"What is Anarchy? Admirers of the writings of that master poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, will probably remember the definition he gives in his celebrated poem, "The Masque of Anarchy":

We shall presently see that Shelley's words hold good today, except that the name has been transferred to the opposite party, and is not now used to define "God and Kind and Law," but to define the principles of that party which Shelley so ably champions. But there is another definition of Anarchy;it is a similar picture to the foregoing, except that he is the symbol of lawlessness allied to disorder and violence. Who is not familiar with the terrible picture of Anarchy, the horrible spectre, mounted on his "horse of death," riding furiously over every man, woman, and child that come in his way, and ruthlessly trampling them to death in his wild career, in the name of lawlessness? This is the popular conception of Anarchy. It is the Anarchy described by newspaper scribes and lexicographers, - the big black bogie of the politician, - the synonym for war, murder, tumult, and general social discord. Such is Anarchy as defined by its foes, - those foes who willfully misrepresent it to guard their own vested interest by so doing, and another class of foes, more numerous and influential, who take up the cry of the former, utterly unconscious of its true character and of the bearing which it has upon their own individual welfare. News constantly flashes through the wires, or is carried through the post, telling the public of some diabolical plot of the Russian Nihilists, or some terrible insurrection among the Anarchists and the Dynamiters of Europe. Nobody troubles to ascertain the nature of the channels through which the news has filtered; nor do they trouble to ascertain the source from, or the conditions under, which it emanated. They are quite satisfied in taking the prescription just as their typographical physicians have prepared it, and never trouble to ask themselves if they are imbibing mental poison, instead of legitimate news as they imagine. Even those who pride themselves upon their scepticism in matters of theology are frequently among the first to condemn the actions and principles of the great heroes of the antipodes, simply on the bare statements of a contaminated and deceptive press. It is not, however, their action so much as their principles which I intend to lay before you, although they are so intimately connected - their principles being principles of action - that it is impossible to speak of the one without occasionally alluding to the other. Neither do I propose to merely state the principles of the Anarchists, but to defend them also.

I have given the commonly-accepted definition of Anarchy, - that is, the definition as given by non-Anarchists: now let me give the definition of Anarchy as understood by the Anarchists themselves. Anarchy is Individualism consistently carried out and put into practice. It is the doctrine of autonomy, laissez faire, independence, and liberty. It is the doctrine which accepts all the social principles of that most advanced school of thinkers of which Herbert Spencer is at the head, and does not fear to carry them to their logical conclu- sions, even though the greatest expounders of those principles may fail to do so themselves. Anarchy, in short, is to politics what atheism is to theology. Atheism says: defy the priest, who robs you under the authority of a god; Anarchy says: defy the ruler who robs you under the authority of a State, as well. Atheism says: be free in your thoughts; Anarchy says: be free in your thoughts and actions too. Atheism says: face the gods like a man; Anarchy says: face all existence like a man. Atheism says: from the gods be free; Anarchy simply says: BE FREE!

As Atheism means "without God," so Anarchy means "without Government." It rejects all authority, whether emanating from gods, goddesses, kings, queens, popes, priests, presidents, or parliaments. It refuses to be crushed out by the rule of majorities or minorities, by monarchies or republics, by aristocracies or democracies, and by law-makers and law- executioners of all kinds whatsoever. The only truth it recognizes is the law of equal freedom. The only right it recognizes it the right to live, - the right of self- preservation, - the right to live as best the intelligence dictates, exercising every function of one's nature to one's best ability, and taking upon one's self the necessary responsibility of every action so performed. Its watchword is: "The equal liberty of each, limited by the equal liberty of all." And all the tyrannies which have so cursed the world in the course of its painful development is wages war with to the death. No matter what sacred halo may enshrine a deed; no matter what air of sanctity may pervade an institution, - if it fails to recognize that principle of equal liberty of all, Anarchy set its brand upon it, Anarchy is at war with it. If a papacy claim a divine appointment to govern mankind, Anarchy repudiates it. Your authority is false, says Anarchy, and, if it were not, we should still oppose it, because it is a tyranny and an enemy of liberty. Should the monarch claim the same right, he would receive the same answer. Should the president, the prime minister, the governor, or the chief secretary say: "We have been appointed by a majority of the citizens to dictate methods of action to each individual," Anarchy tells them they stand self-condemned, - for any act of a majority to coerce a minority is a direct infringement of the law of equal liberty, and as great a tyranny as the others. Should a legislative body, without a president, without a chief secretary, without a head of any kind, attempt to control the actions of the community, acting under the sanction of a majority who had elected them to office, Anarchy would still deny their right to infringe the liberty of the minority: aye, although that minority be a minority of but one individual; for Anarchy knows no mathematical line of demarkation between a just tyranny and an unjust tyranny, no mystic property in figures which decides the morality of an act. Anarchy does not say that, because one individual out of a thousand has no right to coerce the rest, therefore somewhere further down in the scale a number can be found which has that right. It used to be thought that, in a society of a thousand members, one out of the number had a right to rule the rest: that was a despotic monarchy. Then it was thought that he had the right to do so, if he had five hundred to back him up: that was a limited monarchy. Then it was thought that the five hundred had the right to do so, if they picked another out of the remainder in place of the one who originally rules: that was a republic, with a president at its head. Then it was thought that the five hundred and one had the right to rule the other four hundred and ninety-nine, so long as they, or their representatives, voted in a body (that is, by dispensing with the office of a president, and not being split into two sections as they were formerly); that is the modern ideal democracy.

