#title Liberty Vol. IV. No. 14.
#subtitle Not the Daughter but the Mother of Order
#author Benjamin Tucker
#LISTtitle Liberty Vol. 04. No. 14.
#SORTauthors Benjamin Tucker, J. William Lloyd, Gertrude B. Kelly, A. P. Kelly, James L. Walker, Marx Edgeworth Lazarus, George Schumm
#SORTtopics Liberty Vol. IV.
#date January 22, 1887
#source Retrieved on August 11, 2022 from [[http://www.readliberty.org/liberty/4/14][http://www.readliberty.org]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2022-08-11T10:53:56
#notes Whole No. 92. — Many thanks to www.readliberty.org for the readily-available transcription and to [[https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/periodicals/liberty-1881-1908/][www.libertarian-labyrinth.org]] for the original scans.
“For always in thine eyes, O Liberty!
*** On Picket Duty.
John Swinton convicts me of doing him an injustice in a paragraph in the last number of Liberty,— an injustice, however, which is more formal than real. Still, if is an injustice, and should be righted. In the next number I shall find space to right it.
See the advertisement of John F. Kelly’s “Taxation or Free Trade?” on another page. This sixteen-page pamphlet, which I sell at three dollars per hundred copies, is the best document in existence for distribution among Henry George’s followers.
The New Bedford “Standard” thinks it very doubtful whether I will “succeed in materializing Proudhon’s ideas in this country,” and indeed, when I saw it announced in the same paragraph that the “Proudhon Library” begins with the “System of Ecumenical Contradictions,” I began to share its despairing view.
The Greek Socialistic paper, “Arden,” is noticed elsewhere by one of the finest Hellenists in New England. Will the editor of the “Workmen’s Advocate,” who, writing in the shadow of Yale, translates the name of the journal by the word Labor, note the translation given in Liberty,— “utterly,” “unreservedly”? He and C. S. Griffin probably studied Greek together. Perhaps it is Yale’s shadow that causes the total darkness prevailing in this editor’s mind, regarding not Greek alone, but many other matters.
The “Workmen’s Advocate” sees no field for the “Proudhon Library,” for the reason that, “since Marx and the vigorous Socialist agitation, it is hard to grovel among the dry bones of exploded theories and fanciful notions clothed in the threadbare garments of a worn-out philosophy.” The theory upon which Marx’s fame rests is that of “surplus value”; now, this theory Proudhon propounded and proved, long before Marx advanced it and, if it is one of the “exploded theories” referred to, Marx has been exploded with it. If it is not one of them, perhaps it would be well to specify some of them. I would suggest to the Socialists that they translate Marx’s answer to Proudhon’s “Economical Contradictions” and publish it when that work finished in the “Proudhon Library.” Then we shall where the explosion will take effect.
In these days of sore trial to Rev. Dr. Edward McGlynn, late of St. Stephen’s, who of all men should have been expected to stand by his side, speaking words of cheer for him and chastisement for his foes? Who, indeed, but Patrick Ford? Yet the “Irish World,” though printing, to be sure, a great deal that other papers say, is as dumb as an oyster editorially. Where is the lash that ought at this moment to be descending upon the shoulders of His Arrogance Corrigan? Up Patrick Ford’s coat-sleeve, and he dares not draw it out. That he can ply the lash with terrific effect when he chooses and has the bravery to do so, he has amply proven in the past. But he has felt the lash as well as plied it. He stands in awe and dread of the lashing voice of Rome. Once or twice already in his life he has heard it hiss past his ear and felt it cut his hide, and he has cringed and crawled, as he cringes and crawls now. I am glad to see strong indications that Dr. McGlynn is made of sterner stuff.
Mr. Pinney, editor of an exceedingly bright paper, the Winsted “Press,” recently combatted prohibition in the name of liberty. Thereupon I showed him that his argument was equally good against his own advocacy of a tariff on imports and an exclusive government currency. Carefully avoiding any allusion to the analogy, Mr. Pinney now rejoins: “In brief, we are despotic because we believe it is our right to defend ourselves from foreign invaders on the one side and wild-eat swindlers on the other.” Yes, just as despotic as the prohibitionists who believe it is their right to defend themselves from drunkards and rumsellers. In another column of the same issue of the “Press,” I find a reference to a “logical Procrustean bed” kept, in Liberty’s office to which I fit my friends and foes by stretching out and lopping off their limbs. It is a subject on which the dismembered Mr. Pinney speaks feelingly.
I congratulate Henry George upon his manly stand in his new paper against the warfare of the Church of Rome upon Dr. McGlynn, and I cannot regard as anything but folly John Swinton’s protest against it as a distraction that may prove fatal to the unity of organized labor. In so far as Mr. Swinton aims at the destruction of all sources of usurious income, his attitude in economics is far superior in scope and consistency to the narrow and childish policy of Henry George, who aims to destroy but one form of usurious income and proposes no effective method of doing even that. But Mr. Swinton falls below Henry George when he lays supreme stress upon the union of labor’s forces, regardless of the only conditions upon which permanent union is possible, chief among which is Liberty. To be sure, Mr. George, as John F. Kelly has well shown, is no friend of Liberty in principle, but in this Dr. McGlynn matter he is certainly on Liberty’s side, and, instead of thwarting the labor movement by the attitude he has taken, he is doing it a splendid service.
