THINGS OF TO-DAY.

A GREAT statesman, a great soldier, a great scientist have favoured the world in the course of the last month with their opinions upon the prospects and conditions of our society ; and it is hard to decide whether Bismarck, Moltke, or Huxley bears off the palm for brutal frankness. Sincerity, however, is much. It is well that men on the topmost rung of the social ladder should shout their observations upon our civilization to the listening crowd below. Let us listen to what they tell us.

Moltke says that the big States of Europe are founded upon sheer brute force, and maintained by sheer brute force. The modern State and all its institutions stand or fall with the army. Peace within and without is only preserved by strong governments. The enemies of this peace are the passions of the people, public opinion, and the written and spoken word. Quite true, Count von Moltke; these have been the foes of authority since first it cursed mankind, and they will never cease from troubling until they have destroyed it.

But the Chancellor of blood and iron, what has he to communicate to an admiring world? What but the gospel of patriotism, in the narrowest, bitterest, most inhuman sense of that much-abused word. Patriotism, based not on love of kindred, but on hatred of aliens. The patriotism which is the watchword of rulers when in the interests of personal ambition they incite their slaves to tear one another to pieces. Germany desires peace that she may develop her industry and trade. 'What to her, says her leading statesman, are the strivings and sufferings of humanity-in Bulgaria and elsewhere? And let France take heed how she rushes into war, for Germany will do unto her all and more also than France did to Germany eighty years ago; there is no such merciful conquerer upon earth as your Christian German. Bismarck's amenities reminds one of the grin of a dog when he sights his favourite adversary upon the road; a precaution probably intended, Darwin tells us, to ward off attack. If so, it is a policy unsuccessful in affairs human and canine. Quite probably the Jewish gamblers who hold the strings of European politics, and employ Bismarck as their man of business, do not much care about an immediate outbreak of war. But Frankenstein cannot always control the movements of the monster he creates and the capitalist system of competitive production shows a tendency to run away with the wire-pullers. There is no cure for continuous commercial depression like a great war. It clears off superfluous goods, superfluous capital, and superfluous workers, and gives rise to a brisk demand all round, a hey-day of profit to speculative prothe remarks of the Royal Commission upon the Depression of Trade as to the good times which succeeded 1871. So, on the whole, the capitalists of Europe have no particular objection to another Franco-German war. Especially as the above-mentioned super workers are beginning to be troublesome, and may become dangerous if some of them are not killed out of the way.

Will the masses be deluded once more by all this high falluting patriotism and allow themselves to be led to the slaughter? Probably ; and yet it is more than likely that the next great war will see action on the part of the workers but little in next great the wishes of their masters. The last few years, and especially the last twelve months, have witnessed many indications that a healthy spirit of revolt, and a growing sense of a common interest and a common cause, is spreading amongst the Peoples. It may that Bismarck has pronounced the last dying speech and confession of Jingo patriotism.

Let us turn from threats of war to the blessings of peace as portrayed by Professor Huxley. In his speech on the foundation of an Imperial Institute, he tells us that we bear much from our evolutionary philosophers about the peaceful character of industrialism as opposed to militarism, but after all, modern industrialism is also war. It does not break heads or shed blood ; it starves its victims. Its weapon is competition, and in this warfare nation stands arrayed against nation, industry against industry, man against man. The English are getting worsted in the struggle because we have not yet learned to use our scientitic knowledge to the uttermost in injuring our neighbours ; but to unite science with industrialism for this purpose would be a worthy and fitting memorial of Her Majesty's reign ! Has the most "bloody revolutionist" brought a sharper indictment than this against modern society ?

Ferocious war, its horrors intensified by the perfection of murderous invention, or the equally ferocious peace, which also is war, " and that of a kind the viler as underhand, not openly bearing the sword," these are the alternatives, each founded upon sheer brute force, with which the high priests of our civilisation greet the New Year. This is the

pass to which our blind submission to the authority and exploitation of certain of our fellow men has brought us. Is it not time we met force with force and shook off these chains of misery and degradation, that we may try what chances equal freedom brings ?

THE final report of the Royal Commission of Enquiry into the Depression of Trade might well have been compiled for the express purpose of illustrating and

confirming the doctrines of Socialism, and announcing the downfall of our present society. This handful of reactionary professors, politicians, and philantropists are condemned for their sins to show up one by one the false deductions of the pseudo science wherein they trusted for the justification of the capitalist system.

