living on my capital, and if you wait you starve,'-is that capital, which stands in the way of Jem's freedom, a natural or an artificial hinderance? Unrestricted competition. If that is Richard Cobden's motto, let him take for supporters the shadows of the Kilkenny cats. Theirs was unrestricted competition and much came of it. The bit of fluff on a bloody field should be such free traders' armorial bearings. . Unrestricted competition is just unlimited anarchy. It is going back again to savagery. But savages set some limits to individual dealings. The real type of the Cobdenite free trader is the Ouran-outang. Unrestricted competition is the rule of his life; and Richard Cobden himself might envy his absolute freedom from all artificial hinderances. Free trade is bestial anarchy, if free trade means only unrestricted competition. It is the rule of the craftiest. Monkey-rule. Would we therefore justify protection? Not so! What is called protection is no more protection than what is called free trade is really free trade. Protection, in parliamentary slang, means only a preference given to certain persons. A privilege. Messrs Tory and Son were to have the exclusive right of robbing the nation to such a tune. Messrs Tory and Son were to have a monopoly of this. Free trade, also in parliamentary slang, means only that the monopoly shall be extended, that Mr. Manchester shall share the privilege. If the people at large can get any benefit out of the extension, we will make the most of it; but we do not mean the rabble to be free traders. Let them call themselves so on public occasions, and clse be freely traded in. So far free trade is like universal peace (both of the Cobden mint): an understanding between the Powers. masses may be The And free trade if honestly meaning unrestricted competition is, as aforesaid, only the anarchy of Ouran-outangs. Free trade without protection is but anarchy. That old Tory monopoly was a bungling endeavour at a truth; the new 'radical' free trade is also a half-sighted looking toward truth. Liberty is not without equality. What is freedom? Not that you and I should do whatever we list. Not that every man's hand should be against every man. That would be unrestricted competition. Freedom has its limits. What are they? I am free. You are free. To what extent? Am I free to enslave you? What becomes of your freedom? We both are free. Then clearly the freedom of each limits the freedom of the other. But I am stronger than you. If the only limit to my freedom is your weakness or my will, or such respect as I may have for your freedom, I may not be content till I have made you my slave. Is freedom only the despotism of force, the tyrannic freedom which takes liberties' with another? Some law must intervene: to say to my freedom-So far shalt thou go, and no farther. That law cares for the weaker. It is protection. There is no real freedom without protection. The 'freedom' which exists without it is such freedom as exists in Russia-where the Tsar is free and none else. We want no Tsars, even of Manchester build. We do not want a 'garrison,' Mr. Cobden in free quarters, with a nation of slaves at its command. And for what have we freedom? Again, it is not for the injury of each other. Not for our own injury either. But it is not our own injury to be even forcibly prevented from injuring another, from picking and stealing, whether the pretence be free-trade, or free-lance. Freedom is for the sake of growth, of perfection,-growth of the individual for the sake of the universal growth, as the growth of the branch adds to the value of the tree,-perfection of the individual toward the perfecting of the race. Freedom is not a mere means of increasing the number of my stolen cocoa nuts. Ay! free trade is good. But what is free trade? THE TRADE OF FREE MEN. And what is trade? THE INTERCHANGE OF BENEFITS. The bringing to me what I need and receiving in exchange what is needed by the bringer. To sell eye-less needles to savages is not trade, but fraud. To buy labourers at a famine price is not trade, but robbery. When you would say free trade, inquire first whether you mean free trade-or free fraud, free theft,-it may be free murder. For there are men slain on factory-thresholds, and women and children still murdered in the depths of English mines, in the name of free trade, merely for the want of such inquiry. Ay! free trade is good; and excellent the protection of human rights through which only free trade is possible-the fair trade which is the frank interchange of benefits between free men. Will a Disraeli or a Cobden lead us to it? The one asks protection but for certain rascal interests, the other free trade for another set of rascalites. Protection to the one is a monopoly of theft, and free trade to the other but the monopoly extended. The free trade of free-men. How shall that come till men are free? The free trade of slaves is only for their masters' benefit. It is the difference between our republicans and the Manchester school. Their lives are in their shops. Their freedom is only for their trade. We would be free first, and our trade should be like our lives: free and protected. The freedom of each bounded by the freedom of the rest. of all. This is the pure and simple principle of Free Trade. And for the good TWEEDLEDUM AND TWEEDLEDEE. The difference 'twixt the Tweedles, dum and dee: Dear brother knave! to pick the People's pocket? J. Watson, 3, Queen's Head Passage, Paternoster-Row London.