I am asked by Henry Seymour, editor of the London “Anarchist,” on what authority I found my statement that he and the International Publishing Company are one. On the tone of Mr. Seymour’s letters to me at the time of the formation of the Company and on the general character of its publications and policy. Mr. Seymour says that, I have jumped at conclusions, and that he is not the Company, for he has a partner in it who is a State Socialist. Very likely Charles A. Dana has a Republican partner in the “Sun” corporation, but that does not alter the fact that practically Mr. Dana is the “Sun.” It was in the same sense that I declared Mr. Seymour to be the International Publishing Company. If this was a jump at conclusions, what, is the following? “Mr. Tucker, if I am correctly informed, gets his living by writing political articles for a daily newspaper, while denouncing all he writes about in Liberty once a fortnight.” Prolonged study of this sentence has not yet enabled me to determine whether I am charged with denouncing in the daily newspaper what I write in Liberty or with denouncing in Liberty what I write in the daily newspaper. In either ease it is a lie, and Mr. Seymour’s informant is a liar. I do not write political articles for a daily newspaper. In the newspaper office where I am employed I do a certain sort of literary drudgery which those who do it are in the habit of describing facetiously as “putting commas into other men’s copy.” For the opinions and policy of the paper I am neither more nor less responsible than the compositors who set the type.
*** The Unknown God.
“When therefore ye ignorantly worship... declare I unto you.”
Shines that high light whereby the world is saved;
And though thou slay us, we will trust in thee.”
John Hay.
Stand it up against high heaven,
J. Wm. Lloyd.
*** The Science of Society. By Stephen Pearl Andrews.
**** Part First.
So the fettered all may see!
Show them how we worship Freedom
In this land where none are free.
Ay. uprear your beanteous statue,
‘Mid the cannons’ cursed roar,
While the millions cheer amt chatter,
Thronging all the ships and shore.
Ever thus, when substance passeth,
Do men wave the symbol high;
Ever, when the Truth is dying,
Wears its name some new-born Lie.
Tyrants, is there one among you
Knows the import of this act?-
Knows, ere long, this god ye blaspheme
Will become a god in fact?
Dare ye thus, with graven image.
Mock the world’s high hope and God?
Dare ye, ’neath its sacred shadow,
Ply the lictor’s axe and rod?
Know ye not the bones are waking
In the valley of the dead?
Note ye not the ravens feeding
Hungry mouths that wail for bread?
Do ye think like fools we listen,
When ye mock us: “Ye are free!”?
Think ye to your empty idol
We have come to bend the knee
Let me tell you, proud-faced despots,
Ye build wiser than ye know;
Freedom’s torch will light her heroes,
Light them to your overthrow.
She will spurn from ’neath her sandals.
Foul in tilth, your hated name;
Theirs will glisten on her tablets,
Sculptured deep by hand of Fame.
Hear ye not those plaints of anguish?
No, your war-dogs bay too loud;
See ye naught of starving faces;
No, they shun your brutal crowd.
Listen then, and blanch and startle,
To that distant, awful roar;
Listen, to that wind-swept whisper;
“Tyrants, Death is at the door”
See! — Look there! — ye vampires,
Out upon Truth’s flashing sea,
See that tidal-wave, foam-crested,
Rolled from far Immensity!
’Tis the Wave of Revolution.
Breaking o’er your fated land.
Not one barrier ye have lifted
Shall its sweeping surge withstand.
Prostrate falls your god of metal
From its base on hearts of stone;
In its stead - behold the glories
Of the Great the real, White Throne!
Headlong falls your bellow idol,
Broken o’er your ruined land
Burying deep your institutions
In Oblivion’s wave-washed sand.
Smiling there with torch uplifted —
See! — the sweet, the Unkown God;
Look! — the olive’s tender wreathings
Twine the lictor’s broken rod.
The True Constitution of Government In The Sovereignty of the Individual as the Final Development of Protestantism, Democracy, and Socialism.
Continued from No. 91.
Socialism demands the proper, legitimate, and just reward of labor. It demands that the interests of all shall be so arranged that they shall cooperate, instead of clashing with and counteracting each other. It demands economy in the production and uses of wealth, and the consequent abolition of wretchedness and poverty. To what end does it make these demands? Clearly it is in order that every human being shall be in the full possession, control, and enjoyment of his own person and modes of seeking happiness, without foreign interference from any quarter whatsoever. This, then, is the spirit of Socialism, and it is neither more nor less than a still broader and more comprehensive assertion of the doctrine of the inherent Sovereignty of the Individual. The Socialist proposes association and combined interests merely as a means of securing that which he aims at,— justice, cooperation, and the economies of the large scale. Hence it follows that the Democrat resists and the Socialist advocates Association and Communism for precisely the same reason. It is because both want identically the same thing. The Democrat sees in connected interests a fatal stroke at his personal liberty,— the unlimited sovereignty over his own conduct,— and dreads the subjection of himself to domestic legislation, manifold committees, and continual and authorized espionage and criticism. The Socialist sees, in these same arrangements, abundance of wealth, fairly distributed among all, and a thousand beneficent results which he knows to be essential conditions to the possession or exercise of that very Sovereignty of the Individual. Each has arrived at one half the truth. The Socialist is right in asserting that all the conditions which he demands are absolutely essential to the development of the individual selfhood. He is wrong in proposing such a fatal surrender of Individual liberty for their attainment as every form of amalgamated interests inevitably involves. The Democrat is negatively wrong in omitting from his program the absolute necessity for harmonic social relations,— wrong in supposing that there can always be a safe and legitimate exercise of those rights which he declares to be inalienable, short of those superior domestic arrangements which the Socialist demands. It is futile, for example, to talk of removing the restraints of law from marriage, thus guaranteeing freedom in “the pursuit of happiness” in that relation, before the just reward of labor and the consequent prevalence of general wealth shall have created a positive security of condition for women and children. Hence the blunder of Democracy in the old French Revolution, and hence the absolute dependence of Democracy, for the working out of its own principles, upon the happy solution of all the problems of Socialism. Hence, again, the natural affinity of Democracy and Socialism, and the reason why, despite their mutual misunderstanding, they have recently fallen into each other’s embrace, in France, resounding in the ears of terrified Europe the ominous cry Vive la Republique Démocratique et Sociale.