First of all, they are forced to ignore the bogie of Malthusianism, and to confess that in spite of the severe and universal and almost uninterrupted commercial depression of the last twelve years, the increase in the amount of wealth produced has kept well ahead of the increase in population. The workers will know now from the lips of their masters how to reply to emigration agents who assure them that we are too thick on the ground here in England, the country cannot support us. On the contrary, we are suffering, it seems, from an over-supply of wealth and an overaccumulation of capital. There is too much food, there are too many clothes, and too many houses in England. What do you think of it, starving men and women, who cannot get decent food or clothes or lodging for yourselves or your children ? And you, who are weary with tramping the streets, seeking in vain to be allowed to work, what do you think about the over-accumalation of the instruments of labour ? On the face of it, is there not something radically wrong in such a state of society?

But all this wealth is produced, you know, not to satisfy any one's needs, but on the chance that it may sell at a profit. Not a profit to the men who created it, of course; they, poor devils, have had their share in their more or less miserable wages; but a profit to the man whose concern in the matter is that somehow or other he manages to get the rest of the world to recognise him as the proprietor of the capital used in production. If he cannot get as much profit as he wants, he will not let any one have what he calls his goods, nor will he let workers use his capital any longer. They may go the workhouse or where they like, that is not his business.

The ears of the Commission have been defeaned with the groaning of unhappy capitalists bemoaning the "bad times"; profits and interests are so low. For a hundred years and more these gentry have been vieing with one another who could get goods made for him at the least cost and sell them to the best advantage, and now that other countries are surpassing England in the strife, the English industrialists have nearly drained one another dry and the only chance of making a big haul is by speculation. In fact capital is more and supplied by limited liability companies, started merely to pay their promoters, regardless of any real demand, and often wound up as soon as floated. A subject for legislation, remark the wiseacres of the Commission.

And the English workers? Well, they must just make up their minds that they have much to be thankful for. They work shorter hours than foreigners; their average wages are higher; indeed their whole condition during the last twenty years has "immensely im proved," the wealth lost to capital has been gained by tbem; but this improved," to equalisation in the distribution of wealth cannot go beyond a certain point, and I that point is "very nearly if not quite attained already." The capitalists' system has borne its perfect fruit of happiness to the wage worker, therefore let him be content. No doubt he suffers much inconvenience from being perpetually driven from one place and one employment to seek another in consequence of the perpetual introduction of new machinery and of changes in methods of producing; but then "the demand for labour must necessarily be always fluctuating and uncertain," and it is to be hoped the Board of Trade will help him by collecting some statistics.

This then is the utterance of the assembled doctors and prophets of middle-classdom upon social conditions in which our misery increases in proportion to our wealth in which the whole population is restless and "millions of men "each scrap of life " is "but a fear, and the sum of it wretched and base." This is the last word of the Government we are trained to submit, to and revere as half divine, upon the economic system which it exists to maintain . Is not such an unblushing statement of shameful facts indeed the writing on the wall, the weighed in the balance and found wanting," condemning to speedy destruction social arrangements so ill suited to the needs of men

PARLIAMENTARY RULE.

ONE Of the most mischievous prejudices we have to get rid of in order to begin the new life of Socialism, is the belief in parliamentary rule. Parliament has in this country rendered so many services in the struggle against the rule of the Court, and the nation has been so much accustomed to connect with Parliament its reminiscences of struggle for political liberties, that even among Socialists some vague belief in Parliament still lingers; a fancy that it may in future become an instrument for ridding the nation of the rule of Capital.

Not that such a belief is always held consciously. Much has hap, on the contrary, during the last twenty years to weaken to some extent the old faith in Parliament. The intelligent workman already often asks himself whether Parliament, which has been so powerful an instrument in substituting the rule of the middle-classes for that of the aristocracy, can possibly be utilised as an instrument for demolishing the rule of those very classes ? Nevertheless, many Socialists, directing their chief attention to the economic aspect of the Social Question, overlook its political aspects.

They do not ask themselves whether some new form of social organisation must not be called into being in order to permit a new departure in economics ; and therefore they continue to act as if they were persuaded that parliamentary rule really is the hind of political organisation with which a society liberated from the yoke of Capital can set about such a new departure. What, in fact, has been advocated by our SocialDemocratic friends, in this country and on the Continent, beyond the ancient parliamentary rule, with occasional recourse to tile rejerendumi.e., popular vote by yes or no- which has already been in action for so many years in Switzerland ? What do they indicate as the, goal of our endeavours beyond the parliamentary rule of a Democratic Republic: that is, the same sort of political institution which has so admirably favorised the growth of Capital-rule in the United States and Switzerland, and so admirably adapts itself to capitalist exploitation, capitalist wars, and capitalist oppression in France?

