Shawn P. Wilbur has a blog on which he graciously posted a full index of a journal entitled LIBERTY from August 1881 to April 1908. It was published in Boston by Benjamin R Tucker. The subtitle of the journal is a quote from Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (French Jouurnalist and politician 1809-1865) "Liberty, not the daughter but the mother of order". In Volume VI - No:24, dated 'Boston. Mass., Saturday, January 25, 1890' there is an article entitle 'The Woes of an Anarchist' by a man named Wordsworth Donisthorpe. I put on my hat, and off we drove to the conference-room of the big club with the odd name. “National” was first used as a political term by the late Benjamin Disraeli to signify the patriotic as opposed to the cosmopolitan and anti-national. “Liberal” was first used in a political sense about 1815, to denote the advocates of liberty as opposed to the “serviles” who believed in State-control. And yet the members of the club avowedly uphold State-interference in all things, and dub the doctrine of laissez faire the creed of selfishness. Still the building is fine and commodious one, and what’s in a name, after all?
When we reached the political arena, Mr. Headlam, who is a Socialist, was in the middle of a very able individualistic harangue. Indeed, I have never heard the case for moral liberty better stated and more courageously advocated than on this occasion. I was anxious to hear what the censor party might have to say. I half-expected to see some weary ascetic—perhaps an austere cardinal—rise in his place and wade through some solemn passages from the sententious Hooker. I was agreeably disappointed when a chirpy little Scotchman with an amusing brogue and a moth-eaten appearance started off with prattle of this kind: “Gentlemen, there’s no one loves liberty more than me. But we’ve got to draw a line at decency, you see. I’ve been elected to sit on the Council and to see that that line is drawn at the right place. That is my duty, and my duty I mean to do. Everything which is calculated to bring a blush to the cheek of a pure maiden must be put down. And there’s another thing: I say that music-halls where intoxicating liquor is sold must be put down. We are not going to tolerate places what incites to fornication and drunkenness. But at the same time we are no foes to liberty,—that is, liberty to do right, and that’s the only liberty worth fighting for, depend upon it.” Mr. McDoodle slapped his knee with emphatic violence and sat down. “I should like to ask the last speaker,” said a thin gentleman in a back row, “whether it is altogether consistent for a State which has repealed every statute penalizing fornication itself to keep up a lot of little worrying measures for the purpose of penalizing conduct which may possibly lead to fornication. In other words, fornication is perfectly legal, but a song likely to lead to fornication is illegal. Is this consistent?” “Allow me,” shouted a stout man with a loud voice; “perhaps, being a lawyer, I know more about these matters than Mr. McDoodle possibly can. The gentleman who asks the question is in error. His major premise is false. Fornication in this country is a misdemeanor, by 23 and 24 Vict. c. 32.” “Pardon me,” replied the voice in the back row, “I also am a lawyer, and I say that the Act you refer to does not make fornication a misdemeanor; it refers only to conspiracy to induce a woman to commit the sin; that is a very different matter.” “I don’t see that it is,” replied the stout man, “for what is a conspiracy but an agreement to do wrong? Very well, then, an agreement between a man and a woman to do wrong is itself a conspiracy. And since they cannot commit this sin without agreement (if they do, of course, it comes under another head), it follows that I am right.” “Not at all,” rejoined the lawyer at the back, “not at all; I fear your ideas of conspiracy are a little mixed. If you will consult Stephen’s Digest of the Criminal Law, which I hold in my hand, you will find these words: ‘provided that an agreement between a man and a woman to commit fornication is not a conspiracy.’ I suppose Mr. Justice Stephen may be taken to know something about the law.” Chairman (coming to the rescue)—“I think, gentlemen, we are getting off the lines. Perhaps Mr. Gattie will favor us with a few words?” “I confess, sir,” responded that gentleman, “I confess I am in a difficulty. Are we discussing whether indecency is wrong or not? Or is the question before the meeting whether Mr. McDoodle and his coadjutors are the proper persons to act as censores morum? My own views on these three points are these: that indecency, when properly defined, is wrong; that Mr. McDoodle and his friends are not competent to define it, nor to suggest means for suppressing it; and, finally, that the State had much better leave the settlement of the question to public opinion and the common sense and common taste of the people.” A whirl of arguments, relevant and irrelevant, followed his speech, which contained references to a pretty wide field of State-interferences, showing their invariable and inevitable failure all along the line. One apoplectic little man was loudly demanding an answer to his question “whether we were going to allow people to run down the street in a state of complete nudity.” That is what he wanted to know. Some one replied that in this climate the danger was remote, and that the roughs would provide a sufficient deterrent. Some one else wanted to know whether it was decent to hawk the Pall Mall Gazette in the streets, and a very earnest young man inquired whether his hearers had ever read the thirty-sixth chapter of Genesis, and whether, if so, it was calculated to raise a blush to the cheek of virtue. A wag replied: “There is no cheek about virtue.” And so the ball was kept rolling. And we left without having formed the faintest idea as to whether the State should interfere with the amusements of the people or not; whether it should limit its interference to the enforcement of decency and propriety; what those terms signify for the practical purpose; whether in any case it should delegate this duty to local authorities, and, if so, to what authorities; whether it should itself take the initiative, or leave it to persons considering themselves injured; whether such alleged injury should be direct or indirect, and, in either case, what those expressions mean. However, a good deal of dust had been kicked up, and even the most cocksure of those who had entered the lists went out, I doubt not, with a conviction that there was a good deal to be said on all sides of the question. That, in itself, was an unmixed good.
Bravo to Wordsworth Donisthorpe, Benjamin R Tucker and Shawn P Wilbur.
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