The blunder of Socialism is not in its end, but in its means. It consists in propounding a combination of interests which is opposed by the individualities of all nature, which is consequently a restriction of liberty, and which is, therefore, especially antagonistic to the very objects which Socialism proposes to attain. It is this which prevents the harmony of Democracy and Socialism, even in France, from becoming complete, and which renders inevitable the disruption of every attempted social organization which does not end disastrously in despotism,— the inverse mode in which nature vindicates her irresistible determination toward Individuality. Let that feature of the Socialist movement be retrenched, and a method of securing its great ends discovered which shall not be self-defeating in its operation, and from that point Socialism and Democracy will blend into one and, uniting with Protestantism, lose their distinctive appellations in the generic term of Individual Sovereignty.
Such a principle is already discovered. It is capable of satifactory demonstration that out of the adoption of a simple change in the commercial system of the world, by which cost and not value shall be recognized as the limit of price, will grow, legitimately, all the wealth-producing, equitable, cooperating, and harmonizing results which Socialism has hitherto sought to realize through the combination or amalgamation of interests, while, at the same time, it will leave intact, the individualities of existing society, and even promote them to an extent not hitherto conceived of. It is not now, however, the appropriate time to trace out the results of such a principle. We are concerned at present with Individuality and the spirit of the age as connected with governmental affairs.
It is already the axiom of Democracy that that is the best government which governs least,— that, in other words, which leaves the largest domain to the Individual sovereign. It may sound strange, and yet it is rigidly true, that nothing is more foreign to the essential nature of Democracy than the rule of majorities. Democracy asserts that all men are born free and equal,— that is, that every individual is of right free from the governing control of every other and of all others. Democracy asserts also, that this right is inalienable,— that it can neither be surrendered nor forfeited to another Individual, nor to a majority of other Individuals. But the practical application of this principle has been, and will always be found to be, incompatible with our existing social order. It presupposes, as I have said, the preliminary attainment of the conditions demanded by Socialism. The rule of majorities is, therefore, a compromise enforced by temporary expediency,— a sort of half-way station-house, between Despotism, which is Individuality in the concrete, and the Sovereignty of every Individual, which is Individuality in the discrete form.
Genuine Democracy is identical with the no-government doctrine. The motto to which I have alluded looks directly to that end. Finding obstacles in the present social organization to the realization of its theory, Democracy has called a halt for the present, and consented to a truce. The no-government men of our day are practically not so wise, while they are theoretically more consistent. They are, in fact, the genuine Democrats. It is they who are fairly entitled to the sobriquet of “The unterrified Democracy.” They fearlessly face all consequences, and push their doctrine quite out to its logical conclusions. In so doing, they repeat the blunder which was committed in France. They insist upon no government higher than that of the Individual, while they leave in existence those causes which imperatively demand, and will always demand so long as they exist, the intervention of just such restrictive governments as we now have.
It results from all that has been said that the essential principle of Protestantism, of Democracy, and of Socialism, is one and the same; that it is identical with what is called the spirit of the present age; and that all of them are summed up in the idea of the absolute supremacy of the Individual above all human institutions.
What, then, the question returns, is to be the upshot of this movement? If every department of modern reform is imbued with one and the same animating principle; if there be already an obvious convergence, and, prospectively, an inevitable conjunction and cooperation of the three great modern revolutionary forces, Protestantism, Democracy, and Socialism; if, even now, in their disjointed and semi-antagonistic relations, they prove more than a match for hoary conservatism; if, in addition, material inventions and reforms of all sorts concur in the same direction; if, in fine, the spirit of the age, or, more properly, of modern times, and which we recognize also as the spirit of human improvement, tends continually and with accelerated velocity toward the absolute Individualization of human affairs,— what is the inevitable goal to be ultimately reached? I have said that in religious affairs the end must be that for every man shall be his own sect. This is the simple meaning of Protestantism, interpreted in the light of its own principles. If the occasion were appropriate, it would be a glorious contemplation to dwell upon that more perfect harmony which will then reign among mankind in the religious sphere,— a unity growing out of infinite diversity, and universal deference for the slightest Individualities of opinion in others, transcending in glory that hitherto sought by the Church in artificial organizations and arbitrary creeds, as far as the new heavens and the new earth will excel the old.
Socialism demands, and will end by achieving, the untrammeled selfhood of the Individual in the private relations of life, but out of that universal selfhood shall grow the highest harmonies of social relationship. It is not these subjects, however, that are now especially appropriate. Let us restrict our specific inquiry to the remaining one of the three spheres of human affairs which we have in the general view considered conjointly,— namely, that which relates to human government.
Is it within the bounds of possibility, and, if so, is it within the limits of rational anticipation, that all human governments, in the sense in which government is now spoken of, shall pass away, and be reckoned among the useless lumber of an experimental age,— that forcible government of all sorts shall, at some future day, perhaps not far distant, be looked upon by the whole world, as we in America now look back upon the maintenance of a religious establishment, supposed in other times, and in many countries still, to be essential to the existence of religion among men; and as we look back upon the ten thousand other impertinent interferences of government, as government is practiced in those countries where it is an institution of far more validity and consistency than it has among us? Is it possible, and, if so, is it rationally probable, that the time shall ever come when every man shall be, in fine, his own nation as well as his own sect? Will this tendency to universal enfranchisement—indications of which present themselves, as we have seen, in exuberant abundance on all hands in this age—ultimate itself, by placing the Individual above all political institutions, the man above all subordination to municipal law?
