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Title: Notes [Oct, 1886] Author: Freedom Press (London) Date: October, 1886 Language: en Source: Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Socialism, Vol. 1, No. 1, online source http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=3076, retrieved on April 14, 2020.
Professor Sidgwick has compiled for the British Association a list of
permissible exceptions to the principle of laissez-faire. There is an
opening now for some gentleman to. compile a list of permitted
exceptions to the other principle : that of interference by armed
government It would be shorter and much less comprehensive than
Professor Sidgwick's.
To understand the Governmental application of laissez-faire learn the
two -following rules of thumb. 1. When the proprietors molest the
proletariat, laissez-faire. 2. When the proletariat resist the
proprietors, interfere to help, the proprietors. There are no exceptions
to these rules. For examples of their working, apply to Sir Redvers
Buller, Co. Clare, Ireland, any time during the winter.
Mr. Fisher Unwin has published a boo k advocating Home Rule with
Imperial Federation as the solution of the Irish Question. The author,
Mr. J. A. Partridge, describes with all a Nationalist's ardor the state
of Ireland during "Grattan's parliament" from 1782 to 1801. On a page
headed " Freedom and Prosperity ", we read, as overwhelming evidence of
that prosperity, 11 Irish labor was cheap, her water power enormous, and
the climate eminently suited the cotton manufactory." How nice !
Grammarians will recoil from the above, convinced that if Mr. Partridge
is not cleverer at an Irish question than he is at an English sentence,
they are not likely to learn much from his book. It is however, no worse
(grammar excepted) than other nationalist books. They are certainly a
simple people, these our Irish brothers in misfortune, to believe that
starvation and injustice are peculiar to their country. The Belgium are
"a nation ", with Home Rule, manufactures, and all that Mr. Partridge
demands. Irishmen desirous of appreciating the benefits that these
things bring to the workers, had better make a trip to Charleroi and
watch the pitmen and their daughters at work in the mines there. But
indeed as much may be learned without going further than England. If the
Irish workers really believe that the English workers are their
oppressors instead of their fellow sufferers under the yoke of
Proprietorship they are fighting in the dark, and when they win, will
find themselves exactly what they are at present-the slaves of a class.
Mr. Parnell, having found his Land Bill likely to be defeated on the
score of going too far, has whittled it down so that the Government may
reject it on the score of its not going far enough to be worth passing.
Lord Hartington, as uncrowned king of England, will not permit Lord
Randolph to appease the uncrowned king of Ireland. The Pall Mall Gazette
is doing its best to frighten the English monarch by prophesying murder
and moonlight; but the son of Whig Duke with the privileges of property
at stake, is not going to be bullied by any editor alive. Just now, whom
the gods devote to destruction they first make Whigs.
Whilst Governments snarl at each others heels, the workers are giving
convincing proof that they recognize a common cause throughout the
civilized world. The visit of the French delegates, the Inter- !,I
national Trade Conference at Paris, the speeches at Hull, all are links
in the lengthening chain of Internationalism upon which monopolists
would do wisely to ponder. Capital is international. Belgian collieries
are worked with French gold. French manufactures and Spanish mines
flourish on English capital. The recent correspondence in the Daily
Telegraph on the defeat of English goods in the world market has shown
how capital fulfills the law of competition, and seeks the -cheapest
labor as the source of the greatest profit. The Workers, it seems, are
taking the lesson to heart, and preparing to meet international
exploitation by international federation of labor.
The accomplished President of the Royal Academy has at last unveiled his
fresco, "The Arts of Peace," at the South Kensington Museum. After many
years spent amid an industrial system which, stained as it is with the
blood and sweat of innumerable slaves, is still stupendous and full of
promise to the free worker of the future, Sir Frederic Leighton has come
to the conclusion that the only essential arts of peace are the arts of
the toilet as practiced by rich ladies. This is his way of expressing
that the Arts of Peace are mere vanity. The pessimism of the nineteenth
century philosopher and the devotion of the knightly artist to women and
beautiful dresses could not be more delicately reconciled in one work.
John Burns has been under a cloud for some years past. Being an
impulsively good-natured and warm-hearted man, with much eloquence and
humor, he is naturally insubordinate, and has championed the, cause of
labor so vigorously, that it has become necessary to deprive him of his
employment, indict him for sedition, and otherwise decline to laisser
him faire. Yet he has won the heart of polite England at last, not by
passionate speech, but by the mute rhetoric of his fist. He has, in
short, punched the head of a Frenchman in the capital of France, and
would have punched the heads of two others had they not withdrawn
somewhat hastily.
Burns must reflect with some irony on the fact that whilst he strove to
raise men up, he was vilified on all hands by the capitalist press,
although he displayed exceptional powers of a high class in doing so;
whereas now that he has knocked a man down, he is hailed as a hero
because the man was a Frenchman, though in every sporting public house
in London there are half-a-dozen pugilists who can knock down an average
Frenchman--or Englishman, for that matter-with masterly ease. The moral,
however, would seem to be: "Preach forcible suppression of thieving, and
you will be spitefully used and persecuted: practice it, and you will be
respected and supported." The workers might do worse than take the
lesson to heart; but they had better remember that they must, like
Burns, not only be willing to fight, but know how to win.