They argue, of course, that in a society where there will be no individual owners of land and capital, parliamentary rule will be no longer a failure ; that it will not check the free development of a free society of workers without capitalists or middle-men. But in the meantime Life is taking another direction, and is already elaborating 1 new forms of political organisation, which will be as different from 1 parliamentary rule as parliamentary rule is different from Absolute

Monarchy.

Throughout our history we may see that a new form of political organisation has corresponded to each new form of economic organisation AN-lien the peasants were reduced to economic, if not to personal serfdom ; when the city workman was a factor of no importance ; when the richest and most powerful class were the landed aristocracy, -then Absolute Monarchy was the corresponding form of government.

Ent as soon as trade and commerce began to enrich the middleclasses, they refused to be ruled by a few courtiers taken from the aristocracy. They revolted-from the middle of the seventeenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth in this country, in 1789-93 in France, in 1848 in Germany. And, by cunningly taking advantage of the support they found amongst the peasants and workmen, they reduced the monarch and his courtiers to obedience, and substituted tile rule of parliament. More than that. Parliament was the instrument with which they succeeded in accomplishing this revolution and rendering it permanent in its effects.

Further, if we revert to an earlier period we see that the cities when freeing themselves, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, from the rule of their lay and ecclesiastical lords and of the Crown, also started a new form of political organisation, based on the independence of the city and the organisation of the guilds. These guilds were not like the trades'-unions of our time, but were independent corporations, having their own laws, their own forms for the administration of justice, their own arrangements for self-defence, etc-in short, they were political organisations as well as trades' organisations. The cities conquered their independence, and maintained it by producing a new kind of political organisation. A new phase of economic life brought about it new phase of political life. Without the latter, the former would have been impossible.

Again, going still further back, we find, after the fall of the Roman Empire, the common possession of the soil going hand in hand with clan organisation, the gathering of all villagers for the discussion of the affiairs of the village, and the federation of villages and clans for tile discussion of business common to them all.

In short, throughout history we see that each change in the economic relations of a community is accompanied by a corresponding change in what may be called political organisation. These two are so closely connected with one another that they cannot be separated. The freed citizen, beginning a new life on a new basis, proclaims the free commune as the middle classes in similar circumstances convoke a parliament. The free city in one case, the parliament in the other, are instrumental in accomplishing the revolution. They render its results stable and permanent, and afford scope for its further development.

Thus, too, it will be with Socialism. If it contemplates a new departure in economics it must be prepared for a new departure in what is called political organisation. And this new departure cannot be the parliamentary rule of a past era.

Many symptoms show that in Europe there is already a strong tendency in men's minds towards the elaboration of this new Socialistic form of political organisation.

Nowhere is tile belief in parliamentary rule so strong as in this country. But even in this country the old faith has of late received many a severe blow. Those who know what parliamentary rule is, are agreed that some new departure must be made. 11 Things can no longer go on as they have done,"-such is the growing opinion. In fact, as soon as the necessity of Home Rule for Ireland was recognised, the idea rapidly spread that Home Rule for Scotland, Home Rule for Wales, and Home Rule for London are also necessary. But this movement is only a preliminary. It dates but from yesterday. Let it grow, and the necessity of something less parliamentary than a Scotch, or Welsh, or Cockney Parliament will soon be recognised.

On the Continent the anti-parliamentary movement is still more pronounced. In France, among those who reason instead of merely clinging to what exists, you will hardly find one man in a thousand who still believes in the National Parliament of the Republic. As to the workmen, if they cherish any expectations for the future, it is from the Commune-the autonomous Commune federated with other autonomous Communes,and not from any National Parliament or Convention. -Nay, since the defeat of the Paris Commune, the Com1 munalist idea has become the idea of modern France.

In Spain, the only political party of any consequence, besides the International Working-men Association, which is Anarchist and not political, is the " Cantonalist " party of Pi-y-Margal, the party of communal and cantonal autonomy. It is the only party besides the Anarchist International which the Republicans themselves consider worth speaking of.

In Italy, as soon as the Monarchy shall be overthrown and the central government be reduced to impotence (and that will shortly happen), each prov ince, each ethnographical portion of a province, each city, will start upon its own independent career ; each will try to find by its own endeavours a solution for the social question.

In Switzerland, where they have Home Rule for each small separate Republic (or canton). where they have thoroughly democratic institutions, and, moreover, tile use of the referendum, they are discussing at this moment how to modify their political organisation ; and it is a serious question with the democrats of Lausanne if it would not be better, even in the larger cities, to revert to the forum, still in use in smaller communes All the institutions which inspired so much faith in 1848 are pronounced a failure.

Germany alone seems to be an exception to tile rule. Its Radicals and Socialists seem still to see their ideal in Robespierre's Jacobinism, i.e., in a Republic strongly centralised. But this turn of mind is easily explained by the historical phase that Germany is now going through. The first shock will, however, loosen it to the foundations. Something towards tile destruction of Capital Rule will certainly be done in Germany by the next revolution, but this something will not be accomplished by the prescriptions of a German Parliament. It will be done by the revolt of isolated centres, where Socialist life and thought are growing rapidly.

We are deeply persuaded that if anything is to be done in a Socialist sense in this country, it will be done in the same way. It will be accomplished outside Parliament, by tile free initiative of British workmen, who will take possession for themselves of capital, land, houses, and instruments of labour, and then combine in order to start life on the new lines of local independence.

Parliamentary rule is Capital rule. It has served its time. No Parliament, however noisy, will help to accomplish the Social Revolution. And it is not to parliamentary rule that the revolted workmen will look for the economic and political re-organisation of the People.

NOTES

THE energetic action of our Norwich comrades in flinging food from the store in the shops to their famishing fellow-workmen, and breaking the windows of the rich burgesses who refused to attend to their grievances, will do more to advance the cause of the Social Revolution than much talking. Before Mowbray's nine months' imprisonment are over Judge Grantham is likely to discover as much.

Note the effect of --Norwich riots, Trafalgar Square meetings, BatterPea church parades, and the morning calls of the unemployed upon vestrymen and guardians upon the middle-class conscience. The wretchedness of the workers is no new thing, but when have the news papers swarmed as they do to-day with letters, and accounts of committees, meetings, royal commission reports, and proposals for fresh royal commissions? All to suggest some method of evading the Social Question, and pacifying the people without trenching on the privileges of the rich.

Indeed the Liberty and Property Defence League have some cause for alarm. English Socialism is becoming a distinctly national movement, taking a definite national shape. It is localising itself and moving by spontaneous popular initiative. It is passing, with characteristic English practicality, from propaganda by word to propaganda by action. Socialists are pressing into local public affairs and insisting on the claims of the people to the direct management of their own business. And their business is not the maintenance of the status quo !

Mr. Harrington, M.P., exhorted the peasants of Glenbeigh to pray, not to fight, while the evictors were dragging a sick child from its

parents' burning hut to die on the straw in a pig-sty. The young girl who dealt the ruffians some hearty blows with a spade was certainly

the better man, of the two."

Gentlemen who look forward to office in a Home Rule Parliament cannot, of course, afford to encourage too much disrespect for authority.

The manly contempt shown by our comrade Duval for the forms of law during the trial in Paris, which ended in his condemnation to death, hits made a deep impression on his fellow workers. One man who has the pluck to act on his conviction makes such action easier for each one who follows him. A common-place truth, but we all forget it sometimes.

REMEDIAL MEASURES.

WHEN the enemies of Socialism are speaking to Anarchists, they dwell upon the reasonable and humanitarian policy-of Social Democracy, but no sooner are they brought face to face with the proposals of Social Democrats than they declare those proposals preposterous and impraticable the Times for -November 5th.

Well, it is true that there is very little moral difference between charity in money and charity in work, whilst front the economic point of view the former is preferable. Either there is work to be done in the community or there is not. In the first case, capitalists will not fail to lay hand, upon it to make a profit for themselves by supplying the public need. In the second case, the central or local government cannot start superfluous works, or even anticipate work supposed requisite in some more or less distant future, without damaging the interests of the very classes which it seeks to relieve. For this reason, our present system of distribution of wealth (each for himself and the take th hindmost) determines the standard of requirements in each class of the community according to the position and fortune it has seized upon. There is a certain fixed ratio between desires and wealth, wants and the absence of wealth, which cannot be altered without a change in our whole system of distribution. Of course poor men really require better food, better clothes, better lodging, &C. But then' they cannot pay for them, and no laws in the world can make the rich pay for even necessaries for the poor. No law can employ -we might say transform-the wealth of capitalists so as to satisfy the need, of working people. The only means to take wealth from those who possess it are exploitation, expropriation, and taxation. Exploitation can be exercised only on those who possess nothing but their energy and labour force. Expropriation means revolution. As for taxation, it falls-direct taxation indirectly, indirect taxation directly-upon the shoulders of the working class, or, what is the same thing, on the cost of necessities. When the price of commodities ceases to allow sufficient profit to capitalists, these patriots usually withdraw their investment from their own land, and thus the source of taxation is dried up.