To put ourselves in a condition to answer this inquiry with some satisfactory decree of certainty, we must first obtain a clear conception of the necessities out of which government grows; then of the functions which government performs; then of the specific tendencies of society in relation to those functions; and, finally, of the legitimate successorship for the existing governmental institutions of mankind.
I must apologize as well for the incompleteness as for the apparent dogmatism of any brief exposition of this subject. I assert that it is not only possible and rationally probable, but that it is rigidly consequential upon the right understanding of the constitution of man, that all government, in the sense of involuntary restraint upon the Individual, or substantially all, must finally cease, and along with it the whole complicated paraphernalia and trumpery of Kings, Emperors, Presidents, Legislatures, and Judiciary. I assert that the indications of this result abound in existing society, and that it is the instinctive or intelligent perception of that fact by those who have not bargained for so much which gives origin and vital energy to the reaction in Church and State and social life. I assert that the distance is less today forward from the theory and practice of Government as it is in these United States, to the total abrogation of all Government above that of the Individual, than it is backward to the theory and practice of Government as Government now is in the despotic countries of the old world.
The reason why apology is demanded is this: So radical a change in governmental affairs involves the concurrence of other equally radical changes in social habits, commerce, finance, and elsewhere. I have shown already, I think, that Democracy would have ended in that, had it not been obstructed by the want of certain conditions which nothing but the solution of the problems of Socialism can afford. To discuss the changes which must occur in every department of life, in order to render this revolution in Government practicable, and to provide that those changes now exist in embryo, would be to embrace the whole field of human concerns. That is clearly impossible in the compass of a lecture. But it is equally impossible to adjust the radical changes which I foretell in Government to the notion of the permanency of all other institutions in their present forms. What, then, can be done in this dilemma? I am reduced to a method of treating the subject which demands apology, both for incompleteness and apparent dogmatism. I perceive no possible method open to me but that of segregating the subject of Government from its connection with other departments of life, and deducting from principles and rational grounds of conjecture the changes which it is destined to undergo; and when those changes involve the necessity of other and corresponding changes elsewhere, to assert, as it were, dogmatically, without stopping to adduce the proofs, that these latter changes are also existing in embryo, or actually progressing.
I return now to the necessities out of which Government grows. These are in the broadest generalization: 1. to restrain encroachments, and 2. to manage the combined interests of mankind.
First, with regard to restraining encroachments and enforcing equity. Is there no better method of accomplishing this end than force, such as existing Governments are organized to apply? I affirm that there is. I affirm that a clear scientific perception of the point at which encroachment begins, in all our manifold pecuniary and moral relations with each other, an exact idea of the requirements of equity, accepted into the public mind, and felt to be capable of a precise application in action, would go tenfold further than arbitrary laws and the sanctions of laws can go, in obtaining the desired results. In saying this, I mean something definite and specific. I have already adverted to the discovery of an exact, scientific principle, capable of regulating the distribution of wealth, and introducing universal equity in pecuniary transactions,— an exact mathematical gauge of honesty,— which, when it shall have imbued the public mind, and formed the public sentiment, and come to regulate the public conduct, will secure the products of labor with impartial justice to all, and tend to remove alike the temptations and the provocations to crime. What that principle does in the sphere of commerce is done in the social and ethical spheres by the doctrine of the Sovereignty of the Individual. Both give to each his own, for it must be continually remembered that the doctrine of Sovereignty of the Individual demands that I should sedulously and religiously respect your Individuality, while I vindicate my own. These two ground principles, with a few others incident thereto, once accepted and indwelling in the minds of men, and controlling their action, will dispense with force and forcible Government. The change which I contemplate in governmental affairs rests, therefore, upon these prior or concurrent changes in the commercial, ethical, and social spheres. Statesmen and jurists have hitherto dealt with effects instead of causes. They have looked upon crime and encroachment of all sorts as a fact to be remedied, but never as a phenomenon to be accounted for. They have never gone back to inquire what conditions of existence manufactured the criminal, or provoked or induced the encroachment. A change in this respect is beginning to be observed, for the first time, in the present generation. The superiority of prevention over cure is barely beginning to be admitted,— a reform in the methods of thought which is an incipient stage of the revolution in question. The highest type of human society in the existing social order is found in the parlor. In the elegant and refined reunions of the aristocratic classes there is none of the impertinent interference of legislation. The Individuality of each is fully admitted. Intercourse, therefore, is perfectly free. Conversation is continuous, brilliant, and varied. Groups are formed according to attraction. They are continuously broken up, and re-formed through the operation of the same subtle and all-pervading influence. Mutual deference pervades all classes, and the most perfect harmony, ever yet attained, in complex human relations, prevails under precisely those circumstances which Legislators and Statesmen dread as the conditions of inevitable anarchy and confusion. If there are laws of etiquette at all, there are mere suggestions of principles admitted into and judged of for himself or herself, by each individual mind.
Is it conceivable that in all the future progress of humanity, with all the innumerable elements of development which the present age is unfolding, society generally, and in all its relations, will not attain as high a grade of perfection as certain portions of society, in certain special relations, have already attained?
Suppose the intercourse of the parlor to be regulated by specific legislation. Let the time which each gentlemen shall be allowed to speak to each lady be fixed by law; the position in which they should sit or stand be precisely regulated; the subjects which they shall be allowed to speak of, and the tone of voice and accompanying gestures with which each may be treated, carefully defined, all under pretext of preventing disorder and encroachment upon each other’s privileges and rights, then can any thing be conceived better calculated or more certain to convert social intercourse into intolerable slavery and hopeless confusion?
