To the Editor of Liberty:
Although, I hope, as thorough going an Anarchist as anybody, I was certainly startled by your proposition that children have no more rights than chattels or animals. The fact, however, that you lump these two together, although there is manifestly considerable distinction between an inanimate chattel and a sentient creature, would indicate that there may be yet further distinction between an animal and a human child, just as there are gradations in the status of the child as it becomes more and more competent to understand and make a contract.
While, however, a child progresses in intelligence and the capacity for mental suffering, it remains all its life, like an animal, equally sensitive to physical pain, and this, it seems to me, is what gives it an absolutely equal right with any grown-up person to happiness. And, as happiness is the sole end of any ethical system whatever, to deny it to children, or even to animals, is to stultify the whole science and reduce every effort towards progress to absurdity.
Indeed, it is difficult to believe that you use the word rights
here in the ordinary sense, but that your real meaning is, while admitting the abstract right of children to happiness, that it is impossible to enforce it without a still greater infringement of liberty than that which might result if parents were left free to treat their children as they pleased. No doubt there is much force in this contention, but it must be remembered that it is public opinion, far more than laws or even Anarchist juries,
which regulate people’s conduct, and to let it be admitted that children might be punished, tortured, or killed at their parents’ option would simply, in innumerable cases, lead to such outrages being perpetrated; just as in France, where it is the custom, animals are much more cruelly used than in England, where there is general sentiment and law against such ill usage. Mrs. Mona Caird’s theory, as set forth in Personal Rights, seems to be the soundest,—viz., that the rights of all sentient beings are determined by their capacities; the obvious deduction from which is that, while babies, who can feel pain but do not feel death, may be painlessly destroyed, and older children who have no purpose in life, but dread the knowledge that death is coming, may only be killed if that is done instantaneously and without warning, so no child who has begun to understand the value of life may be deprived of it without his consent, nor one who is capable of mental suffering be compelled to endure it, and no child at all physically assaulted except according to the same rules as apply to adults.
And, speaking of mental torture, I have a word to say respecting the controversy between yourself and Mrs. Dietrick. Here again the main postulate to be borne in mind is that no one has a right to cause unprovoked pain to another, and, if not physical pain, à fortiori still less mental pain, seeing that this is the worse to bear of the two. And there are greater outrageous of this nature than even to be called a fool or a thief, and where one is still more defenceless. If, for instance, a man chooses to wear long hair, or sandals instead of boots, this surely is no affair of any other person, and yet in a drawing room he would be grinned at, in the street hooted and perhaps mobbed, nor would he get any peace until he gave up his fad,
no matter how rational and even beneficial to any who adopted it, and dressed like every one else. Let a lady go along any of our lower class streets on a bicycle, especially if dressed in knicker costume, and what kind of treatment will she receive? Yet she has no redress, and, if she ventures to expostulate, the mildest answer she is likely to get will be: Pooh! there is no law against laughing.
No, there is not, and no public sentiment against it either, and consequently we all are held in abject terror, and compelled, whether we like it or not, to do, within narrow limits, the same as everybody else does.
The only chance for the weak is in combination, and just as Anarchists, by sticking together and invoking the aid of other persecuted bodies, can manage to obtain some amount of consideration, so children must look to those whose sympathies are with them to resist the tyranny and cruelty of parents, and compel them to grant the same rights to happiness as they themselves enjoy.
P.S.—One of the strongest arguments I know against Anarchism, because based on experience instead of theoretical, is the horrible tyranny and bullying that goes on in large boarding-schools. These are practically Anarchistic, since sneaking
to the master is as much tabooed by schoolboy ethics as is hitting a combatant when he is floored, and any boy resorting to such a means of protection would be ostracized. Yet, so far from such equal liberty leading to the concession of equal rights for the weak or even a sentiment of fairness, we find a most elaborate and autocratic system of aggression in force, the younger boys being treated worse than slaves by the elder, while, instead of the weak majority banding together for protection, they invariably support and applaud the bullies, and even take pleasure in witnessing or assisting in the torture or abuse of their fellows. This proves at least that the unscrupulousness and cruelty of human nature is not entirely due to the struggle for a living, and that, even where ample bodily requirements are supplied without effort, and all are on an equality and without any privileged government, there is a constant striving after mastery and delight in inflicting pain on others. Also that the general sentiment is rather with the invader than the invaded, the most flagrant example of which is the respect shown for a murderer, while every one loathes the hangman who but gives him a dose of his own medicine.
The Rights of Children. in Liberty Vol. XI.—No. 11, Whole No. 323 (October 5, 1895). 7.