It follows that if extraordinary relief works be started for the unemployed, the wages and profits connected therewith must be either by reducing the wages of labourers already employed, or by drawing upon the proceeds of future labour.

Note this : wages, as well as profits (surplus value). Every fresh enterprise under our present economic system gives occasion for fresh exploitation of labour; takes from, instead of adding to, the workman's means of subsistence.

The more the workers work, the worse they make their condition as a whole, the wider the gulf between them and the wealthy classes. They only seem to receive wages, in reality they pay tribute to their employers. Therefore to start new works to relieve the working class is like paying a debt bearing no interest by means of a loan upon which interest must be paid.

As an immediate measure of relief for the misery of the people, 'it would be more practical to diminish than increase production. it were possible to put a stop for some time to all the production of a country and prevent any expatriation of capital, or importation of produce, no doubt the labour market would revive and wages rise. But, as a matter of fact, capital and capitalists are quite ready to abandon their own country and seek more favourable openings elsewhere ; and it is as easy for capitalists to baffle any attempts at lawmaking to prevent this as it is difficult for workmen to escape the thraldoin of the laws they are subjected to. Even when the possessors of the means of production cannot remove their property-as in the case of the soil-they can and do give up producing necessaries and devote their wealth to the production of luxuries, or, in the case of land, withdraw it from cultivation, and devote it to sporting purposes. Thus their enjoyment is secured at the cost of the misery of the workers.

The same objections apply to a compulsory reduction of the hours of labour. Without reduction of the profits of employers, the condition of the working classes cannot permanently improve, either as regards the amount of wages or the continuity of employment. But if it were possible, either by reduction of hours of labour, or by taxation, or any other governmental expedient, to lower the rate of profit in a country, either prices would go up or capital would emigrate to foreign lands. To prevent the emigration of capital it would be necessary to declare and enforce all the world over common rates of wages, hours of labour, prices of commodities, and taxation : rather a difficult achievement in face of private property, inequality of possessions, and commercial competition.

It is because we realise the utter impossibility of putting a check upon usury under existing social arrangements; it is because we do not feel confident as to the beneficial results of the remedial measures proposed by Social Democrats in this and other countries, that we are Anarchists, and cry to the people, "Put not your trust in any government assistance. Help yourselves." For Anarchism puts Revolution before renovation, whilst Social Democracy puts reform before Revolution-the end before the beginning.

[Note.-Many of our Social-Democratic friends are better than their professed creed, and only put forward remedial measures to entice hesitating quasi-Socialists into the wholsome path of revolution. -EDITOR.]

SCIENTIFIC MUDDLES.

IT is quite possible in our enlightened times to be scientific over much and Anarchists will do well to beware of staking the validity and success of their doctrines of life and society upon the truth of mechanical and fatalistic theories of evolution which attempt to bridge over the gulf that at least appears to gape between physical science and social theory, between the facts of the inanimate and animal world and the facts of human existence. Our danger is that we shall level down, instead of up.

The reflections here presented on this subject have been suggested by a perusal of an article in the Contemporary Review for September last, by Leon Metchnikoff, entitled "Evolution and Revolution."