It is precisely in this manner that municipal legislation interferes with and prevents the natural organization of society. Mankind legislate themselves into confusion by their effort to escape it. Still, a state of society may perhaps be conceived, so low in social development that even the intercourse of the parlor could not be prudently indulged without a rigid code of deportment and the presence of half a dozen bailiffs to preserve order. I will not deny, therefore, that Government in municipal affairs is, in like manner, a temporary necessity of undeveloped society. What I affirm is that along with, and precisely in proportion to, the social advancement of a people, that necessity ceases, so far as concerns the first of the causes of Government referred to,— the necessity for restraining encroachments.
The second demand for Government is to manage the combined interests of society. But combined or amalgamated interests of all sorts are opposed to Individuality. The Individuality of interests should be as absolute as that of persons. Hence the number and extent of combined interests will be reduced with every step in the genuine progress of mankind. The cost principle will furnish in its operation the means of conducting the largest human enterprises, under Individual guidance and control. It strips capital of its iniquitous privilege of oppressing labor by earning an income of its own, in the form of interest, and places it freely at the disposal of those who will preserve and administer it best, upon the sole conditions of returning it unimpaired, but without augmentation, at the appropriate time, to its legitimate owners.
A glance at the functions which Government actually performs, and the specific tendencies which society now exhibits in relation to those functions, will confirm the statement that all, or most of, the combined interests of society will be finally disintegrated and committed to individual hands. It is one of the acknowledged functions of Government, until now, to regulate commerce. But, as we have already seen, the spirit of the age demands that Government shall let commerce alone. In this country, an important Bureau of the Executive Department of Government is the Land Office. But the public domain is, we have seen, already demanded by the people, and the Land Office will have to be dispensed with. The Army and Navy refer to a state of international relations of which every thing begins to prognosticate the final extinction. The universal extension of commerce and intercommunication, by means of steam navigation, railroads, and the magnetic telegraph, together with the general progress of enlightenment, are rapidly obliterating natural boundaries, and blending the human family into one. The cessation of war is becoming a familiar idea, and, with the cessation of war, armies and navies will cease, of course, to be required. It is probable that even the existing languages of the earth will melt, within another century or two, into one common and universal tongue, from the same causes, operating upon a more extended scale, as those which have blended the dialects of the different countries of England, of the different departments of France, and of the kingdoms of Spain into the English, the French and the Spanish languages, respectively. We have premonitions of the final disbanding of the armies and navies of the world in the substitution of a citizen militia, in the growing unpopularity of even that ridiculous shadow of an army, the militia itself, and in the substitution of the merchant steamship with merely an incidental warlike equipment instead of the regular man-of-war. The Navy and War Departments of Government will thus be dispensed with. The State Department now takes charge of the intercourse of the nation with foreign nations. But with the cessation of war there will be no foreign nations, and consequently the State or Foreign Department may in turn take itself away. Patriotism will expand into philanthrophy. Nations, like sects, will dissolve into the individuals who compose them. Every man will be his own nation, and, preserving his own sovereignty and respecting the sovereignty of others, he will be a nation at peace with all others. The term, “a man of the world,” reveals the fact that it is the cosmopolite in manners and sentiments whom the world already recognizes as the true gentleman,— the type and leader of civilization. The Home Department of Government is a common receptacle of odds and ends, every one of whose functions would be better managed by Individual enterprise, and might take itself away with advantage any day. The Treasury Department is merely a kind of secretory gland, to provide the means of carrying on the machinery of the other Departments. When they are removed, it will of course have no apology left for continuing to exist. Finances for administering Government will no longer be wanted when there is no longer any Government to administer. The Judiciary is, in fact, a branch of the Executive, and falls of course, as we have seen, with the introduction of principles which will put an end to aggression and crime. The Legislature enacts what the Executive and Judiciary execute. If the execution itself is unnecessary, the enactment of course is no less so. Thus, piece by piece, we dispose of the whole complicated fabric of Government, which looms up in such gloomy grandeur, overshadowing the freedom of the Individual, impressing the minds of men with a false conviction of its necessity, as if it were, like the blessed light of day, indispensable to life and happiness.
*** Ireland!
By Georges Sauton.
***** Translated from the French for Liberty by Sarah E. Holmes.
Continued from No. 91.
“The Duchess, the disastrous Lady Ellen!” exclaimed Sir Richard, eagerly.
“Yes, she,” said the priest, who turned again, letting fall his cassock, which he had lifted up to the knees, and making a wry face; “but I should have preferred that the name had not been cited, that we had expressed ourselves with veiled words, that we had understood each other without being explicit. A certain obscurity seemed to me favorable to our explanation: the shade covers propositions which one would not make in full sunlight, and the confessional, in the darkest part of the church, is kept in a mysterious penumbra, where the sinner, with bent head, reveals secrets which he would hide carefully in the depths of his soul, if he were asked to disclose them under the tapers of the altar or the light of the porch....”
And, in truth, an embarrassment seized Bradwell, who had become quite calm again, but who, having betrayed so freely his liaison with the wife of Sir Newington, with the wife of his father, felt how greatly he had failed in his duty as a gallant man, and his uneasiness extended to Marian, who, reddening, dared no longer look at him.
So much so that the situation became difficult, intolerable, inextricable, and that Sir Richard, ashamed, purple, furious with himself, desired now to disappear as soon as possible, and would have left abruptly, in a gust of wind, in his inability to invent a plausible way of escape.
The priest, happily, cut short the constraint which all, including himself, felt, and which, if prolonged, would spoil all, preventing the success which he had promised himself to achieve by his step.
“I will see you again this evening,” said he to the young man, taking leave of him with an affectionate, paternal grasp of the hand. “I made allusion just now to the privileges of the confessional; alone with Marian, we will talk as if I were receiving her at the tribunal of penitence... Au revoir!”
