To the Editor of Liberty:
Not every one who has been advanced beyond the barbaric Fijian type, but certainly all who have reached that highly nervous and susceptible stage of development wherein a requirement of existence—as an essential factor to happiness—is the elimination from the environment of, at least, all the grosser discords that injure the sympathetic and aesthetic feelings, could not but regard some of the editorials that appear in the paper called Egoism (published in California) with disgust. To show the low plane of egoistic satisfaction that suffices for the wants of the editors of the said paper, I beg to point to an article over the signature H.
in the last issue (dated June 3) that has reached me,—an article that is very similar to previous articles by G.
which have already been sat upon by you. H.
lays down the law that citizens must allow parents to beat their children to all but death or permanent disablement,
or to otherwise maltreat them as they think fit, on the ground that parents, as producers of their children, are absolute rightful owners and disposers of them as of all their other products. Children are put on a par with property.
To justify this attitude H.
puts forward the principles of liberty and products to the producer, as he sees them, bowing to the word, under a supposed logical necessity, as to a fetich, without being influenced at all by the sufferings of others. Now, while I am not now concerned to discuss the logical interpretation and application of the principles mentioned, I am concerned about the attainment of the end which these principles are intended to subserve. My sympathies, my well-being, requiring that the infliction of pain shall cease (with due allowance only for the necessities of existence, and acknowledgment of the limitation of my powers to obtain all I want), I am delighted whenever I find principles formulated, as guides to conduct, which promise a lessening of pain and an increase of pleasure. But, clearly, if any of the principles I hold to for that end can be turned and twisted about as to justify aggressions or to give the protection of law to those who torture children or the lower animals,—forcibly preventing the sympathetic from shielding the latter from their parents, guardians, or so-called producers,—then such principles are a menace to those who seek harmony, and absolutely useless for the purpose for which they were originally invoked.
As it is suffering that is the prime mover for all ameliorating libertarian propaganda, it is seen that sentiency alone places any organism above all property regulations. So long as child or domestic animal is unable to get the help of the sympathetic against the cruelty of those who have power over it, there is liberating work still to be done; and, if our liberty principles cannot be extended so as to shield the child and animal, then they fall short of our requirements—the requirements of the sympathetic—and must be re-cast.
I don’t, for one moment, think Liberty’s propaganda is insufficient for its purpose, but it is worth remembering that the life is more than the creed.
Yours ever,
John Badcock, Jr.,
St. Brelades, Leyton, England, June 21, 1895.