1. FREEDOM

Well, we have at length got much of those halfputrified, half petrified remains of a Companionship out of our smell and sight. And what times. there were before and in the act of burying that pestilential and impenetrable corpse! What viperous broods were to be stopped up within, and what jackal and hyena bands to be slain off! But bestiarial metaphors are mild compared with the human actualities. In 1066 King Harold, last of the folk-kings, went out, and with him the last faint phosphorescent gleamings of Companionship. In 1137, we may hear by means of the Peterborough Chronicle, "they"- the later shepherds of the people" took those who they thought had any goods and tortured them unspeakably. Never were martyrs tortured as these men. Some they hanged up by the feet and smoked them with foul smoke; some they hanged up by the thumbs or head with armor fastened to their feet; others they tied round the head with knotted strings and twisted them until they went to the brain. Some, moreover, they cast into cells where snakes and toads were and so killed them. Some they put into torture-houses, which were narrow, short, and shallow chests, packed sharp

stones upon them, and then pressed them until they broke all their limbs." Some, too, they hitched up in spiked halters, and others they entertained with manifold devices more. Why mention, after such evidences of inventive individualism, that they starved many thousands and "spared neither church nor church-yard"?

Such plagues, however, having finally devoured all valuable victims, their virulent activity halts for lack of food, and the near-perished people has a chance to spring and to grow strong again. So, after nineteen years, according to the Chronicle, of barren fields and burned towns, and of villages "deserted at the coming of two mounted men," the good king kindly dying, the good king next in line could get sufficient help partly to cleanse the land. And so was the worst got over with.

But much remains to do, which, not demanding such immediate remedy, must be endured for several centuries before it can begin even slightly to be cured. The dead hand of authority, royal and religious, holds the individual down; and he, poor devil! happy at not being squeezed quite out of life, will bear what may be borne. Nay, will he not on some occasions kiss the hand and thank it for the room to wriggle in? The King, who had long ago been "cyning" (son of the tribe, and bearer only of lent power), now becomes Heaven's representative and very properly careful of its honor as vested in himself, and takes two or three

hundred years to be set straight about the situation once again. And, that accomplished, Upper Class must gradually be urged to sit less heavily upon the neck of Lower Class. Meanwhile some of us may not choose whom we would to talk for us on national occasions of the talking kind, must pay our taxes without such preliminary conversation, and are righteously aggrieved thereat. This too is finally adjusted on both sides of the Atlantic to the general satisfaction of the righteously aggrieved. We, on this side, have some questions of like nature to consider, but in due time get them also settled smoothly and the same on both sides of our Mason and Dixon's line. So that, politically speaking, Freedom dwells in the midst of us and waves her sheltering wings; we have the glorious privilege of choosing whatsoever we can get to talk for us, and should ever mind our debt of gratitude.

Other freedoms were, however, to be won; in which warfare progress has crept even more slowly, but gratifyingly withal. That other tyranny, which sat in Heaven and made right and wrong by word of mouth, has been reduced in some minds to benevolent despotism or to paternalism, has by others been republicanized to presidency of an Ethical Society, and by many has been abrogated and retired altogether. In like manner the domestic tyranny of former times has given place to milder modes of household government, which may be better or may be worse, but are in either case

come to remain some little while. Nay, has not the Spirit of Freedom flown in the face of Moral Law itself, refusing to be bullied about by any such impersonal phantom, and following some inner guidance of its own, not necessarily so far, far worse? In close company with which proud Spirit are apparent many anarchists of excellent character and other perfectly free persons of various species and reports.

Wherefrom it seems we may assume that Freedom in its several forms and aspects has arrived to some of us at least. We know full well that as a serious fact Freedom is far from having arrived to all of us; that as a matter of evident fact Feudalism still dwells among us, and under altered name and mildened demeanor keeps much the same old character. We know that for many of us Freedom means the liberty of choosing to take what wages we can get, for what hours, under what conditions, or to die, perhaps not unaccompanied, by process of starvation. This is our modern Feudalism, commonly called Industrialism, with acquisitive employer superseding robber baronage: it is doubtless some advance on the old system, but still far from a truly delightful state of things. And this being so, some of us will probably maintain that it is the immediate duty of all social pulpiteers and pamphleteers steadfastly to demand for these survivors of old serfdom greater and still greater degrees of genuine freedom, and