“Thank you!” said Bradwell, taking his leave and saluting Treor’s granddaughter with an awkwardness which would certainly have been ridiculous under any other circumstances, but which denoted a complete suspension of his former vindictiveness.
And when the door closed on him, the abbe returned to Marian, taking her hands in an easy, caressing way, and inviting her to listen to him with attention, and, above all, to heed his advice; he implored it of her!
“We have only a little time to ourselves; let us talk little, let us talk well, or rather be silent yourself, my dear child, and be for me all ears and all heart. I declare to you that it is the voice of the Lord which converses with you,” he concluded, investing his priestly air with unusual circumstance.
And, after his traditional pause, letting go the young girl’s hands, walking rapidly through the room, veiling the tone of his phrases, with his chin in his band, he began upon his subject:
“You love Sir Richard, Marian. Before the events which disturb our unhappy country, and expecting them to lay it waste, sowing everywhere misery and ruin, you have several times avowed it in your confessions.”
“Yes!” said she.
“I have myself advised you to stifle this love, or at least quiet it, inasmuch as you did not know the intentions of Sir Bradwell in regard to you. In his rank, with his birth, it was to be feared, if he distinguished you, if he sought your society, it would not be from a commendable motive. I forewarned you against his fascinations, against the perils of a passion which sometimes ends in dishonor.”
“And I took it kindly”...
“Today, it is no longer the same,” said the priest, stopping, with folded arms, before his sheep. “Richard has formally declared himself; I have heard him. It is not a mistress whom he is deceiving, whom he is urging; it is a respected wife to whom he aspires. You repulse him, you have not the right.”
“Oh!” exclaimed the young girl.
But father Richmond did not permit her to formulate her protest.
“You have not the right,” repeated he, “for the reasons that I stated in presence of Sir Bradwell, and because, in constraining so your heart, in breaking his, in drawing on your cause the worst calamities, you only obey a guilty watchword, a criminal countersign, both sealed with a sacrilegious vow.”
“Pardon me,” said Marian, “we have not time to discuss this subject.”
Although knowing the moments were counted and that he had himself stated the urgency of brevity, Sir Richmond, like the majority of his colleagues whom discourses from the height of a pulpit render necessarily prolix, not accustomed to limiting himself, elaborated endless phrases and wandered off into useless digressions. Now he had prepared his theme to develop it methodically, in the logical, progressive order of arguments carefully accumulated. The remark of the young girl nonplussed him, showing a lack of deference with regard to the word of God which exhaled from his lips, as he had forewarned Marian.
But he did not entirely lose his bearings on that account, and, descending from the heights, he resumed familiarly, and not without malice, knowing the feminine nature by constant association with it and not fearing to come directly to the point: “Lady Ellen is Richard’s mistress; she has inveigled him, like a wicked princess in a fairy story; she is corrupting his body, she will ruin his soul. What do I say? If Bradwell should die today, what account would he render of his acts at the tribunal of the Most High? The lover of his father’s wife, ignominy! All the commandments of the church, of God, outraged. Shameless, the work of the flesh accomplished under conditions which one shrinks from relating and which Catholicism punishes with the most extreme torture, even with the stake! And, in another world, an eternity of pain among the orbs of hell!”
“Why has he committed this inexcusable crime, worse than murder?” said Marian, coldly, in whom, all at once, virtue and the chastity of her nature rebelled indignantly.
“Why? but am I not explaining it to you?” replied the abbe, inventing, in order to sustain his position, the circumstances of the crime. “Why? Because, eudowed with an incomparable beauty, full of the voluptuousness which intoxicates, a nest of enticing lasciviousness, she has contaminated the unfortunate Richard with her sorceries, like a poor innocent boy, and no adviser has shown him the peril, no friend has extended the hand to keep him from falling into the alluring atmosphere of delicious vice.”
The priest watched Marian closely. Was the effect being produced on which he counted? He smiled shrewdly, with an imperceptible half-closing of the eyelids. Evidently she was seizing the bait. Now her breast was heaving under her dress, her nostrils contracted, the tears gathered and were forced back into her throat, a hissing sound escaped from her clenched teeth, and in the pupils of her eyes something of defiance gleamed.
At once she deplored the position of Richard, irresponsible, fallen unwittingly into the snares of an enchantress, enervated by the carnal philters which she distilled; and a desire to struggle against Lady Ellen, to snatch her prey from her, invaded her, exciting the woman and the lover to the contest.
The feeling of her woman’s power, of which she had been ignorant, was suddenly awakened in her; and, surprised, bewildered, proud of this power of influence which she had never before suspected, there came to her an irresistible, childish desire to use it.
In the past she had loved Sir Richard without reasoning, without accounting for it to herself, without reflecting, without dreaming, consequently, of defending herself from this capture of her soul, from this penetration of her being; and probably she would have been more inclined to believe herself the subject.
The pain of her sacrifice, when she had taken the pledge required by the League, the inefficacy of this oath, which was binding only on her acts, but could not modify her heart, could not repress its beatings, could not change its preoccupations,— such reasons confirmed her in the idea of this subjection.
Spontaneously, in her revolt against the atrocities committed by the English, she had at the time included Richard in the reprobation which she vowed against them; the solemn kiss given to Paddy sealed, in her intention, the official rupture with Sir Bradwell; it had sufficed to see him, to learn of his interventions in favor of the conquered, to see him at work in various circumstances, to lose the courage and the force to persevere in this indifference, or, rather, hostility.
