WHAT IS LIBERTY?
[To THE EDITOR or THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—I hope you will admit my protest against your assertion that you would not be acting justly if you failed to express " admiration for the way in which the miners as a whole have refrained from disorder." That is to say that, supposing they had not refrained from disorder, you could not have seriously blamed them. We do not admire a man for refrain- ing from crime. Men who take their stand on their liberty to sell their own labour at their own price may be expectet naturally and excusably (you imply) to use violence in order to prevent other men from doing exactly the same. This is surely not what you mean, but it is what you say ; you excuse the conduct abstinence from which you admire. It is such language as this on the part of thinkers which induces, on the part of the thoughtless, acquiescence in the supra-legal position of a class and the surrender of honest labour to tyranny.—I [It is something of a novelty for us to be treated as apologists for trade-union tyranny. We cannot, however, admit that men under strong temptation are not to be praised for doing their duty. We should have condemned disorder unsparingly, but it was none the less pleasant to be able to refrain from such condemnation. Instead of feeling that working men may be excused for having resort to violence to prevent others from working, we regard "the right to work'' in its true sense as a right which the State must at all costs secure to all its citizens. If it fails to do so it has been guilty of dereliction of duty in an essential matter.—En. Spectator.]
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