The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1895-07-16
THE RIGHT OF L1BEHTY.

Correspondence of the Progressive Farmer.
Nothing can possibly be right in law
which is wrong in morals.
Second in the order of our 'Declara-
ton of Rights" is the ~inalienable
Fright to liberty" the right to be freed
from bonds, to be liberated from the
necessity of doing or suffering injustice,
set free from the oppression of injus
tice, and made free to enjoy and to do
justice. The right to such liberty is
undeniable, and ought to be one of the
most ~unalienable personal rights.
How can we consistently talk of free
dom, of our right to liberty, while we
both suffer injustice, and admit that
we are compelled to do it." or suffer
it, in order that in the battle to live,
we may not be overborne and com
PEELED to dies
How can we consistently claim that
men are at liberty to do right and be
just and to love their neighbors, when
the consequences of our laws and the
unjust social conditions which flourish
under them, have made it essential to
trample our neighbors down and walk
over their PROSTATE forms to the vic
tory of great (O gain or small gain,
indeed, that we may thus obtain even
the means and material of perpetual
ing life.
If we do but liberate all men from
such enslaved conditions, conditions in
which they must PROSTATE themselves
as suppliants before the owners of the
opportunities to live, conditions in
which they must purchase the priv
lege of living by a legalized bond SER
vice, by unWillingly sUrrendering some
or much of the production which they
create by their use of natural oppor-
tunities, surrendered to legal owners of
the earth as the price of permission to
use it, then liberty will be something
more than an empty name. Now it is
a word juggled with to cheat the truth,
a false label attached to unjust Especial
privileges" and ~proscriptiTe powers.
Such mistakes Of government have
filled human life with the bitterness of
a universal fight to obtain and retain
advantage of our fellowmen. A strug-
gle in which necessity raises the hand
of each against every other, and in
which success ~ depends upon doing
unto others as we would not and do
not wish others to do unto us.
When men n secured freedom, are
established in their equal right to use
use the natural opportunities of the
earth, free to have, hold and enjoy all
the products of their industrial use of
it, giving up to government lin the form
of a taxi only the monopoly value of
the special privileges which society
permits them to enjoy and employ, and
receive in exchange for it a just equiv
alent in the benefits of government, the
services of public functions, then, and
only then, will liberty be established.
Then the hateful strife for ADVANTAGE
will a Natural, willing, real CO
operation and mutual self giving help
will become the social order and
the ignorance, misery and crime which
are the universal consequences and at
tendants of poverty will end. Only
then will mankind be able to abide and
put to profitable practice the Golden
Rule, and to defy and dethrone the
rule of gold.
How very simple and self-evident it
is, that if we tax and take to the public
treasury the value arising not, by indi-
Vidual industry, but by the growth of
population and general need to use
natures gifts to all men, the value of
special privilege of monopolizing
desired and desirable natural opportu.
mites, speculation in the never failing
means and source of maintaining life