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.

Samuel Johnson.

Liberty hears with regret of the death of Samuel Johnson. Of the religious radical who, since the death of Parker, have come into notice as apostles of Reason in Religion, Mr. Johnson, less widely known than many others, easily stood foremost. In breadth of view, clearness of thought, he had among the radical writers no superior. His many and carefully prepared contributions to the “Radical” show the vigor and temper of his mind. A transcendentalist of most consistent parts, he knew always where he stood, and was never found lapsing into uncertainty and compromise. The materialist found in him a man with both the courage of his convictions and the “preparedness” to state them. He knew his own ground thoroughly. Probably no writer has presented the transcendental philosophy with more satisfaction to transcendental believers than did Mr. Johnson in an elaborate paper published in the “Radical Review,” nearly five years ago. For nineteen years he was the preacher to a Free Society in Lynn. He was a firm believer in individual, personal influence and power, and instinctively avoided the organizing, sectarian purposes and plans so beguiling to others. The bond of organized religious propagandism, however liberal in protestations, was to his mind still a fetter. To swap the “Lordship of Christ” for the mastership of even a tacit understanding among radicals as to matters of belief was to make no signal advance. The mind, to be free, must follow its own laws with not even the implied duty of social argument. Each man must do his own work in his own way on his own ground, and without fear or favor. For this duty of freedom, this absolute necessity for independent activity, he ever did valiant and successful battle. And herein, more than in any other fact of his life, does Liberty rejoice. In spirit Mr. Johnson was ever a Liberty’s side. But not always could he see o’er what seemingly dangerous passes the aspiring dame led. If he did not follow her to the length of her leading, it was not that he lacked the courage, but that, to his ardent vision, the goal had been touched. Nevertheless, in his philosophy the foundations of Liberty were laid deep and strong. Sincerity, honesty of thought and expression ennobled and strengthened his whole life. Not shrinking from the world, as some mistakenly have said, but retiring to his appointed tasks that he might well and faithfully do them, he toiled happily and unremittingly. Twenty years and more he had worked upon the three large volumes devoted to the “Oriental Religions,” two of which, published by J. R. Osgood & Co., are before the public,— “India” and “China.” This last-named volume is well worthy the widest circulation. It treats of the Chinese people, their religion, philosophy, government, their whole social life and history, in the most learned and intelligent manner, and has the most practical of bearing upon this now exciting question in American politics. From its pages one learns that the much hated “heathen Chinee” is, in nearly all the essentials of real manliness, quite beyond the imitation even of his Christian detractors.

Mr. Johnson’s death occurred suddenly, and gave a sad surprise to his many personal friends. A brave, true man, whose memory Liberty will ever cherish! Had he begun life to-day with the same fervent zeal and clear-sightedness that characterized his anti-slavery career thirty years ago, there is no doubt where he would have taken his stand and what new battles he would have helped Liberty fight. But age and death, foes and destroyers of us all, chained and claimed him. Much he did, yet much remains behind. In his day and generation he did Liberty noble service. But nobler, higher, profounder meanings the ages unveil, and we who still live must needs press forward into their newer and stronger light.

“Freedom all-winged expands,

Nor perches in narrow place,

Her broad van seeks unplanted lands.”

These lines of Emerson he loved to quote, and now that his lips are still, his voice silent, Liberty to his memory repeats them, and adopts them as her own.

Americans, Attention!

In our issue of January 21, No. 13, appeared an appeal of the Nihilists for pecuniary aid, not in behalf of the movement itself, but for the material relief of those who are now suffering in consequence of their participation in the struggle for Liberty in Russia. The special appeal then printed was a translation of that which had been issued to the people of France. To-day, in another column, we printed the appeal that has been issued directly to the English-speaking race and especially to Americans. In it is stated the fact, which we now take pleasure and pride in announcing, that the Editor of Liberty has been duly appointed the American delegate of the Red Cross Society of the Will of People to organize the subscription in this country, and receive, acknowledge, and transmit such responses to the appeal as American sympathy and American love of Liberty shall show its willingness to make. He assumes the trust thus placed in his keeping with clear sense of the honor conferred and full realization of its importance. He adds his voice to those of Vera Zassoulitch and Pierre Lavroff, who in turn speak authoritatively for the best elements of Russian life, and, with all the earnestness at his command, asks every one whom it may reach to give the utmost that he or she can spare to succor the Siberian exiles and their suffering families. The appeal is to the human heart, regardless of individual opinions. Let it not be said that the citizens of the freest country in the world failed to do their best to heal the wounds inflicted upon such of their brethren as have heroically struggled to cast off the chains placed upon them by the most absolute and cruel of autocracies.

We are in possession of stamped and numbered subscription lists issued by the Central Committee of the Red Cross. To any responsible person in any part of America who shall signify his willingness to devote a portion of his time to working up the subscription, one of these lists, together with copies of the printed appeal, will be forwarded. Especially do we urge our readers to take a hand, and an active one. in the glorious work. Individual subscriptions may be sent directly to Benj. R. Tucker, Box 3366, Boston, Mass.; also any requests for further information. All amounts received, with the names of the donors, will be acknowledged in these columns, and promptly transmitted, at least possible cost, to the Central Committee.

