Henry Glasse

“ In expounding Anarchism we are met by a certain stolid repugnance as well as a seeming inability to grasp our idea, and this we find to be owing to a prepossession in favor of Government. Let us therefore examine and see if this superstition is based on common sense, or whether it is not the result of prejudice carefully maintained and cultivated in the past by those who have put themselves forward as the guides of humanity. ”

“ In no historic time has Government failed to encounter Revolt, either overt or covert; individuals or classes have at all times contended to subvert the dominion of other classes or individuals in order to win that dominion for themselves. ”

“ There is, it seems to me, no other way of combating this prejudice—for prejudice, I think, it has been shown to be—than by patient reiteration of our principles and repeated pointing out of their logical character; in this way we shall go on in the future, as we have already begun, to familiarise the popular mind with our ideas, which is the indispensable preliminary to their acceptance. In this good work let us persevere; our success will be commensurate with our efforts. ”

“ Moreover, so accustomed are people to regard those who propose political changes as candidates for political power, that when they hear that Anarchist propagandists do not desire power or place, and reject authority for themselves as well as for others, they are puzzled to conceive the motive which actuates them, used as they themselves have always been to regard the desire for personal advancement as inseparable from the role of an agitator ”

“ Insurrectionary and opposition leaders have always posed as deliverers of the people in order to gain its support, and have taught it to regard the exercise of power and the spoils of office as the just reward of their condescension in taking up the cudgels on behalf of its interests. ”

“ Obviously, therefore, during the many ages that personal ambitions and rival castes hare warred for supremacy, it has never suited them to so much as even hint to the vile populace whose help they were soliciting that the evils it suffered were inherent in Government itself ”

“ We might be tempted to answer this question in the affirmative, but for another fact which is co-universal with Government and which entirely upsets its claim to be in harmony with man's moral and social nature. ”

“ So, also, in the ancient classic story, Jupiter dethrones his father Saturn, and in his turn becomes "Father of the gods and King of men." I have spoken of the hostility of individuals and classes who happen for the time to be out of power, as directed against those who for the moment are in power ”