-No. 54, Jan. 6. ATHEISM AND ATHEISTS. ATHEISM (ά0ebтns, Greek) a denying or disbelieving the Being of God. ATHEIST (ά0eos, of á, privative, and Oeds, God) a Person which denies or disbelieves the Being of God. Bailey's Dictionary. Atheism: without God. An Atheist one who denies God, one who does not acknowledge God. The denier has to prove his negative. The atheists of our day generally avoid this dilemma. Only they will not acknowledge. Here then we will deal with the non-acknowledgment. Of those who do not acknowledge there are two classes- -the theoretical, and the practical. Some indeed are consistent enough to be both; but these are few. The PRACTICAL ATHEIST is he who, acknowledging God with his lips, disavows Him in his acts. Who on Sundays prays to God, and all the rest of the week knows nothing of Him. Who in church or chapel owns His laws, 'revealed' or learned from science, to be his rule of life, and out of church or chapel busics himself in law-making, law-supporting, or law-obeying, in direct opposition to what he believes God's law to be. This sort of only practical Atheist will listen to or repeat no end of texts, treating of love toward his neighbour, of the equal brotherhood of men before God, of the worthlessness of riches, the beauty of righteousness, the duty of building up the living church. He will readily and regularly assent to this in his Sunday pew, and sometimes between his Sunday meals; but how much of it walks abroad with him on the Monday morning, to his counting-house, or factory, or shop, to the senate or the market-place, where his hand is against every man and every man's hand against him, where his neighbour' is a rival in trade, and his equal brother before God the raw material from which he grinds his profits, where he knows no worth like money, no beauty but success-matters not how knavishly abominable, and where he altogether forgets the living church of Godexcept to sneer at some enthusiast Vane who dreamed of making man's law accord with God's, and the State a church of living men devoutly worshipping God by acts of service to Humanity? Sunday after Sunday our twenty-thousand law-established priests, and how many thousands more dissenting only on some trifling form, declare aloud their faith in God, their certainty that every act of human life, as a sced sown for eternity, should be conformable to God's order. Whoso shall only with his lips gainsay this, him they pronounce an infidel-without God-an Atheist and accursed. Quarrel as we may with the form and manner of their words, their Whose sense is truth. And whose work-day lives does that truth condemn ? lives are condemned by the million responses of those who weekly echo that condemnation ? Whose lies are condemned by other millions, who, though they repeat not a priestly formula, yet dare not other than confess with their lips the God their daily, hourly acts deny? These thus condemned are the practical Atheists. Happier the THEORETICAL ATHEIST, who, equally inconsistent, confesses God in deed, though not in word, who leads a godly life, albeit his mind is darkened, —like a blind man walking straight along the road wherein the seeing stumble. One such we could now point to. Purely, nobly natured, richly gifted and well-cultured, energetic, earnest, ever prompt in service to his kind. Looking on his outer life you shall think-Here indeed is one who worships God; on the broad earth you will find none more lovely, none more worthy of your respect. And yet, inquire deeply of this man's motive and principle of action: you find it not faith in God, but a mere sentiment of finite Beauty,-good taste, no more. Theoretically he is an Atheist. shall What matters the principle if the result is good? What have we to do with his motives? Everything. For this man stands before the world (as indeed does each man more or less) as an example, or a warning-to be studied—to be followed or avoided. His life shows beautifully. You will attempt to fashion yours by it. Will you get happiness by merely copying a happy smile? Will you feel the actor's depth of passion by putting on his mask. Know you not that deeds are but the outer growth of thoughts? You must go down to the very roots of