This constant changing of the forms of government is all very amusing to those who have not to pay for it. But what about those who have to suffer all these experiments? Where is the minority all the time? Where are th four hundred and ninety-nine or any lower figure that it may be, - perhaps one? Where are they? Forgotten! Every individual composing the minority is "The Forgotten Man," to use Sumner's excellent expression. All this foolish game of political chess has been played, and what for? Why is the limited monarch moved to the square lately occupied by the despotic monarch, and he subsequently removed off the board by the president? Why has this costly and fruitless game been played? Why, simply that the pawns should be enabled to see sufficient of its surface as silent spectators, and should lose sight, in the excitement of the game, of the part they themselves were playing in it. The rulers, the politicians, the tricksters, said to the people: "Here, we will give you a lolly to suck in the form of a vote, and it will keep you quiet; you will vainly hope by that means to checkmate us, but it will not give you the power; and you will continue to help us in carrying on the game, under the impression that you stand as good a chance of winning it as we do; you are too foolish at present to know that political chess is a game of 'heads I win, and tails you love.'" But Anarchy come along, and says to the stupid voters: "Wake up! open your eyes, and see what you are about; you are not feeling yourselves with your votes; you are killing yourselves; you have got a State tape-worm inside of you, and you are feeding that instead; take an emetic in the form of a healthy mental revolution; if it doesn't act after a time, try a stronger does,- -mix a little dynamite with it; that will help you to remove one of the worm, and you will have very little difficulty in passing the rest, for they will only too willingly fall in with your ideas when they find your medicine too strong for them." And that is the method by which Anarchy proposes and has already commenced to cure humanity of the social diseases which have hindered its progress for so many untold generations. "We did not succeed, because we were mere talkers, incapable of real work", said the Nihilists reproachfully of themselves; and the cry, "Let us act," soon became a bye-word with them. And one needs not to be told that they put their resolutions into practice; even the falsifying press has told us that much.