Metchnikoff is a good, well -meaning Anarchist, but he is a little too much in love with the elaborate evolutionary science armour. He tries to put it on, rejecting several pieces which are obvious misfits ; and in the end just succeeds in hobbling along, encumbered, embarrassed, and awkwardly brandishing the foreign weapons. It is on the whole a sad grotesque spectacle, and meaningless, except as a warning. First to be tried on is the system of Herbert Spencer. " Sociology is a physical science like others: its aim cannot be any other than the reduction of the specific laws of social life to the universal laws of motion"! This is bridging the abyss, with a vengeance. And if it could really be, it would be it full vindication of over-ruling by bruteforce, and would ensure the immortal reign of the policeman, the prison, and all the tools of masterhood. Put it is not likely to be accepted as truth, till Love is reduced to sound digestion, Hate to liver-complaint, and Sympathy is found to be the function of some organ in good working order. 'then there are scientific muddles and puzzles about what is an individual ? where does the individual end and society begin ? for instance, is a man an individual or a society? Now this may be an interesting physiological curiosity, but upon things human and social it can have no bearing. For the politician or Socialist it is mere trifling. That a man is one and individual, because he feels and knows himself to be one and counts himself one, is both sound common-sense and philosophy, and enough for the theory of practice. We have not time to reckon how many angels can stand on the point of a needle. " Men , " says our science-beglamoured friend, "like other mammalia, are in fact associations of such colonies of cells." But it is men as men, and not as mammalia, that interest us as Socialists. "Our inveterate tendency to consider ourselves as an end and centre of the creation makes us prone to prejudge that our individuality is the only genuirie one." Quite true, and we are not merely prone, but compelled so to judge. My own oneness and individuality is the only one immediately known, all others are reflections or projections of that one unity. I make things in my own likeness. So, and only so, do I (and every other I) get a world of individual things and persons. Science is perforce anthropomorphic; more subtilely perhaps, but just as really and inevitably as the first makers of myth and fetish. But our scientific friend would fain wriggle out of anthropomorphism and anthropocentricism. Yet, if we could cease to regard ourselves "as an end and centre of the creation," creation would soon make an end of us. But Metchnikoff is so enamoured of science that has not reflected upon, criticised, and recognised its own grounds and methods, that with him anthropomorphic is synonymous with "antiscientific."

The next muddle encountered in the search after "science" is the piece of rhetoric so familiar now, that "a society is an organism." It is only in Germany that this is taken for more than an analogy on three legs or very lame figure of speech. But there it has inspired a savant (Jaeger) to give a zoological account of human societies as a last chapter of a biological handbook ! Schaeffle takes the same bestial line, and finds a Bismarckian state-socialism at the top of the zoological tree. But what else can come of seriously regarding a human community as a kind of banyan-tree or leviathan, and talking solemnly of its " organs, tissues, cells, and inter-cellular substance"!

Is society under the law of gravitation only, or under that and the Malthus-Darwinian law of struggle and starvation only; or is it, as conscious and endowed with reason and will and capable of setting before itself ideal ends, a law unto itself ? According to the answer given, it is either mountain, mouse, or man-organic or super-organic unity.

Metchnikoff finds this higher self-determined law of reasonable goodwill to be consent, co-operation, voluntary and conjoint aiming at an end not personal to any one or more only and exclusively, but personal to all equally. But in doing so he unconsciously disencumbers himself of all pseudo-scientific sociology, and affirms a principle and practice above nature, in the restricted scientific and evolutionary sense-a spirit and power that will use nature and not be swung about and used up by it. He is now entitled to assert that "the end can be but one:

viz., Anarchy-i.e., co-operation of autonomous individuals, not by mechanical, physiological, or political constraint, but plainly and completely by their own conscious and free will." "The law of the future society is anarchy." Yet when he adds, "It surely shall be attained by nature alone,"- be must mean Nature in a ampler sense than the physical and zoological-not nature according to Newton, Malthus, and Darwin only, but nature according to commoti-sense, philosophy, and humanity. This wider Nature includes Will, Reason, Sympathy, as its central facts and factors, and its evolutiona' movement includes " revolution," which is the affirmation of the future by the denial of the past in so far as the past is a dead thing. Revolution is Recreation.

The positions implied in these reflections are-

1. We have, and are entitled and even constrained to have, a profound conviction of the Unity of Things. There is a universe.

2. But this conviction is meantime rather of the nature of Faith than Knowledge or Science.

3. Insistance upon crude and premature attempts to expound this Faith in continuous detail, as if it were already matter of Science, is only distracting and embarrassing in practical life like that of the Socialist and Anarchist.

4. Permissible speculation or imaginative construction, that seeks to bridge or fill up the gaps in our knowledge, in accordance with our faith, must be by way of interpreting the lower in terms Of the higher developments of the universal life, rather than conversely, as the physical and zoological evolutionists do. Level up.

5. The highest we know is self-consciousnesss. Therefore in terms of self-consciousness we must explain, if we will speculate and would not explain away.

6. Freedom, Duty, Sympathy are facts of self-consciousness only, and elements of the idea of human society, ultimate, given, an underivable.

THE STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM.

AMONGST THE WHITES IN SOUTH AFRICA.