being to be You will find this godlike life is but a matter of taste. sure. You will lean on And if taste can be sufficient motive for such a life, is not that sufficient? Ay! there's the rub. That if is the whole question. Sufficient for him may not be sufficient for you. What if you have not his perfect sense? his example to your ruin. He is the exception. We want a principle of action which may be enough for all; that out of godly thoughts good deeds may surely come. We will not depend upon the accident of taste. We need a law. Here is the mischief of theoretical Atheism. It gives us chance instead of a sure dependence upon God; it weakens or destroys the only motive sufficient for universal action, that belief in God, from which springs aspiration, endeavour, and the law of endeavour-which is duty. We have preferred the theoretical to the practical Atheist. Certainly. The first may be honest; the second never is. Nevertheless theoretical Atheism is more mischievous than the practical. Whoso, confessing God with his lips, denies him in his acts, stands self-convicted before the world. But the good life of the theoretical Atheist misleads men; and his theory is made a justification for the other's practice. The real question before us here is the effect of the theory of Atheism. We repeat that it is to justify an atheistical practice; and that, notwithstanding the most exemplary conduct of the theorists. For that conduct can not be set to the account of their profession, which is a mere negation. Nor can not be a principle of action. Some accident,-taste, early bent of life, want of other temptation, may make their lives correct; but how can we trace the correctness to the mere denial or ignorance of God? But we shall be told that Atheism is not a mere negation; its positive side has been discovered. At least so says the accredited organ' of the founder of the new school of Secularism, which is only Atheism under a less obnoxious name. Here is the accredited exposition of 'positive principles.' "The Freethinking is the secular sphere. Drawing its line of demarkation between the things of time and eternity, it works for the welfare of men in this world. It asserts that Morality is deducible from the nature of things, and Duty from the Solidarity of Human Interests,' etc. Never mind the contradiction of free-thought being confined to things of time by a 'line of demarkation' which shuts out eternity; we have now to do with 'Morality' and 'Duty,' placed here as two separate things, one deducible from 'the nature of things,' the other from the 'solidarity of human interests.' What is the nature of things? Can any Reasoner, of never so little reason, answer off-hand? Does not that very phrase open up all the dispute between Theist and Atheist ? Does not the Theist also assert that Morality is deducible from the nature of things? What things? and what is that nature? Atheistic Thought, calling itself free, does but shirk the inquiry, with its line of demarkation' to stop all search into the origin, the original nature, of things. Is the passage we have quoted mere words, to hide the utterer's ignorance? Pass we to his 'Duty, deducible from the Solidarity of Human Interests.' Communist jargon! Who is to deduce it? Each for himself, since each must judge of his own interest.' Duty, then, is just what each may think his own interest, as a part of the solidarity. A Cain, a Cæsar Borgia, a New Zealand Cannibal, a Sawney Bean, or a Louis Bonaparte,-each has his sense of 'interest,' which is to light him to the solidarity' from which he may deduce his 'duty.' Admirable Reasoner! But-A practical idea of duty arises in a sense of obligation. The sum of civilization and freedom we find existent, the benefits of which we accept, we are bound to preserve. A sense of honour leads to this return.' Is not this shifting the ground? Just now Duty was deducible from the solidarity of interests.' Now it arises from 'a sense of obligation.' Obligation is duty. That is to say-duty arises from a sense of duty. The 'honour,' perhaps, is of some new chivalric order, an invention which, since it is not very exactly described, we may for this present forbear to examine farther. 'Bound in honour'! The But, we are bound to preserve the sum of civilization,' etc. An Attila, or a Pope Pius, may show us the efficacy of the bond. new chivalry again! However 'A man who refused to accept of the bequeathed by his ancestors, and refused any aid at might be said to have no duties.' fruits of past civilization the hands of his fellows, In other words, if a man could do an impossible thing he would have no duties. How does that prove that duty is based on the solidarity of human interests? But we altogether deny this hypothesis of a justifiable evasion. Duty is indeed deducible from the solidarity of human interests, if and only if |