The Priests Playing Trumps.

The no-rent resolve in Ireland, if measured by the increasing uneasiness of Gladstone, Forster, and the landlords, is a glorious card in the nineteenth century.

But Gladstone, Forster, and the landlords are not the only uneasy victims. A nest of designing priests must needs sit in Cincinnati, and, as a result of their dark counsels, issue a pastoral by which to offset the righteous light-spreading of the “Irish World,” as well as fasten their schemes of ecclesiastical plunder and fraud upon the necks of their dupes under the guise of morality.

Priests are the natural enemies of all protests against usury, fraud, and plunder. In fact, these cunning conspirators are nothing but landlords themselves in spirit and vocation, since they return even less for their usurious fees than do the landlords. In league with these rosy-faced spiritual rogues the Irish lawyers and other Irish tribute-takers are generally found. The whole craw are fellow-usurers in one boat.

As usual, it is the Irish workingmen who are doing the glorious work of “no-rent.” But, as success seems more and more distinctly promised, the priests redouble their effort to coax, bribe, and threaten them away from their noble task. They are consistent, and understand their game. But being forced to show their hands and play their trumps, certain it is that hundreds of their dupes are gradually opening their eyes, and quietly parting company with these infamous spiritual rack-renters.

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.

Light from the Laborers.

The following are the resolutions passed by the mass meeting of trades unions recently held in New York, and referred to at greater length in another column:

Resolved, That labor has the chiefest interest at stake in every cause affecting economic administration in all countries, since labor is asked to feed, clothe, and fatten landlords, usurers, monopolists, politicians, and all the unproductive army who enslave it.

Resolved, That the issue between landlord and tenant in Ireland, and in every other country, is but one of the phases of the labor question; that, since rent is an immoral tax on productive labor, its infliction upon the oppressed of any land makes labor in every other country its natural ally and defender.

Resolved, Therefore, that the working people of every other country, irrespective of race, language, creed, and color, are morally bound to stand by Ireland in this her hour of need, and that the voice of this mammoth gathering of the trades unions of America should be seconded in every country where the voice of labor is not utterly stifled by savage absolutism and repression.

Resolved, That, while we recognize Ireland to be the most woful victim of landlordism, through especially iniquitous laws and governmental administration, we are chiefly assembled to emphasize the fact that the bottom causes of landlordism — land monopoly and rent — are not local, but universal curses, inflicted upon labor, and against which labor is everywhere called upon to wage an uncompromising war of extermination.

Resolved, That we, nevertheless, recognize in the heroic no-rent stand in Ireland that this long-persecuted and rent-ridden isle is fighting the grandest battle and wielding the most effective artillery that ever confronted landlordism; that her battle is humanity’s battle; that her cause is labor’s cause; and its workingmen of America here represented do, therefore, heartily endorse her righteous methods, and solemnly promise her every means of support, co-operation, and sympathy within their power.

A Glorious Meeting.

The mass meeting of trades unions in Cooper Union, New York, on January 30, was the most significant and gratifying move that has been made since the so-called Irish land war began.

The Irish race, by nature of their organism, are easily ridden by superstition. The Pope has always sat in the Irish saddle with greater assurance than in any other. Blood-sucking priests have always found the Irish skin the thinnest to prey upon. With such a people — sympathetic, domestic, and deeply endeared to their traditions — the nationality craze easily finds a lodgment, and short-sighted, designing politicians are ever ready to make use of it in order to divert the attention of the people from the bottom causes of universal industrial slavery.

But this meeting stood on a thoroughly broad and de-nationalizing basis. As the splendid resolutions put it, the Irish cause was “humanity cause;” it was “Labor’s Cause.” Germans, Russians, Americans, Scotch, English, and Irish,— all clasped the brotherly hand in the grand resolve that the curse of landlordism was not local and national, but universal and human (or rather inhuman), and a part of the great scheme of usury against which Labor is everywhere called upon to wage an uncompromising war of extermination.