And after that she met him so often on the road! He prowled about, he stood taciturn, disconsolate, so constantly, so long, for hours, with death in his soul, about their house, impatient and feverish if, at last, she did not appear at a window; rejoiced and revived, when she went out into the street to get something for the house, to speak with a neighbor who called her, to caress the children whom their mothers were leading!
It was stronger than she; in spite of her inmost resistance, of the scruples of a severe conscience, in spite of the fear of this sin which was always dragging her along, at last she ended by showing herself and did not always succeed in avoiding Richard with her look.
Then, evidently, she imagined herself dominated, subjugated; simple and without coquetry, she did not reflect that the attraction, at least, was reciprocal, and now, the priest, after having won her interest, repeated that she held in herself a sure power over Richard, a considerable power. And not only to command the son of Newington, free and in love only with her, but capable, in a struggle of which Sir Bradwell would be the object, of winning the victory over the Duchess, so wonderfully pretty, so armed with seductions, so artful, so refined, surrounded with all the resources of princely luxury.
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“In abolishing rent and interest, the last vestiges of old-time slavery, the Revolution abolishes at one stroke the sword of the executioner, the seal of the magistrate, the club of the policeman, the gunge of the exciseman, the erasing-knife of the department clerk, all those insignia of Politics, which young Liberty grinds beneath her heel.” — Proudhon.
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☞ The appearance in the editorial column of articles over other signatures than the editor’s initial indicates that the editor approves their central purpose and general tenor, though he does not hold himself responsible for every phrase or word. But the appearance in other parts of the paper of articles by the same or other writers by no means indicates that he disapproves them in any respect, such disposition of them being governed largely by motives of convenience.
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*** Six Cents a Week for a Library.
Subscriptions to the “Proudhon Library” are coming in as a rate not altogether disappointing, while not indicating, on the other hand, of highly flattering immediate success. If the rate keeps up, it will sustain the enterprise. It is incumbent upon the renders of Liberty to keep it up. If every one of them would subscribe, the “Library” would be a success from the start, and till additional subscribers would serve to lessen the cost of the future volumes. It is a source of amazement to me that men and women who have long been subscribers to Liberty and who profess the greatest interest in its work should need any urging to induce them to support a project which cannot fail to give its work a most powerful impetus.
Some complain, I know, that the price is high. Even if this complaint were well-founded, it would afford no large number of Liberty’s readers a valid excuse for withholding their support. Whatever relation the price may bear to the cost of publication, in itself three dollars a year is not a very large sum to pay for what one really wants very much indeed. On the contrary, it is very insignificant. Why, it is only six cents a week. How many readers has Liberty who do not spend that amount regularly for things which, if the question were squarely put to them, they would at least profess to want much less than they want the “Proudhon Library?” That it has a few such I believe, but I doubt if their number exceeds a dozen. Even the average workingman, oppressed and robbed as he is, can afford three dollars a year for whatever single thing he may regard as a necessity only second to that of his bare food, clothing, and shelter; and, if he refuses to pay it for the “Proudhon Library,” it may be put down for a certainty, whatever his professions, that he is not actually hungering and thirsting after that author’s writings. But I believe that such hunger and thirst do afflict nearly all of Liberty’s friends, and that they will hasten to satisfy their cravings when once they realize that they can get this wonderful set of books by sending me three dollars every year, or one dollar and a half every six months, or seventy-five cents every three months, or, if even that is too great it strain, then by simply putting aside six cents every Saturday night and sending me a quarter of a dollar at the end of each month.
Not only, however, is the price of the “Proudhon Library” not absolutely high,— it is not even relatively high. It is no rash assertion to say that there is very little literature published anywhere at as low prices, in proportion to excellence of quality and the extent of the demand, as those of the books and pamphlets issued in connection with Liberty, and to this rule the “Proudhon Library” is no exception. It is all very well to talk glibly of popular prices, but popular prices can be placed upon none but popular books. Anarchistic books are unpopular, and the wonder is that they are sold as cheap as they are. When the people are as anxious to read Proudhon as Dickens, they will have the opportunity to do so at as little cost. Or, to take a fairer comparison, insider the recently published English translation of Marx’s “Capital.” I have not seen it yet, but it is probably little, if any, larger than the “Economical Contradictions,” while in the matter of book-making it cannot well surpass the “Proudhon Library.” Moreover, considering Marx’s celebrity and the strength of the State Socialists, the market for “Capital” in the present and the immediate future must be ten times as great as for the “Economical Contradictions,” and the price therefore should be very much lower. Yet the two volumes of “Capital” sell for $5.75 (possibly this includes duty), while subscribers to the “Proudhon Library” will obtain the two volumes of the “Contradictions” for $5.00 or less, including binding.
So much for those who criticise the price. There are still others who criticise the project itself. I have just heard of one man, an intelligent member of one of the professions, who thinks that I overrate Proudhon. I question very much whether he has acquired the competency to judge in this matter by reading Proudhon. Be that as it may, to this criticism I have at hand a very much better answer then any that I could make myself, in the following letter written by one of the very few people in this country who are intelligently familiar with Proudhon’s writings:
Dear Mr. Tucker:
You can scarcely imagine how pleased I am that, you have undertaken the publication of the “Proudhon Library.” If it meet with the success it deserves, the sales should be extremely large. There can be no doubt in the mind of any unprejudiced reader of his works that he must be classed in in the front rank of the men of this century. As an economist he is without a peer. According to my judgment, there is no modern sociological writer, not even excepting Herbert Spencer, destined to have a greater influence upon the future. That Spencer has had a greater influence upon me is true; but that is simply because I became acquainted with his writings earlier, and, therefore, there was not so much left for Proudhon to do.
