Liberty's Declaration of Purpose

terence as between slavery and liberty, faith and science, courts and justice, usury and labor, government and economy ~ non-existence and being, God and man.~' LIBERTY'S DECLARAnON OF PURPOSE Volume I, No. I, of Liberty appeared on August '6, 188 I, and here is its salutatory: LmERTY enters the field of journalism to speak for herself because she finds no one willing to speak for her. She hears no voice that alwayscharrtpions her; she knows no pen that always writes in her defence; she sees no hand that is always lifted to avenge her wrongs or vindicate her rights. Many claim to speak in her name, but few really understand her. Still fewer have the courage and the opportunity to consist ently fight for her. Her battle, tpen, is her own, to wage and win. She accepts it fearlessly and with a determined spirit. Her foe, Authority, takes many shapes, but, broadly speak ing, her enemies divide themselves i!lto three classes: first, those who abhor her both as a means and as an end of progress, opposing her openly, avowedly, sincerely, consistently, univer sally; second, those who profess to believe in her as ~ means of progress, but who accept her only so far as they think she will subserve their own selfish interests, denying her and her blessings to the rest of the world; third, those who distrust her as a means of progress, believing in her only as an end to be obtained by first trampling upon, violating, and outraging her. These three phases of opposition to Liberty are met in almost every sphere of thought and human activity. Good representatives of the first are seen in the Catholic Church and the Russian autocracy; of the second, in the Protestant Church and the Manchester school of .. politics and political economy; of the third, in the atheism of Gambetta and the socialism of Karl Marx.

Through these' forms of authority another line of demarca tion runs transversely, separating the divine from the human; INDIVIDUAL LIBE.RTY ;3:£ or better still, the religious.'from the secular. Liberty'svic tory over the fortn~r is well-nigh achieved. Last century Vol taire brought the authority of the supernatural into .dis repute. The Church has peen declining ever· since. Her teeth areetrawn, and though she seems still to show hereaJild there vigorous signs of life, she does so in the violence of the death agony upon her, and soon her power .will be felt no more. It ishuttlanauthority that .hereafter is to he dreaded, •and the State, its organ, that~n the .. future is. t6 be fe~ted. Tho~~ who hayelost their faith in gods.only to put it. in gove!'nments; tliosewho have ceased to he Church-'worshippersonly to be come State-worshippers'; those who have .abandoneq pope for king. or czar, and priest for .president or .parliament,-have indeed changed their hattle-group-d, but none the less are foes ofLihertystil1r~The Church has 1l>ecome an ohject of derision; tIte State must be, made equally so-The State is saidhysome to.~e a unecessary evil"; it mus1i.be.made unnecessary.. This cep;tury's battle, then, is with the State: the State, that de ba.sesman; the< State, that prostitutes woman; the State; that corrupts. children;' the State, that trammels .love; the. State~ 'that stifles thought; the. State, that monopolize$ land; the State., that 'limits credit; the State,. that restricts .e:x;change~ . t~~ State,. tha~ gives.idle capital the power of, increase,..,and, tHrough interest, rent" profit, 'and. taxes, robs' industrious Iaporofits products. . ". . .. " • 'ifIow the State does thcsethings, and how it can be p~e..