💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › freedom-press-london-notes-feb-1888.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 10:19:07. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Notes [Feb, 1888] Author: Freedom Press (London) Date: February, 1888 Language: en Source: Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Socialism, Vol. 2, No. 17, online source http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=3066, retrieved on April 14, 2020.
We have changed our address. The Link the new organ of the Law and
Liberty League, edited by comrade Annie Besant and Mr. Ste-ad has turned
us out of our old quarters We are now lodged under "We same roof as
another new journal of Socialistic bent, comrade Bolas's "Leaflet"
Newspaper." To both ventures we heartily wish a career of much service
to the revolutionary cause. Every wedge driven into our rotten social
structure hastens its downfall.
More victims of "justice." Two poor and ignorant men condemned to
fifteen years of living death for having last year entertained ideas
which the prosecution admitted had since been completely abandoned.
Granted for a moment that their intended action was evil. What can a man
who meditates evil do more than repent and renounce it ?And with what
pretense of justice can his fellows torture him for actions he has not
committed and plans he has laid aside?
But these men were not accused of any selfish crime, but of having
intended to protest by the strongest means in their power against such
vile outrages upon humanity as our Irish correspondent details in
another column. What sort of proportion is there between the possible
injury to innocent persons caused by such explosions as these Irishmen
are supposed to have meditated, and the unutterable heap of suffering,
the outraged human feeling, the ruined lives that are dragging each
Irish landlord, each British capitalist who holds Irish mortgages, down
to hell ?The guilt is not with those who devote their lives to protest
in any shape against the horrors with which the greed and domination of
heartless men are disgracing our common humanity; but with those who
fold their hands in sight of the wrongs committed against their brethren
and say Let us eat, drink, and be merry, these things concern us not.
All the pain inflicted by all the most violent and ill-considered
actions of all the rebels in the cause of freedom that the world has
seen is but as a drop in the bucket compared to the measureless,
ceaseless misery inflicted by rulers and their mechanism of legality.
Will the most rabid Conservative venture to seriously contend that all
the Socialists in Germany have caused one millionth part of the tears
and despair, the mental and physical suffering and the moral degradation
implied in the list we publish of the persecutions of Bismark and his
confederates, with their soldiers, constables, spies, and agents
provocateurs?
Nay, more. Has the most barbarous criminal whom Mr. Poland has hunted
down in the name of society been a source of so much cruel and unmerited
distress, of so much depravity among his fellows, as can he laid at the
door of the Public Prosecutor-the man who for gold and (rave the mark !)
for fame has sold himself to be the sleuth-hound of class tyranny and
property rule?
Alike in its persecution of those who exceed the average limit of social
feeling and its torture of those who fall below it, the judicial system
is an outrage upon humanity. When the superstition of authority no
longer veils our eyes, and the poison of property no longer eats into
our hearts, we shall look upon it with the loathing we now feel for the
barbarous follies of the Inquisition.
Louise Michel, more than most persons of to-day, lives and sets in the
spirit of the new social relations that are growing up among men. Her
conduct towards the stupid assassin who has just attempted her life is a
practical illustration of the attitude of the coming Anarchist society
towards those who have lagged behind the average of human development.
The verdict against the Lewis crofters has surprised no canny Soot who
realizes the true meaning of the " Not guilty, as libeled," which so
charmed some of our Radical contemporaries in the previous case of the
deer raiders. Anywhere else than in Edinburgh the asserters of the
claims of men against deer, the people against the landlords, would have
got off as free before a Scotch as an Irish jury. But Edinburgh is a
stronghold of middle-class flunkeydom, tainted throughout with the
notions of English land thieves; that is why the crofters are tried
there. The queer rider to the first acquittal was merely a hint to the
Government lawyers to draw up the indictment in better form next time.
They have taken the hint, and the brave rebels are condemned to weary
months' imprisonment for their social conduct.
Meanwhile Lady Matheson, one of the most heartless of the land
appropriators, figures on a London committee to aid the crofters to
emigrate. The Highland soil is so over-populated! It is said that the
wasp suggested that the bee-hive was over-populated when she paid a
visit to the combs and found the honey to her liking.