In asking the Irish to de-nationalize, as far as possible, their grand struggle, we would by no means look lightly upon their exceptional persecutions as a nation. But were these persecutions simply political and national, the Irish would have no especial claim to the co-operation of other nationalities. Since, however, the curse which afflicts them is one which threatens, and actually afflicts, more or less, the working masses of every other nation, they simply assert a just demand when they call upon working people everywhere to stand by them.

To attempt to argue down a superstition is the slowest process. Here and there a level-headed Irishman has sense enough to brush aside the ridiculous nonsense of expecting an “Irish republic” to do better by those who labor than does the ruling British machine. But these men are exceptions, and their voices is easily rub-a-dubbed down by the blatant nationalists.

It is useless to remind these rub-a-dub-dub, Irish republic, national flag enthusiasts that this American republic is severer on the tenant class, under its laws, than is England; but perhaps we can put it in another form with more effect. Place the Irish landlord class of America beside the Irish rent-paying class. Is the former any less merciless to its tenants than is the English landlord in Ireland? If the Irish landlord in this American republic is usurious-blood-hound, would he be anything less in an Irish republic? No, it is the system that must be crushed, and the system thrives just as audaciously under one form of government as another. The fact is that the State, without monopoly and usury as its main pillars, ceases to be the State.

It will take long to get these bottom facts into the heads of the masses, but such meetings as the one in Cooper Union are most gratifying helps in that direction. The masterly genius which moves the “Irish World” was never displayed to greater credit than on that occasion, and Liberty shouts thrice, Bravo! upon the whole affair.

The Hour of Test.

Ireland has reached the crisis. She needs to-day some Thomas Paine to rise up among her people, warning them that “these are the times that try men’s souls.” “Souls” in a more exclusive sense than in 1776. For Ireland’s warfare, to be successful, must be a moral one. The call for mere physical courage is less pressing within her shores that it was in these colonies one hundred years ago. What she needs is the moral courage and endurance to bear in silent protest injury, insult, indignity, following fast upon one another, until necessity shall drive, and the aroused moral sense of the civilized world shall shame, the authors of her outrages into lifting from her shoulders the iron hand of power.

Mr. Parnell’s arrest and the suppression of the Land League were not unexpected happenings, but the logical results of this moral warfare that Ireland, for three years, has steadfastly and bravely waged. These events are Ireland’s victory, if she knows how to make them such. The aim of the British government has been to drive the people into open revolution, and then, on the pretext that the people first resorted to force, shoot them down without mercy and mutilate them into submission.

But the policy has failed, Not only that,— it has retroacted, and possibly fatally, on its inventors. The government itself has been driven, in order to maintain its rule in Ireland, into a most shameless exhibition of force and tyranny, involving an entire abrogation of all the rights hitherto most sacred in the eyes of British subjects. It is not surprising. Only right knows law. Necessity, on which governments are based, knows none. But in reality, despite these despotic measures, the government is down. Ireland has the knee of moral pressure upon its chest, the grip of moral right upon its throat, and Gladstone and his gang are gasping spasmodically for breath. Will Ireland hold her advantage? Not unless she remembers principles, restrains her passions, acts upon conviction, obeys the advice of her true and tried leaders now in prison, and refuses to strike while refusing to submit.

The first duty to-day of every Irish tenant is to heed the manifesto of the League, and pay no rent whatever. Be that manifesto issued as a war measure, as some say, or, as other and profounder persons think it should be, in pursuance of deep-rooted conviction that “rent is an immoral tax upon industry,” it is equally binding on every true Irish heart. “Not one cent for tribute, but millions for” passive resistance!

Irishmen, remember the words of Parnell and his colleagues: “Against the passive resistance of the entire population military power has no weapon.” Disregard the cowardly priests! Their aim is to relieve you of one despotism only to fasten their own more permanently upon you. The heaviest blow yet struck you comes from their ranks in your hour of sorest trial,— from that one among them all in whom perhaps you placed your trust most confidently, His Dis-Grace of Cashel. Remember him hereafter. Remember now only your duty to yourselves, to your imprisoned martyrs, to your beloved land, to the world at large, and, above all, to the cause of justice, and stand firm!