ately, with an unthinkable
fatuity we permit him to be told that but for the very agencies that
have put him in possession he could successfully assert a God-given and
world-old right to the noses of others. At present the honest fellow is
mainly engaged in refreshing himself upon his own nose, consuming that
comestible with avidity and precision; but the Vaillants, Ravechols,
Mosts and Willeys are pointing his appetite to other snouts than his,
and inspiring him with rhinophagic ambition. Meantime the rest of us are
using those imperiled organs to snore with.

'Tis a fine, resonant and melodious snore, but it is not going to last:
there is to be a rude awakening. We shall one day get our eyes open to
the fact that scoundrels like Vaillant are neither few nor distant.
We shall learn that our blind dependence upon the magic of words is a
fatuous error; that the fortuitous arrangement of consonants and vowels
which we worship as Liberty is of slight efficacy in disarming the
lunatic brandishing a bomb. Liberty, indeed! The murderous wretch loves
it a deal better than we, and wants more of it. Liberty! one almost
sickens of the word, so quick and glib it is on every lip--so destitute
of meaning.

There is no such thing as abstract liberty; it is not even thinkable.
If you ask me, "Do you favor liberty?" I reply, "Liberty for whom to do
what? Just now I distinctly favor the liberty of the law to cut off the
noses of anarchists caught red-handed or red-tongued. If they go in for
mutilation let them feel what it is like. If they are not satisfied with
the way that things have been going on since the wife of Duke Albert the
Pious was held under water with a pole, and since the servitors of the
Suabian nobleman cherished their vestigial ears, it is to be presumed
that they favor reversion to that happy state. There is grave objection,
but if we must we will. Let us begin (with moderation) by reverting
_them_."

I favor mutilation for anarchists convicted of killing or inciting to
kill--mutilation followed by death. For those who merely deny the right
and expediency of law, plain mutilation--which might advantageously take
the form of removal of the tongue.

Why not? Where is the injustice? Surely he who denies men's right to
make laws will not invoke the laws that they have wickedly made! That
were to say that they must not protect themselves, yet are bound
to protect him. What! if I beat him will he call the useless and
m