Let us add that the appeal which we formerly published occasioned, by its issuance in France, the expulsion of Pierre Lavroff, one of its signers, from French territory by the new ministry, which professes to be governed in its policy by the principle of Liberty. Lavroff has long lived the life of quiet student in Paris, spending most of his time in the libraries, and his expulsion is another evidence of the hypocrisy of the pretence that any other principle that authority can lie at the foundation of any form of government whatsoever. Before leaving France, he addressed a letter to Clémeceau, from which we quote the following passages, leaving till another time the burning comments of the radical press of Paris upon this latest outrage:

I have just been notified of the decree expelling me from French territory.
Having scarcely busied myself at several years with the affairs of France, I did not consider myself so dangerous to “public safety” of the republican country in which I took up my residence some five years ago. But I do not complain. A revolutionary socialist, it is with me axiom that existing society cannot be society of justice and liberty; if it pleases the government of French republic to furnish new proofs in support of my theory, it would ill become me to exhibit astonishment. It acts according to the logic of its situation as a government. . . . .
It intends, in expelling me to-day, to show a mark of friendship for the government of the Russian empire; but, in view of the weakness and inferior intelligence of the latter, this act of compliance is not unlikely to be found more disinterested than we could have desired. Who knows how many other concessions to political combinations will follow to-morrow? It is inevitable. . . . .
Driven rudely from a country which I loved and where I have made friends, I have only to submit to the decree, still deeming it thoughtful on the part of a minister not to have relegated me to some interior stronghold, or not to have conducted me to the frontier, manacles on wrists and in prison wagon, as happened a year and half ago to several of my friends, who had mingled as little as I in the struggles of French political parties.
I submit, then, to the decree of the ministry, and shall probably have left France when you read this letter. But it is for you and your friends, representatives of the French people and managers of their journals; for you, who, by talent and political influence, are the natural guardians of the interests and honor of your country,— it is you ti take heed whether the government of the French republic is not allowing itself to glide too quickly into a path fatal to the principles of liberty and democracy, whether the danger, from the moral and political point of view, does not become more imminent with every hour.
In quitting France, probably forever, I shall always preserve the memory of those who struggle within her boundaries for the triumph of the principles of republican radicalism.

To The American People.

The public prints have told you of political trials in Russia and of the monstrous judgments daily pronounced in her courts. But they have told you nothing of the cruel sufferings of the condemned; and the victims whose names are recorded by them are but a fraction of the crowds that go to their doom in darkness and silence. Before the vast and ever widening discontent of the Russian people, authority in Russia is terror-stricken and amazed; and it lays hands, by tens of thousands, on our youth, and sends them, men and women alike, into hopeless banishment. The deserts in the north of the Empire, from the dreary wastes round the White Sea to the frozen shores of Eastern Asia, are scattered over with bands of exiles, the flower of the Russian race. They are prisoned everywhere: in wretched hamlets, in the depths of trackless and inhospitable forests, in remote tribal camps in Eastern Siberia, where hardly a word of their native tongue is spoken or understood. And they have to endure not only the moral tortures of isolation and inactivity, but the physical pangs of hunger and cold. There is scarce a means of livelihood that is not denied them; and though to each the State allots a pittance for his support,— twelve shillings a month if he is nobly born; seven shillings a month if he is not,— there are of late so many of them that it is never paid until long overdue. Month after month goes by, and many an exile dies for lack of bread before he has received a single farthing.

They are mostly young and energetic; they have faith in the coming of better times; they are brave and strong enough to make little of the trials that are imposed upon them by the desperate necessities of their time and of the duties to which they are called, if they had but is hope that they might one day to life and work among their friends. But their strength is wasted by misery and hardship, and they die easily and soon.

Money alone is needed: that much suffering may be spared and many sufferers may be saved. To raise it, and afterwards distribute it among our prisoners, we have formed a Red Cross Society of the People’s Will. It bears no part whatever in our war against authority. Its relation to the Revolutionary Party is that of the Red Cross Society of Geneva to an army in the field. There is only one difference,— that the Red Cross Society of the People’s Will shares in each and every one of the dangers of the force it would succor and relieve.

Such funds as it may raise will be devoted to but one use. Not a penny but will be spent upon political exiles and political prisoners. It will make no distinction in favor of persons or opinions. All who suffer and are in need will receive of it alike.

The Society esteems it a duty to appeal not only to the men and women of Russia, where to be charitable to political convicts is to run the risk of suffering beside them, but to the men and women of the freer and happier countries of Western Europe and America.

To this end it has appointed two of its members to work of organizing sections abroad, and of gathering in such sums as may be bestowed in favor of the ends it has in view. These delegates are Vera Zassoulitch and Peter Lavroff. Their instructions are as follows: —

(1) To appeal directly to subscribers, by means of numbered and stamped subscription lists, signed by the delegates themselves and containing an account of all sums received.

(2) To beg all journals and organs of public opinion to assist the Society by opening subscription lists and receiving and paying in subscriptions.

(3) To publish accounts of all subscriptions received and of manner of their employ.

(4) To appoint receivers in countries to which no delegate has been named, whose signature shall have equal authority with that of the delegates themselves.

Benj. R. Tucker, Editor of Liberty, P. O. Box 3366, Boston, Mass., is the delegate for America.

It is earnestly requested that subscriptions be only paid (1) to one or other of the delegates; (2) to persons accredited by the possession of subscription lists, as described above; or (3) to the editors of such journals as shall consent to receive subscriptions for the Society.

Vera Zassoulitch.

Peter Lavroff.

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.