Construction and Destruction.

Almost without exception every new subscriber to Liberty to whom its purposes are disclosed and who has grown up under prevailing systems exclaims: “Ah! I see you are wonderfully expert as tearing down, but you don’t say what you propose to substitute. I am fully aware that our present governments are terribly rotten, but you don’t propose anything better.”

Dear friends: suppose the natural road-bed from Boston to Lowell were of the very best quality. Nature had made it most admirably adapted for travel and transportation. But, seeing a chance to put up a job and rob the public, certain designing rogues, hired by a few thieving contractors, have succeeded, through the vile arts of politics, in covering this natural pavement with a certain patent invention, gotten up by the political road-builders. You and we are located on this patent road. Every time that we put a spade into our ground we find that the natural bed is almost perfect. It is hard, yet elastic and absorptive, and in every way adapted for commerce and transportation, if it had only been left to the care of those who use it, and who have most at stake in its serviceability.

But the patent road we find to be a perfect nuisance. We are constantly being levied upon by force to support it and repair it. Every day we, or some of our neighbors, “get stuck” upon it and our property is ruined and disabled. It is hard to walk and ride upon. It is uneven. It is full of gullies and holes, and is in every way a constant source of damage to our lives and possessions.

But, whenever we complain and appeal to the political road-builders, they are very polite and sympathetic. They hear our grievances, and straightway the jobbing contractors behind them set about to repair the road at our expense in their own way. The taxes increase, but the road grows worse. Some of us begin to suspect that the whole scheme is a put-up job to rob us, but then the thought that it is the work of our legislative governors restrains us from wicked, anarchistic designs. And yet the thought that underneath their artificial patent road there is a perfect natural bod constantly haunts us. “if they had only let us alone,” some of us cry, “and not built up their artificial swindle over the natural bed in the first place, all would have been well.”

But by and by two or three resolute dwellers along the road begin to ask themselves: “By what right do these swindling political patent-road-builders meddle with the natural bed? By what sacred right are these robbers privileged to eternally impose upon us? Why should they have any authority above us in these matters?” etc.; and, upon looking into the matter deeply, they find that the robbers have no solid claim to authority in natural justice.

Now, then, for radical, heroic treatment! On some fine morning they start out with plow and pick and dynamite to “tear down” the useless and costly superstructure. But scarcely have their plows penetrated the patent road and touched hard-pan when the other plundered neighbors arrive upon the scene. “Hold on!” they cry with one accord; “you are wonderfully expert at tearing down, but you don’t say what you propose to substitute. We are aware that the patent-road-builders and their road are terribly rotten, but you don’t propose anything better.” The fact is that they have become so imbued with the idea that nothing can be properly done without resolutions, bills, committees, votes, and all the red-tape hocus-pocus of the State that these superstitious falsely educated, state-craft-ridden neighbors are ready to pounce upon their only true friends, who desire to go straight down to hard-pan and abolish the robbing swindlers.

The reply of the hard-pan men to their deluded neighbors is very simple. They are constructing something better in the very fact and act of tearing down. Removing the rotten superstructure is in and of itself building something better. While they are putting the plow down to hard-pan, they do not forbid these who choose from using the old superstructure till their work is done. They simply ask their neighbors to take hold and hasten its removal, instead of standing idle and finding fault, if not denouncing them in their righteous work. When the old rotten swindle is out of the way, then whatever new arrangements are necessary to complete the usefulness of the natural road can be easily fixed upon and executed by mutual consent.

But the old superstructure must come down before any construction is possible. The road of equitable commerce is already there, if the patent innovation can only be gotten out of the way. These political patent-road-builders are simply usurpers, who persistently block the way and tax their fellow men to sustain their nuisances. In waging war against natural equity and true government it is they who are the real de-structionists. If our friends will only wean themselves from the old delusion of confounding the cart with the horse, they will then easily see that the friends of Liberty are the only real constructionists. We hope we have made our point plain.