Editorials

Mr. W. G. H. Smart desires to make a correction. Referring to his last issue, he writes: "After 'Do you not see my meaning?' I should have said, and meant to say, 'That,' besides its natural inherent productivity, 'the productive property or potentially possessed by any material substances,' &c., 'is invested in it precisely as it is invested in a man's brain, and is of precisely the same kind. It is capital,' &c." Mr. Smart gently chides us for not noticing and repairing his omission of the first of the foregoing italicized phrases; from which it appears that he expects us, who confess the we cannot understand even what he does say, to understand also all that he does not say. His correction disposes of but one of several errors which we pointed out and which still stand as such. His present communication we have not space to print in full, but, lest he may attribute our failure to do so to a disinclination to see his withering words in print, we give the following precious bit: "I might take exception to the closing part of your letter on the ground of some degree of discourtesy, but perhaps dogmatism and — may I say conceit — are among the sacred prerogatives of Liberty. At all events I forbear. I can well afford to be pronounced ignorant on the same place of paper and by the same man that calls Herbert Spencer a fool." We forbear, too, except to add that we have never called Herbert Spencer a fool. Our words were that on one occasion he "made a complete fool of himself." There is an important distinction between a man who is, or is made a fool, and one who temporarily makes a fool of himself. This distinction Mr. Smart forcibly illustrates in his own person. He is no fool, but he frequently makes a fool of himself; for instance, when he tried to show the other day in the Boston "Herald" that Bismark is a socialist bent on accomplishing the ends of socialism. Comparatively few persons are fools, but nearly all sometimes make fools of themselves. The editor of Liberty has not "conceit" enough to claim exemption from this rule.

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Another priest has lifted his voice against the Land League, Bishop McQuaid of Rochester, who virtually prohibits Catholics under his care from connection with that organization. The advice of Bishop McQuaid, like that of any other man, should be carefully weighed, and taken at its intrinsic value; but, when this would-be mental slave-driver gives his advice in the tone of command, he should be met with contemptuous defiance. If Ireland would cast off the chains that bind her industrially and politically, the first insurrection of her people must be against the spiritual bondage of the Roman Catholic church, — an insurrection which many begin, as well as anywhere, with the throttling of the tyrannical overseer who rules the Rochester plantation with the double-thonged lash of excommunication in this world and damnation in the next.

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The interpreters of Mr. Frothingham are becoming bewilderingly numerous. The latest addition to the list is M. J. Savage, who claims to speak under Mr. Frothingham's sanction; but, his interpretation of the latter's views widely differing from the original "Evening Post" interview, which Mr. Frothingham has pronounced substantially correct, those interested are getting pretty well mixed and Mr. Frothingham pretty well advertised. Indeed, the cynical might fairly be pardoned a suspicion that the whole affair is but a shrewd scheme to increase the sales of the forthcoming "Life of George Ripley." Mr. Frothingham, presumably, is incapable of entertaining such a design, but he could not have carried it out more successfully had he deliberately set about it.

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There is no better definition of anarchy than Proudhon's: "The dissolution of government in the economic organism."