Workmen's advocate. (New Haven, Conn.) 1883-1891, 1886-06-06
LIBERTY AND FREEDOM.
Ertrdct from Groal,mdS "Co-operatire
Commonwealth"

on elderly" the fear lest freedom
should be drilled and disciplined out Of
human life, in order that the great mill
of the Commonwealth should grind
smoothly. To ascertain whether this
fear is well grounded or not we must
first know what we are to understand by
the words: "Freedom' and elderly"
Everybody calls the not being OPP
pressed, "I.iberty." That is, undoubt-
eddy, an Indispensable and yet, Us has
been said, most insignificant fractional
part of human freedom. Then again. we
mean by Liberty the not being re
strained, being "at liberty" to do this or
that. Now, tina, may be good thing or
otherwise. Whether it is the one or the
other depends entirely upon the answer
to the question: to do trhdt
To be lat liberty" to be a tramp or to
die OF starvation, or to steal, or to be
lodged in Jail are not good things. We
sometimes find great lout in railroad
car who thinks he is at liberty to spread
himself over four seats, but occasionally
he finds out that he is not; that he must
take his feet down and sit along. The
liberty of this lout is the elderly" which
our shrewd, grasping, vulgar autocrats
glorify, for it means the predominance of
their interests over everybody else's in
terests, over the General Welfare 1t is
in the name of that liberty" that all
fleeing is done
OF that kind of liberty there always
has been too much in the world-some-
where. That kind of liberty means
slavery to somebody; means, as the
Yankee defined it, ito do what he liked
and make everybody else
Every struggle for real liberty has been
a struggle against that sort of Liberty"
entrenched in classes. Progress demands
the curbing of that kind of elderly"
and our Commonwealth will use no
gloves IN handling 1t.
The fact is, there is a radical difference
between liberty to do the right thing and
liberty to do the wrong thing. That is
why young Spencer could not draw any
sound conclusian from his so-caled
"prlnclple: that every man has free
dom to do all that he wills provided he
does not infringe on the like freedom of
any other man, because no one can do
any wrong act, without doing harm to
other men; or as Professor Huxley puts
it: "The higher the state of civilization,
the more completely do the actions of
one member of the social body influence
all the rest, and the less possible is it for
one man to do u wrong thing without in.
terferlng, more or less, with the freedom
Of all his fellow citizens"
AS Liberty is such hazy term, why
use it at all, when we have such elori-
Gus word in the English language as
freedOm? There is the same difference
between Liberty" and Freedom" as
between Fright and Might" between
Fiction and Fact, between Shadow"
and Substance.
"FreedGm' is something substantial
A man who is ignorant is not free A
man who is a tramp is not free. A man
who sees his wife and children starving
Is not free. A man who must toll
twelve hours day, in order to vegetate,
Is not free. \ man who is full of cares
Is not free. 4 wage-worker, whether
laborer o clerk, who every day for GER
tam hours must he at the beck and call
OF 'master" is not free. As Shelley
says in the Apostrophe to Freedom.
For the laborer thou art bread"
Right, SO far. But Freedom is not
alone bread, but leisure, absence of cares.
seli-determination, ability and means to
do the right thing. Restraint very often
Is just requisite TO develop that ability;
indeed, Restraint is the very life of Free
dom.
Freedom is something the individual
unaided can never achieve. He is az
drift-wood in flood. 1t is something to
be conferred on him by well organized
body polite.
Now certain people have altogether
too much liberty" Our Commonwealth
VIII evolve that priceless good FREEDOM.