On Picket Duty.

We are now prepared to furnish the portrait of Michael Bakounine (published in Liberty several weeks ago) separately and on large, heavy paper. It ought to adorn the library walls of every true radical. Consult our advertising column for further information.

The Philadelphia “Press” refers to the British house of commons as a “band of chuckle-headed dullards.” So exact an appreciation of the tools of the governing classes is worthy of Liberty, who hastens to acknowledge her encouragement at hearing her opinions echoed by her influential contemporaries.

On another page will be found along extract from a newly published pamphlet on “Natural Law,” written by that veteran but ever young reformer and philosopher, Lysander Spooner. The whole pamphlet is a powerful and closely argued statement of the philosophy of Liberty, showing the unrighteousness of the government of man by man. It is, however, but an, introduction to a large volume intended to be exhaustive of the subject. Nevertheless it is an integral, and not a fragmentary portion of the work, and maybe read with satisfaction and profit by all. Liberty trusts that each of her readers and friends will pay immediate heed to the advertisement in another column, and order a copy forthwith.

Elsewhere may be found resolutions adopted by active and earnest coworkers in Jersey City in support of the act of George Hendrix in defacing the monument erected by Cyrus W. Field in honor of Major Andre. Against these resolutions Liberty feels bound to protest. We fully agree that Mr. Cyrus W. Field is a thoroughly contemptible being, whose soul, if he has one, will shrivel in hell, if there is one. But, as long as he shall remain on earth, he will have rights, the same rights that every other man has, and in his exercise thereof Liberty will ever defend him even against her own friends. Among these rights is the right to worship any god or man he pleases and in his own way. Whoever disturbs or interferes with him in such worship strikes an unwarrantable blow at freedom of expression, and in so far is false to Liberty. We heartily join in condemnation of the illegal arrest of Mr. Hendrix, not only as the act of a compulsory government which is not entitled to arrest anybody, but as a denial of one of the prerogatives which said government itself pretends to guarantee to its citizens. Still we remember that, if Mr. Hendrix is guilty, his arrest is simply one outrage of Liberty in return for another. The monument erected at Tappautown should be allowed to stand inviolate until taken down by Mr. Field impelled by a sense of his own shame. This, first, for a principle’s sake, because Mr. Field had a right to erect it, and, second, for policy’s sake, because while it stands, it will commemorate ehieny, not the act of Andre, but the folly and servility of his small-souled admirer. Remember! He is no fit soldier of Liberty who refuses to accord Liberty to his enemy.

Patrick Ford has issued through his journal, the “Irish World,” a strong personal declaration on the Irish land question. As a whole it is manly and has the right ring. To be sure, it contains one rhetorically resonant passage glorifying the “Holy Catholic Church” and her infallibility and pledging the writer to a total change of his opinions the instant the “Mother of the Living” shall announce her antagonism thereto, perhaps the most eloquent piece of self-stultification to utter which any man ever soared to the skies with his voice or grovelled in the mire with his intellect. But such things are to be expected from Patrick Ford, the Catholic and slave of superstition. Patrick Ford, the reformer and light-spreader, in whom alone Liberty takes interest, is quite another person. He declares afresh and in unmistakable terms his adherence to the “No Rent” standard, and rebukes, in words that would shame any but shameless men, those who would nullify the grand work already achieved for Ireland by abandoning the Land League with victory almost within its grasp to engage in a hopeless struggle for “home rule” and Irish independence. Home rule, forsooth! As if that were not as bad as any rule! As if Ireland had not suffered too much from the rule already! What she needs now is no rule, anarchy, with which will come peace. For where there is no rule there will be no monopoly; and where there is no monopoly there will be no rent; and where there is no rent there will be no disturbing land question, and every other question of human welfare will be started on the road to its speedy solution.

Of the absolute correctness of the principle, and advisability of the policy, of free trade there can be no reasonable doubt, but it must be thorough-going free trade,— no such half-way arrangement as that which the so-called “free traders” would have adopted. David A. Wells, Professor Perry, and all the economists of the Manchester school are fond of clamoring for “free trade,” but an examination of their position always shows them the most ardent advocates of monopoly in the manufacture of money; the bitterest opponents of free trade in credit. They agree and insist that it is nothing less than tyranny for the government to clip a large slice out of the foreign product which any one chooses to import, but are unable to detect any violation of freedom in the exclusive license given by the government to a conspiracy of note-sharing corporations called national banks, which are enabled by this monopoly to clip anywhere from three to fifteen per cent out of the credit which the people are compelled to buy of them. Such “free trade” as this is the most palpable sham to any one who really looks into it. It makes gold a privileged product, the king of commodities. And as long as this royalty of gold exists, the protectionists who make so much of the theory of the “balance of trade” will occupy an invulnerable position. While gold is king, the nation which absorbs it — that is, the nation whose exports largely exceed its imports — will surely govern the world. But dethrone this worst of despots, and that country will be the most powerful which succeeds to the largest extent in getting rid of its gold in exchange for products more useful. In other word, the republicanization of specio must precede the freedom of trade.