But whence comes Anarchy? What are the circumstances which have brought it into existence? It is simply the revolt of intel- lectual man against the degrading principle of authority, which his ignorant and brutish ancestors have handled down to him. In the earlier stages of human existence, men, in order to avert the constant depredations of their kind, elected one of their number chief, or leader, of the general body, and, while acting under his leadership, acknowledged the supremacy of his dictates and voluntarily appealed to him to arbitrate between them in their little disputes one with another. This appears to have answered its purpose very well in the early stages of man's career, but, as society become more complicated and knowledge became diffused among the members, this chieftainship began to assume the nature of a tyranny rather than a blessing. The greatest wisdom had hitherto bee the distinctive characteristic of the chief, but now it had become the general characteristic of the people as a whole, and in many instances the subject showed more wisdom than his ruler. In other words, the chieftainship of primitive ages had developed into that form of monarchy seen in modern times, where the king or queen, though blessed with all the luxuries and attractions which modern ingenuity can bring, - the costly trappings, the gaudy shows, the immense displays of wealth and mock charity, - is no longer received with that reverential and unquestioning devotion which characterized his or her less gaudy but more potent prototype. The lot of the modern monarch is one of extreme danger to himself, to say the least of it. The divine right which used to hedge a king has been swept away by the keen logic of modern scepticism, and the humblest laborer does not fear to proclaim himself a republican. He no longer admires the monarch's wealth, because he has realized the fact that he has to pay for it. He no longer looks upon his ruler as a majestic hero, when he proclaim war with another nation; but he looks upon him as a robber and a mercenary self-seeker, who sends his subjects to be butchered like so many rats in order that he may still further drain the pockets of the poor fools who so liberally support him in his grand system of spoilation and stolen luxury. The modern monarch durst not leave his palace, lest some brave Nihilist or Dynamiter shall seek revenge for the thousands of missing and brothers whom he has consigned to exile or to death. The time has passed for monarchy, for the people have learned that with power they are tyrants, and without it they are useless expenses. An absolute monarch is the simplest and most perfect form of government possible, and consequently it is the worst possible system for the governed. And as the kings have had to disclaim any divine appointment and to practically admit that the only right they have to their position is the right of might, the people have said to them: "Be it so! if might is right, we shall put our respective strengths to the test and see on whose side the might lies." When a community has settled matters with its king, instead of dispensing with the office, it hands it over to the parliament or government, and when it finds its new master as treacherous as the old one, it sets about trying to hold the "reins of government" itself. It is here that the voting swindle comes more fully into play, and the wily politician proposes "universal suffrage" as a panacea. The tyranny of one man had been shown by experience to be detrimental to human welfare, so it was proposed to make every man a tyrant as far as possible by letting every adult individual have a vote in the election of representative rulers. But this does not materially change matters, for one half of the community are still without representatives, - that is, the half who voted for unsuccessful candidates. And even the successful voters who did return their representatives are not much better off than the unsuccessful ones. They are really no more "represented" than the others. Could a greater mockery exist than that involved in the word "representative"? Can any man be represented by any one else? Are there any two men alike in the world? Of course not. Then how ridiculous to say that one politician represents a few hundred individuals, not one of whom he resembles, and who, furthermore, differ from each other!The majority have no more returned representatives than the minority have done. What they have returned are men with ideas and crotchets of their own, or men with no ideas at all, as is oftner the case, - men who in their hearts can say with the pious editor:

Some of the "representatives" are superior to that type, but even they are in most instances little better than the others. They are all tarred with the same brush; and the despicable tyranny of the common-place politician is carried on in an equally effective, though not so open a manner, by the wealthy idler who represents "respectability." One and all are office-seekers, trying to get cheap honors and well-filled pockets by following up the contemptible trade of minding other people's business, under the hollow pretense that they are their "representatives." No wealthy legislator can represent the hard-working, poorly-fed mass of the population; neither can a "poor" man, returned on the "payment of members" system, represent them, for the individual is transformed in the operation. He is now a paid servant in an easy government billet, and no longer the hard-working and poorly-paid man that he was before his election; and he is no longer a representative of the class which returned him when his circumstances resembled their own. And the probability is that, if he went in a honest man (as occasionally happens), he will come out a rogue.

In the face of all this bamboozling, what is to be done? dignity and your individualist to the few professional politicians, who are deserving of nothing from you beyond contempt for their mischievous meddlesomeness. Do not countenance this pernicious system, which ignores the rights of every minority and every individual who is leading the progress of society. When next you go to register your vote, - that sugar-coated pill, - remember what the politician says of it:

And let the voter bear in mind that every time he gives his vote he is assisting to perpetuate a system which has been continually waging war with the best interests of mankind. No matter what class may be in the ascendancy, the results to the ruled are disastrous nevertheless. If an aristocracy of wealth be represented, it means the enactment of more arbitrary and cruel laws to wring more securely from the laborers the necessaries and luxuries of which they are the sole producers. If the "poor" are represented, it means the enactment of laws to supply the requirements of the thriftless, the stupid, and the good-for-nothing at the expense of the industrious, the careful, and the hard-working, - robbing the successful Peter to pay the unsuccessful Paul. No party, no individual, is clever enough to legislate for others with good results. It takes a clever man to run a large business; but it wants an omniscient one to run a government. Every class government is an unqualified tyranny, whether it be a conservative House of Lords, or a House of Commons which refuses to allow Charles Bradlaugh to do what it does itself, or a government like that of Liberal (U.S.A.) [a town], which refuses to allow its inhabitants to erect and attend churches and public-houses; it is still a tyranny of the once class in power, arbitrarily dictating to all the other classes what they shall do and what they shall not do, irrespective of what the others are anxious to do in the matter. All governments are tyrannies; and that is why revolutions have generally resulted in the substitution of one tyrant for another, and why the general elections always produce a similar result, and "parliamentary reform" always turns out to be a sham. Reform comes from without, and it is useless to expect a government to reform itself when its own self-interest warns it against taking such a fatal step. Reformers in the past, and many in the present, who ignore the face that "history repeats itself," have continued to formulate schemes for the improvement of society, by means of the tyrannical institutions of which I have been speaking. All those people who are known under the generic name of State Socialists have aimed at modeling society on a totally different basis from that on which it rests at present, and hope to achieve their reforms by means of those demoralizing institutions founded on compulsion...All institutions which seek to force mankind to perform certain actions are based on the principle of slavery, and cannot fail to do harm to human welfare.

