Page:Instead of a Book, Tucker.djvu/166

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INSTEAD OF A BOOK.

the rearing of a family. To hold a man whose association with such a girl has been sanctioned by her free consent and even her ardent desire guilty of the crime of rape and to subject him to life imprisonment is an outrage to which a whole font of exclamation points would do scant justice. If there are any mothers, as the journal of United Labor pretends, who look upon such an outrage as a protection against outrage, they confess thereby not only their callous disregard of human rights, but the imbecility of their daughters and their own responsibility for the training that has allowed them to grow up in imbecility. "Has Liberty a daughter?" further inquires the Journal of United Labor. Why, certainly; Order is Liberty's daughter, acknowledged as such from the first. "Liberty not the daughter, but the mother, of Order." But it is needless to raise the "age of consent" on account of Liberty's daughter. Order fears no seducer. When all daughters have such mothers and all mothers such daughters, the Journal of United Labor may continue to regard them as the "worst of womankind," but the powers of the seducer will be gone, no matter what may be fixed as the "age of consent." Because Liberty holds this opinion and expresses it, Powderly and Litchman profess to consider her a "disgrace to the press of America." Really they do not so look upon her, but they are very anxious to win popular approval by pandering to popular prejudices, and so they took advantage of the opportunity which Liberty's words gave them to pose as champions of outraged virtue while endeavoring to identify Anarchism with wholesale rape of the innocents.


AN UNFORTUNATE ANALOGY.

[Liberty, November 5, 1887.]

A question has arisen in England whether the public have a right of access to the top of Latrigg in Keswick Vale, the public claiming such right and certain landowners denying it. It is probable that the claim of the public is good, but, as I am not informed regarding the basis of the landholders' title in this particular case, it is not my purpose to discuss the matter. The London Jus, however, has discussed the matter, and I refer to it only to expose an inconsistency into which that journal has fallen. It seems that Mr. Plimsoll, who champions the claim of the public, has made this declaration: