Individual Liberty - Evernote

in the teeth of their interests and trustworthy for combined action." If I do mean this,
he ventures to "doubt the policy of a test which depletes, not that enormous vampire,
Uncle Sam, but our own little purses, so needful for our propaganda of ideas, several
times a year, distrainment by the sheriff being in many parts of the country practically
equivalent to tenfold taxes." If, on the other hand, I have in view a minority capable of
"successfully withdrawing the supplies from Uncle Sam's treasury," he would like to
inquire "how any minority, however respectable in numbers and intelligence, is to
withstand the sheriff backed by the army, and to withhold tribute to the State."
Fair and pertinent questions these, which I take pleasure in answering. In the first
place, then, the policy to be pursued by individual and isolated Anarchists is
dependent upon circumstances. I, no more than "Edgeworth," believe in any foolish
waste of needed material. It is not wise warfare to throw your ammunition to the
enemy unless you throw it from the cannon's mouth. But if you can compel the enemy
to waste his ammunition by drawing his fire on some thoroughly protected spot; if
you can, by annoying and goading and harassing him in all possible ways, drive him
to the last resort of stripping bare his tyrannous and invasive purposes and put him in
the attitude of a designing villain assailing honest men for purposes of plunder; there
is no better strategy. Let no Anarchist, then, place his property within reach of the
sheriff's clutch. But some year, when he feels exceptionally strong and independent,
when his conduct can impair no serious personal obligations, when on the whole he
would a little rather go to jail than not, and when his property is in such shape that he
can successfully conceal it, let him declare to the assessor property of a certain value,
and then defy the collector to collect. Or, if he have no property, let him decline to pay
his poll tax. The State will then be put to its trumps. Of two things one, - either it will
let him alone, and then he will tell his neighbors all about it, resulting the next year in
an alarming disposition on their part to keep their own money in their own pockets; or
else it will imprison him, and then by the requisite legal processes be will demand and
secure all the rights of a civil prisoner and live thus a decently comfortable life until
the State shall get tired of supporting him and the increasing number of persons who
will follow his example. Unless, indeed, the State, in desperation, shall see fit to make
its laws regarding imprisonment for taxes more rigorous, and then, if our Anarchist be
a determined man, we shall find out how far a republican government, "deriving its
just powers from the consent of the governed," is ready to go to procure that
"consent," - whether it will stop at solitary confinement in a dark cell or join with the
Czar of Russia in administering torture by electricity. The farther it shall go the better
it will be for Anarchy, as every student of the history of reform well knows. Who can
estimate the power for propagandism of a few cases of this kind, backed by a wellorganized
force of agitators without the prison walls? So much, then, for individual
resistance.
But, if individuals can do so much, what shall be said of the enormous and utterly
irresistible power of a large and intelligent minority, comprising say one-fifth of the
population in any given locality? I conceive that on this point I need do no more than
call "Edgeworth's" attention to the wonderfully instructive history of the Land League
movement in Ireland, the most potent and instantly effective revolutionary force the
world has ever known so long as it stood by its original policy of "Pay No Rent," and
which lost nearly all its strength the day it abandoned that policy. "Oh, but it did
abandon it?" "Edgeworth" will exclaim. Yes, but why? Because there the peasantry,
instead of being an intelligent minority following the lead of principles, were an