The natural function of government is to perpetuate slavery; for the more reverence three is in the people, the more they are law-abiding and cowardly, the more humility and loyalty they show, the easier it is for the few adventurers called "the State" to rule over. them. No State can make much progress where the individual members of the community are brave, independent, and self-reliant. It is only the humble and the meek who submit to such a body. The idea of a State setting about to make people moral and prevent crime! Could absurdity go much further. Fancy a mixed body of novices and charlatans setting up as judges of crime, and passing acts to prevent it, without knowing what crime is, what produces it, or what will remove it. One of the most potent causes of crime is the want of self-reliance. And yet this is the very quality which all governments tend to destroy in the individual, directly they set about government him. Government have tried to suppress drunkenness and only succeeded in intensifying it, and turning honest people into sly grog-sellers. Governments try to make people moral by passing laws upon laws and torturing and imprisoning their victims. No one can fully define morality, and yet every ignorant government acts as though it actually knew more about it than other people. Heresy is immoral, says a government, and forthwith it persecutes a Columbus and a Galileo, burns a Bruno, and imprisons a Bennett or a Foote. A priestly government creates an inquisition, and a political government builds gallows and prisons, and makes laws to fill them. A government tries to keep the press pure, and inaugurates a vigilance which soon develops into a rigid censorship, which it requires a Nihilist to overthrow, or it enacts the most iniquitous laws, which it takes a Wilkes, a Bradlaugh, or a Symers to break. In the defense of the nation or the individual the State again fails to do as much good as evil. It makes legal expenses so extravagant that many a man has been ruined in trying to right a wrong by its assistance. It sets guard over us a body of policeman who in many instances are not better than itself, on the principle of "setting a thief to catch a thief." Its courts of justice are but a mockery of the name, frequently as unjust as they are uncertain; for they are always dependent on bad laws, the interpretation of which is often dependent on the humor of a judge or the state of his stomach. So little are the judges to be relied on for meting out justice that nine people out of ten have more faith in an ordinary body of jurymen, picked haphazard from every Tom, Dick, and Harry who passes by. That individual is best protected by the law who manages to keep out of is meshes. Long ago Bacon said that every man should know sufficient of the law to make him keep out of it, and his axiom holds as good as ever, and will continue to do so as long as men are slaves, and until each is a law unto himself. As to the State's protection of the nation, history has plentifully supplied the record of wars and international intrigues which it has developed in that direction; and the cost and inutility of standing armies has been pretty well estimated People are already beginning to learn that to be a soldier is to be a slave, and to pay taxes to support the army is to be a worse slave still. The British taxpayer is finding that, while was pays his rulers, it does not pay him. The State has defended (?) [sic] the English nation during the last two centuries by involving them in an expense of something like sixteen hundred million pounds, all of which has come out of the wealth - not the money - produced by the laboring classes.

The governments sometimes try "the 'prentice hand'" on the management of the railways, the shipping, or the building operations of the country, and everywhere they leave a trail of devastation behind them. Even in the post-office, that cheaply-conducted, extensively-patronized institution, they conduct the business with less efficiency and at greater expense than private companies, whom they cannot compete with, and consequently have to drive out of the market by making their competition criminal, or carrying on their own system at a still greater loss, which has to be borne by the taypaying public. Bungling and dishonesty characterize nearly every government undertaking. They superintend the management of the public libraries, art galleries, and museums, and close them on the very day in which the great bulk of those who are taxes to support them can only find time to visit them. The celebrated Sunday question, the laws regarding oaths, and the whole question of Church and State, show what little justice is to be expected from governments, and how they always take tyrannies under their wings and work together for a common object. The States have made such moral cowards of the people that they actually tolerate laws against libel; and the stupid and vexatious laws to regulate the sale of poisons they bear almost without a murmur. Even laws against vice are allowed to pass unquestioned, - laws "to save the individual from himself," to prevent him gambling and getting drunk, to make him insure his life, to prevent him from committing suicide when they have made his life unbearable.

