“Conduct,” well says the editor of the “Index,” “must have beneath it a logical basis of rationality, or else it has no validity.” But in that case what an appalling amount of invalid conduct will the “Index” have to answer for, if its efforts in behalf of law-made virtue shall materially increase the amount of that shoddy product in a moral market already overstocked!
Auberon Herbert, the radical English nobleman, says in a recent letter to the London “Daily News”: “I have not a word to say against the speculators. We are all speculators in something, and we can all speculate with as much enthusiasm as we like, if only we have grace enough not to ask that the rest of the nation should be at the back of our speculations.” On the strength of these words and many similar ones that he has uttered, Liberty recommends Mr. Herbert as eligible for membership in any thorough-going society of Anarchists. When the State ceases to back the speculators, its occupation will be gone. It exists for little else than that.
Wendell Phillips is often caught napping on questions of Liberty, and with mental recklessness frequently does violence to the principle for which his life has been a battle. But when the special issue with which Liberty confronts him is one of race-discrimination, he is always wide-awake enough, and sees it in its true light. Consequently, while keeping step with the army of authority in its campaign for compulsory taxation, protective tariff, money monopoly, and prohibitory liquor laws, he is prompt to part company with his cronies in compulsion when the disputed Chinese question presents itself. Being misquoted in Congress recently by one of the howlers against the heathen, he telegraphed to Representative Candler his “detestation of all restrictions on Chinese immigration as inconsistent, absurd, unjust, and wicked.” Amen to that! say we.
The rights of American citizens abroad are becoming a political question of absorbing interest. For many months several naturalized Americans have been imprisoned in English jails without a trial, and that no trial is intended is evident from the fact that they were arrested by the English government under the Coercion Act, which provides for no trial. These men have appealed in vain to James Russell Lowell, the United Stales minister to England, who, instead of demanding, as he should have done, their immediate release or else the speedy trial which the United States constitution declares the right of every American citizen, attempted to draw distinctions between naturalized, and native Americans and impudently informed them that they could not expect to be Irishmen and Americans at the same time, after which he went back to his familiar hob-nobbing with the men guilty of this outrage. This delinquent envoy, whose character, once so thoroughly democratic, flattery and station seem to have transformed into that of a fawning flunky, should be instantly recalled, both as a rebuke to himself and as a warning to England. A meeting to demand this as well as instant and determined interference on the part of the United States will be held in Cooper Institute, New York, next Monday evening, and other meetings should be immediately called in all parts of the country to echo the demand. But we fear that there is little to be hoped for from the administration. Governments exist not to protect the people from other governments, but to protect each other from the people whom they oppress. The boasted protection afforded by the State is a chimera. If there were no States, from whom should we need to be protected?
People in general and the governmental socialists in particular think they see a new argument in favor of their beloved State in the assistance which it is rendering to the suffering and starving victims of the Mississippi inundation. Well, such work is better than forging new chains to keep the people in subjection, we allow. But it is not worth the price that is paid for it. The people cannot afford to be enslaved for the sake of being insured. If there were no other alternative, they would do better, on the whole, to take Natures risks and pay her penalties as best they might. But Liberty supplies another alternative, and furnishes better insurance at cheaper rates. The philosophy of voluntary mutualism is universal in its application, not omitting the victims of natural disaster. Mutual banking, by the organization of credit, will secure the greatest possible production of wealth and its most equitable distribution, and mutual insurance, by the organization of risk, will do the utmost that can be done to mitigate and equalize the suffering arising from its accidental destruction.
That able journalist, Prentice Mulford, thus puts the Chinese question in a nutshell: “John Chinaman must be banished so that William Croesus shall give higher wages to Patrick Mahoney. As if William Croesus could not devise means and had not the power and inclination to squeeze by other methods Patrick Mahoney’s day’s pay down to just sufficient to keep body and soul together!” There you have it, Kearneyites, political fuglers, prescriptionists, and deluded working-people! There you have it, and the whole of it! It could not have been said better. The Chinese question is of no moment as a part of the labor question. Given land and money monopoly, it makes but very little difference whether laborers are few or many or to what nationality they belong: under such conditions they will not get much more than they must have. Destroy land and money monopoly, the difference is still as small; for then, no matter how numerous the laborers, each will get his due,— that is, the whole of his product. Where there are free land and free money, the supply of work will always exceed the supply of workers, capital will be at the disposal of all men of moderate ability and good credit, and no one will find himself under the necessity of working for wages too small to satisfy him. This the capitalists and their political tools well know, and because they know it, they are willing to humor and even foster the delusion of the laborers and grant their short-sighted demand for the exclusion of the Chinese. By this means they hope to postpone the inevitable exposure of their own villainy, obscure the true causes of misery and crime, and prolong for a few more years their opportunities for plunder. But the crash will be only the more terrible when it comes.
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