IN discouraging contrast to most other European countries and colonies, old or new, the colony of the Cape of Good Hope seems unmoved by tile great social awakening of the proletariats of other lands. Lying as it does at the southern extremity of the dark continent, one might almost be led to imagine that it was too far removed from the current of popular ideas and the magnetic influence of popular enthusiasm, were it not that we see that Australia, though more remote in point of distance, is yet far more advanced in the understanding shown by its masses with regard to their rights and interests.

The principal cause of this is doubtless to be found in the fact that white workers in this country form a comparatively small proportion of the population, especially if we deduct from their number the clerks and others who, although suffering as much as any in these depressed times from reduction of salaries and precariousness of livelihood, yet cling to a ridiculous affectation of gentility and seek to delude themselves and others into the belief that because they do no manual labour they are of the same caste and have the same interests as their employers, the shoddy shopkeeping aristocracy of this truly Jew-ridden country. The white workers are hindered from combination and interchange of intelligent ideas by reason of their being generally scattered amid a large mass of semi-barbarous, coloured labourers utterly impervious to, I will not say Socialistic, but even to liberal notions of the most moderate type. The only instances in which white working-men are associated in any numbers are to be found in the diamond mining industry at Kimberley, and in the work of the shipping and landing companies at this port, and it is precisely in these instances that they have attempted within the last few years to assert their rights as men.

In the case of the Kimberley diamond mines the indignation of the men was finally aroused by the determination of the directors to institute a humiliating and disgusting method of examining the persons of all employed in the mines. This determination gave rise to a general strike which placed the large and wealthy town of Kimberley at the mercy of the outraged proletariats. At one mine alone the managers succeeded in maintaining a show of continuing the work, and a large concourse of strikers proceeding thither to stop operations was fired on with revolvers by some watchmen employed on the premises, with the result of several being killed and wounded. Now mark what followed, you who preach moderation and half measures! Instead of at once pressing forward and avenging their fallen comrades by destroying the capitalistic hirelings who had caused their death, instead of taking possession of Kimberley and all its contents-mines, machinery, buildings, stores and supplies of all kinds-in the name of, and for the use of the people, the crowd, listening to the advice of talkers rather than following its own manlier instincts, withdrew to hold a public meeting to protest and to resolve upon taking legal measures against those who had committed the murderous deed in defence of the legally Sacred rights of property.

The result was easily to be foreseen. A verdict of " serve them right " was passed upon the victims of capitalist violence, and the witnesses who appeared on their behalf were sentenced to severe terms of imprisonment on charges of rioting and attacking property. The capitalists and their agents the Govenment officials, emboldened by the silly unwillingness of the workers to use their strength slid opportunity, rapidly recovered the courage which had left them at the outset. Arrests were made right and left, and one tyrannical measure followed another until "order reigned" at Kimberley as at Warsaw, and no murmur dared to make itself beard. Since that time the working-men of the Diamond Fields have made no sign.

Here in Port Elizabeth, a strike of the boat-men employed on lighters and surf-boats took place last year to resist a reduction of wages and all indefinite increase of working hours; the strike, however, met with no outside support, and tile Companies meanwhile succeeded in getting the work carried on after a fashion by a few white traitors supplemented by Kaffirs. At the meetings held by the strikers they actually invited employers of labour to address them, and listened without indignation to discourses directed against themselves and favouring the tyranny of the Companies. In a few days the victory of the latter was complete and within a month a general reduction of wages rewarded the other classes of working-men who had refused their sympathy and aid to the boatmen ill their struggle.

When, some time ago, the unemployed of Cape Town assembled for the purpose of representing their distress and hearing proposals for a remedy, the great gun of the meeting, a man of position, declared frankly that he knew that some of the unemployed desired that means should be afforded them for quitting the colony and trying their fortune elsewhere, but that he for his part would never consent to such a step, inasmuch as, on the return of better times, the colony

and employers of labour would be at the expense of bringing out flesh hands from Europe. And in this case again the misery-stricken audience listened calmly to the arrogant bourgeois, and did not stone him as he deserved !

These facts give a fair illustration of the condition of the poorer classes of Europeans here, and may be instructive to any who feel tempted to emigrate to these shores, as well as to all who are able to draw lessons from passing events.

LAW AND ORDER IN IRELAND.

