, is one of "effete despotism." In France the same result is achieved by surprise. Free France is a republic, and her citizens govern themselves. O Liberty! how many peoples are bamboosled in thy name?

The election of the German Reichstag are expected to begin in early October. The Conservative factions are uniting against the Progressists, who, notwithstanding their names, are not very far advanced. Still, they are so powerful in Berlin that the Social Democrats intend to contest but two seats for that city, where formerly the latter had greater strength. We should feel a keener regret because of the socialists' decline if their methods were those of Liberty. As it is, we are nearly as hostile to Bismarkian socialism as to Bismark himself.

The crofters in the Isle of Skye (eleven families), who had been served with ejectment notices by their landlord for refusing to pay an increased rent, and to whom the Land League recently made a grant of fifty pounds, have declared their determination to "keep a firm grip of their homesteads," and only to submit to eviction at the point of bayonet, have had their ejectment notices withdrawn, and have received a reduction of 621/2 per cent in their rents. The tenantry and peasantry of Ireland, if they choose, may profit more by the example of one such fact as this than by a century of electoral agitation, parliamentary struggle, home rule, and land legislation.

We see no further call for denominational activity or sectarian propagandism. Always expensive, they have now become useless. Souls can be saved without them. The disposition of the great and learned infidel recently deceased, M. Littre, appear to satisfy everybody. The Church is jubilant at having run him into the fold in season to train him for the celestial journey, while infidels, at first not exactly reconciled to the capture, begin to appreciate the advantages of the situation, and are expressing their satisfaction in words like Rochefort's: "Free-thinking France had his life, his brain, his thought, and his work. The Church will have only his body, - his carcass." Henceforth let us save our money. No more Sunday schools; no more tract societies; no more home or foreign missions. Let us be infidels while we live, and we'll agree to become Christians when we come to die. Thus all parties will be suited, none will be out of pocket, the devil will be discomfited, and heaven will run short of harps. Blessed be Compromise!

The Social Democrats of Europe are having a hard time of it. Forbidden to hold their proposed congress in Zurich, they have carried the question up from one authority to another only to be snubbed more ignominiously after each new appeal. They have even begged and attempted a compromise. They have agreed to ventilate no revolutionary ideas, to be more moderate in their demands than they were ten years ago, and to do nothing whatever to disturb the peace of Switzerland. But all to no purpose. To their touching appeal the federal tribunal turned a deaf ear. Liberty is always sorry to see free speech denied, no matter where or to whom, but it must be confessed that this outrage has its amusing aspect. We view with considerable satisfaction the wry faces made by these lovers of the State at having to swallow so bitter a dose of their own medicine. You wish the State, gentlemen. Well, you've got it, - a plenty of it. Tell us when you've had enough. Room can always be made for fresh recruits in the ranks of the army of Liberty.