Then the State becomes quack physician and decides that some shall practice the healing art and some shall not: a certain "diploma" shall be necessary to allow a man to practice as one of the "profession," - one of the monopoly which has grown out of that great monopoly, "the State." Nor content with going so far, they step between the parent and the offspring, and under threats of fine and imprisonment compel the unhappy parents to submit their children to that abominable and filthy practice, - vaccination, - it being to the interests of "the profession" to have it perpetuated. With the same kindly interest, the ignorant handful called "the State" next tells the parent what he shall do for his offspring in the way of education; how he shall be compelled to send his child to a State school to be formed by second-rate teachers into a common-place individual; and how, if he has no child, he shall pay taxes with which other people's children shall be "educated." And by the time it has so crammed the child with "education" that its little brain has been turned, it bundles it off to a lunatic asylum to drag out its miserable little life in the company of other lunatics consisting of madmen and madwomen, people slightly "touched" and others quite sane, - all in fact, except the very class whose presence there would be the most advantageous to society, - the legislators themselves. After a while, the little creature dies, and is buried in a State cemetery,t here to rot and emit poisonous gases with which to destroy the health and shorten the lives of those whose turn has not yet come to return to their maker, the earth, The parents dare not subject the dead body to cremation instead, in order to ward off these evils because it is "unlawful" and "sinful,' as it is called respectively by the twin life-destroyers, the Church and the State, in their omniscient wisdom.

And what says Anarchy in all this roguery? It says: Mind your own business. Anarchy says a man shall choose what physician he likes, and take the risk of a bad choice without being dictated to by the ignorant "State." It tells the parent to refrain from having his child vaccinated if he believes it to be injurious, or to have it vaccinated and take the consequences if he believes it to be beneficial. It tells the parent to educate his child in what he thinks necessary, and to choose the teachers and the place of education himself. And Anarchy tells the parent to dispose of the body of his dead child in whatever manner his judgment and good sense commend.

There is not corner free from the machinations of the State clique. They find their way into the factory and the store. But Anarchy with eagle eye is ever on their track, and well it need be, for "the price of liberty is eternal vigilance." Anarchy says that manufacturers, like all other people, should be left to manage their own affairs in their own way; and that no mischievous Factory Acts nor Eight Hours Bills should undertake to manage it for them. Neither should a government exist to dictate who shall work and who shall not whether he be an Englishman or a Chinaman, of whether he belong to any other nationality. Anarchy says no government shall interfere in the commercial affairs of individuals and nations, but each shall be free to deal with whom he likes, and to exchange what commodities he chooses to. He shall divide his labor as he finds convenient, and shall have his industries conducted simultaneously over the whole world if he finds it in his interest to do so. In this department, as in all others, Anarchy is satisfied with nothing short of absolute Free Trade. Every laborer shall do what he likes with the products of his own labor; and no "State" shall rob him of a large portion of it, as they now do, by means of compulsory taxation. Unfettered natural selection shall then operate upon the distribution of products to the advantage of our food and food-supplies, as it now operates upon other necessities which the State has not yet got it "protective" grip upon. The enormous waste of wealth by the State, its outlays upon wars, monarchies, aristocracies, government, civil services, pensions, and the thousand and one other natural jobberies that government is heir to, shall thereby be cut off by having their supply stopped at the source. Capital shall then represent wealth and not currency, and the Issues of money shall be responsible for the repayment of it in the necessaries of life. Individuals shall be free to adopt what form of currency they desire and find most convenient, whether it be metallic money or paper money, private money or national money. There shall be no laws to imprison a man for issuing "unlawful" money, but each will be a liberty to adopt his own system, and the fittest system will survive. Plutocracy, shorn of its monopoly, shall no longer be the toiler's master, but shall be reduced to the useful function of acting as his servant.

Poverty will probably exist as long as humanity does, but without a State to foster it with its robberies and its poor-laws it will be transferred from the shoulders of the taxpayer to that of the idler. And who shall bring about the change? The legislators, whose interests are directly opposed to the legislated, are not the ones to look to for liberty in this direction. Their interests are as wide apart as the poles asunder. Law-making is the natural function of the legislator, not law-repealing. It is only the outside influence - the Anarchical influence - which can do it.

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