IV.-LOST OPPORTUNITIES,

THERE came a brief cessation in the making of laws for Ireland. Richard II. resolved to try other means than legislation, and so undertook an expedition, which his vanity assured him would cover him with glory. His proclamation on landing at Waterford was unique in its naive impudence. All the tribes in Leinster were summoned "to surrender full possession of lands, tenements, castles, woods, and forests." In return they were to have unmolested possession of any and all lands they could conquer from the King's other Irish enemies elsewhere in the island. The only reply to this was curt refusal from one chief, Art Kavanagh by name ; by descent, from the outlawed son of Dermot, of regal rights. He and "three thousand hardy men, who did not appear to be much afraid of the English," enlivened Richard's march to Dublin by raids and skirmishes, so that his 4000 men-at-arms and 30,000 archers were shorn of much of their splendour by the time they reached their journey's end. The reception by the Dublin burghers, to whom a king was a king for a' that, and meant money in their purses, somewhat soothed Richard's wounded vanity. The chiefs and barons were invited to a conference, and all who came were flattered and feasted, in order to elicit from them oaths of submission. These seductions failing in the case of Art, he was treacherously imprisoned, and only released on his taking the required oath-a violation of hospitality that made Richard the more odious to the people. This expedition has been fitly described as being " nothing profitable nor honourable-and scant worth the noting." There is, however, one little record made by the society journalist of the day which may be interesting to our readers. It seems that Richard's courtiers were greatly shocked by the custom practised by the Irish chiefs of having their minstrels and principal servants to sit at the same table with them and to eat from the same dish, so the interpreters were urged to use all their eloquence to dissuade the chiefs from this "lewd habit," at least during the time they were the King's guest.

Richard's second expedition was hastily concluded ere it was well begun by the news of his cousin's usurpation of the crown. The usurper, Henry IV., had enough to do to keep his crown on without meddling in Irish affairs. His warlike son found the fields of France more profitable for his genius, so that he did nothin beyond appointing the redoubtable Talbot as lord deputy. Talbot distinguished himself in Ireland by slaughtering every minstrel he could lay hands on, and returned in 1419 " carrying with him the curses of many " who had the ill-luck to give him credit, and leaving behind him a brood whose descendents are still among the detestable landlords.

The long period of England's distraction by the strife between the Yorkists and Lancastrians was another opportunity lost to Ireland. It appears to have been only favourable to the development and increase of landgrabbers. When the temporary lull came in the civil warfare under Edward VI., a glance in the direction of Ireland Showed the low ebb of English interests there, and the hopelessness of enforcing English laws where every landowner had become a law unto himself and to his immediate dependents. Yet an effort was made, an impotent one, through the "infamous and sanguinary Head Act," passed at Trim in 1465, whereby the colonists were empowered " to take, kill, and behead any persons going or coming, having no faithful man of good name and fame in their company in English apparell " ; and for every head so obtained the " cutter " thereof could levy with his own hand, as his reward, " of every man having one ploughland in his barony, two pence; and of every man having half a ploughland, one penny; in and of every man having one house and goods value forty shillings one penny and of every other cottier having house and smoak, one halfpenny." The ferocity of this statute serves to show to what desperate straits the English interests had been reduced. But this state of things was soon to be altered by the accession of the astute and powerful Tudor dynasty ; and Ireland's opportunities in the struggle for freedom were thenceforth fewer and farther between.

(To BE CONTINUED.)

'SOCIALISM0 0 MONOPOLISMO.'

WE would call the attention of those amongst our readers who know Italian, to the above work, just published by our comrade S. Merlino. It is a most useful text-book of Anarchist Socialism, and we hope it may shortly make its appearance in English dress.

The author begins by pointing out that our present economic system, in spite of so-called free competition, and other delusive appearances of freedom, is founded upon monopoly. By monopoly he understands the individual appropriation of the wealth of the community by persons who make use of this property to obtain for themselves the fruits of other people's labour. The first part of the book describes the growth of this monopoly ; the second consists of an examination of the doctrines of the economist, and exposes current fallacies in relation to the private appropriation of wealth.

The third portion devoted to the evolution of Anarchist Communism. Our comrade exhibits this form of Socialism as the logical outcome of the progressive elements already at work within our existing society, and the only practical satisfaction for our present needs. He then deals with the stock objections of the admirers of things as they are ; e.g., the absence of any stimulus to exertion in a communistic society, the want of individuality which some folks imagine to be ell engendered by economic equality, etc. He contrasts with such futile objections the impracticability and uselessness of so-called practical reforms in economics and politics, considered as a means of bringing about a radical change in the basis of society ; and ends by affirming Anarchy as the scientific social ideal of our times.