already provided." "Officer, you are exceeding your duty," hotly replies Mr. Stuart; "I have made a bargain with Mr. Tucker, and, if you were at all qualified for your post, you would know that the New Abolition party demanded, in the platform upon which it 'swept the country like a wave,' the 'immediate and unconditional repeal of all statutes that in any way interfere with free trade.'" "Yes," I say, hastening to put in my oar (I use the word metaphorically, not referring at all to my boat-oar), "and you would know too that this same triumphant party demanded the 'immediate and unconditional repeal of all forms of compulsory taxation.' So I should like to see you confiscate my boat." "Oh! you're a couple of tom-noodles, way behind the times," retorts the policeman; "the demands of which you speak were numbered five and seven; but the demand in regard to ferries was a ninth and later demand, which invalidated all previous demands that conflicted with it." Mr. Stuart, being a law-abiding citizen and not one of those "Boston Anarchists" who do not believe in the State, sorrowfully steps from the boat inwardly cursing his political offspring, takes the government ferry-boat an hour later, and gets across the river just in time to lose the benefit of a lecture by a "Boston Anarchist" on "The Fate of the Individualist Who Threw a Sop to the Socialistic Cerberus."
COMPULSORY EDUCATION NOT ANARCHISTIC.
[Liberty, August 6, 1892.]
A public-school teacher of my acquaintance, much interested in Anarchism and almost a convert thereto, finds himself under the necessity of considering the question of compulsory education from a new standpoint, and is puzzled by it. In his quandary he submits to me the following questions:
1. If a parent starves, tortures, or mutilates his child, thus actively aggressing upon it to its injury, is it just for other members of the group to interfere to prevent such aggression?
2. If a parent neglects to provide food, shelter, and clothing for his child, thus neglecting the self-sacrifice implied by the second corollary of the law of equal freedom, is it just for other members of the group to interfere to compel him so to provide?
3. If a parent wilfully aims to prevent his child from reaching mental or moral, without regard to physical, maturity, is it just for other members of the group to interfere to prevent such aggression?