As you know, however much of a worshipper of Man I may be, I have no worship for men, and I have, not made an idol of Proudhon. I can see his faults, his divergencies from principle, his government-patronized bank, his plans of taxation, reduction of wages, and the like; but, if it can be truly said of any man, it can of Proudhon that his faults were those of his time, his virtues his own. With the chiefs of all the other Socialist schools offering immediate happiness to the proletariat on condition of its embracing their various governmental schemes, and with that proletariat clamoring to him for something materially beneficial at once, the wonder is that he remained so steadfast to liberty. It should be enough for us to know that he developed and demonstrated the general principles of moral or, if you will, social action, and that he showed how government taxation and the arbitrary interference of man with man could be dispensed with. This abides with us forever as of permanent value, even though he himself occasionally yielded in his practice to the feelings and opinions of his time.
I have spoken of Proudhon from an Anarchistic standpoint, but no sociologist of any school can afford to be without him. The dialectic skill displayed in the “Economic Contradictions,” the broad sweep and masterly generalizations of the “General Idea of the Revolution,” equalled only by Buckle’s, the ready wit of the newspaper controversies, the deep insight into the nature of the social organism exhibited in the ”Philosophy of Progress,” in which work he demonstrates Man as the efficient cause and maker of men, an idea since so beautifully worked out by Clifford, are all too valuable to exist only in French. They ought to be accessible to all civilized peoples.
If I could only reach them, I would urge personally upon each of Liberty’s readers to do his utmost to make the publication a success, and I am sure that, when they became acquainted with the works, they would thank me for my urging. You may put me down for twelve copies, and, if necessary for the success of the enterprise, I will take up to forty. Yours truly,
This temperate and strong judgement I follow, even in its qualifications. Proudhon was not perfect, and his shortcomings are patent to those who read him. I would even go farther than Mr. Kelly, and advert to an error far more serious than the mere temporary yielding to the temptation to compromise for the attainment of immediate results,— I mean Proudhon’s Archistic, reactionary, and almost brutal attitude towards the movement for the emancipation of woman. But, even in his discussion of woman and marriage, he said many very original, very true, and very important things.
In regard to his government-patronized bank, it should be stated, to prevent, misunderstanding, the Exchange Bank proposed by Proudhon was simply to exemplify his idea that the Bank of France could be run on mutualistic principles, and was subordinated in his mind to his Bank of the People, which was not to be a governmental institution. He believed in utmost freedom of banking.
I hope that Mr. Kelly’s letter, by its sound estimate of Proudhon’s character and importance, and the example set by its writer of whole-hearted and open-pocketed cooperation in a work so valuable, will bear abundant fruit in many quarters.
By Michael Bakounine, Member of the International Association of Working-People.
***** Translated from the French by Sarah E. Holmes.
Continued from No. 91.
Finally, there is the category of the loving believers. This is the least numerous, the most amiable, but not the least dangerous. Jesus Christ, the greatest among them, was, without doubt, of this class. Let us hope that Mazzini will be its last representative in the history of the religious aberrations of civilized humanity. I have said that this category of believers is not the least dangerous. And, in truth, their first wrong consists precisely in serving as passports, and almost always also as tools and bait, for the hypocrites and violent believers. When society, tired of the falsehoods of the former and the cruelty of the latter, seems on the point of disgust with a religion which produces so much misery and horror, it is pointed to some simple, good, narrow, saintly man, and his sympathetic, venerable, look disarms suspicions and hatred. These men are very rare; so the leaders of the churches appreciate them highly, and generally know how to put them to excellent use. Time it was that at the epoch when the cruel persecutions practised by the Jesuits upon the Protestants, the Vaudois, were drenching Savoy with blood, there was in this very order of the Jesuits, in Switzerland, a bishop, a saintly man, Francois de Sales, whose heart, overflowing with love, made more conversions than all the cruelties of the church.
Heart overflowing with love! That is the true, accurate definition of these men. They are, I repeat, excessively rare. But they exist, and each of us has met one at least in our lives. When they are very strong, and, what is more, very intelligent, as Jesus Christ doubtless was, they found new religions, provided the spirit of their age is at all ready for the foundation of a new religion. Or they seek to found it and are disappointed, when the tendency of the surroundings and the times is opposed to it, as is happening to Mazzini. But ordinarily, with the exception of some who are geniuses “crowned with virtue,” these men, profoundly, intimately, lovingly religious, form no school; for what predominates in them is not mind, but heart; is not thought, but love. They are religious, but they are not theologians. Their faith, indefinite and not firmly settled, is only a very imperfect expression of that love which is called divine because it is excessively rare, and which really overflows their whole being. Contrary to those who enlighten without warming, they warm all those who surround them without enlightening them, exciting love, never thought.
Mazzini, by his intelligence, is infinitely superior to these obscure lovers. But he does not equal them in love. They are so full of it that, in spite of their faith, they have the power of bravely loving pagans, atheists. Mazzini is too theological for this; he detests atheists, and, like Christ, if he had the power, would take the scourge to drive them from his dear Italy, considering them as corrupters of his predestined people.
Let us leave, then, to flourish in peace those sweet religious souls, loving and obscure, who perfume with their native grace their little unknown corners, and study in Mazzini himself the ravages which theology can and must work in the greatest souls, the noblest hearts, the loftiest minds.
To thy own self be true,I should not infer from Mr. George’s words, “supporting any measure that will attain that object,” that he, a rabid governmentalist, meant more than measures of legislation. As Mr. Kelly speaks of a tendency to “disrupt society,” I will note that Stirner has used the word society in such a way that the dissolution of society by individuals becoming independent has no more terrors, when understood, than Proudhon’s dissolution of property,— society standing for the invasive community in all its spontaneous forms beyond the family.
And it must follow as night the day
Thou canst not then be false to any man.