Liberty engine

“ It is a misfortune that necessity has induced men to accord greater license to this formidable engine, in order to obtain liberty, than can be borne with less important objects in view; for the press, like fire, is an excellent servant, but a terrible master. ”

“ Yet we can give it, one to another, or one man to the race. It has an infinite leverage. One great thought moves millions onward. Plant the word steam, and globe-transport changes. Plant electricity, and a hundred new industries spring up. Plant liberty, tyrants fall. ”

“ That engine is the human mind. Like the steam-engine, it is gathering power, and capability for the exercise of power, and the time will come when it will go crashing, with resistless energy, among thrones, overturning despotisms, upheaving dynasties, sweeping away those false theories of governmental institutions, which guarantee to one class of people a life of luxurious idleness, coupled with a prerogative to rule; and which dooms another class to an hereditary servitude, changeless as fate, and relentless as the grave. ”

“ And this order, quickened by such ideas and making use of such aids, becomes the instrument of new liberty and still greater union. Thus, the power of steam triumphing over the obstacles of matter, and the speed of electricity overcoming the resistance of space and time, favor the free expansion of nation toward nation, and make, I might almost say, one single society out of the most distant nations. ”

“ When we have freed our government, when we have restored freedom of enterprise, when we have broken up the partnerships between money and power which now block us at every turn, then we shall see our way to accomplish all the handsome things which platforms promise in vain if they do not start at the point where stand the gates of liberty. ”

“ These extreme cases justify what common observation demonstrates, that, as regards at least the nations of Europe and their descendants in America, progress and safety have, on the whole, been best secured by the very system which is employed in the most perfect mechanical contrivances, a system in which springs and weights, power and resistance mutually restrict the action of one another. And what is true in mechanics and politics is equally true in every other sphere. Unfettered liberty rushes speedily into license, just as certainly as, on the other hand, despotism paralyzes action. ”

“ That the old machine, the old organism, slowly elaborated in the course of history to mangle liberty, to crush the individual, to seat oppression on a legal basis, to lead the brain astray in accustoming it to servitude—will lend itself marvellously to new functions: that it will become the instrument, the means of making a new life germinate, that it will seat liberty and equality on an economic basis, awaken society, and march to the conquest of a better future!... ”

“ But if their attempts were considered of so dangerous a nature as to excite the fears and to rouse the indignation of the soberest and wisest men of the nation, what shall we say and do when we see at the helm of our general government an interest of a decidedly aristocratic and despotic character, which tries to undermine the guaranties of popular liberty systematically, and by design? — an interest which most assiduously labors to convert the whole system of our general government into a mere machine for the promotion of its peculiar objects? ”

“ But the equilibrium of capacities, the prelude of which we have seen in the division of labor, does not fulfil the entire destiny of machinery, and the views of Providence extend far beyond. With the introduction of machinery into economy, wings are given to LIBERTY.
The machine is the symbol of human liberty, the sign of our domination over nature, the attribute of our power, the expression of our right, the emblem of our personality. ”

“ I should wish, for my part, to preserve free competition between ideas, though not between individuals and groups, but this is only possible by means of what an old-fashioned liberal would regard as interferences with personal liberty. So long as the sources of economic power remain in private hands, there will be no liberty except for the few who control those sources. ”

“ These technology cannot countenance. Liberty under law presupposes the supremacy of politics. It presupposes the possibility, for example, that political deliberation might lead to the decision to postpone the introduction of a new machine. Technology, on the other hand, asserts that what we can do is worth doing ”

“ In like manner, if a number of machines are all at once introduced into the manufactures of an industrious nation, (in consequence of that freedom which must necessarily be indulged to all sorts of improvement, and without which a state cannot thrive) it becomes the business of the statesman to interest himself so far in the consequences, as to provide a remedy for the inconveniencies resulting from the sudden alteration. It is farther his duty to make every exercise even of liberty and refinement an object of government and administration ”

“ If you want the great piston of the engine to run with absolute freedom, give it absolutely perfect alignment and adjustment with the other parts of the machine, so that it is free, not because it is let alone or isolated, but because it has been associated most skilfully and carefully with the other parts of the great structure. ”

“ It is to be built on electricity. Then we are all forced into an organization around these natural forces and adapted to the methods or their application; and although we indulge in rhetoric about political liberty, nevertheless we find ourselves bound tight in a new set of conditions, which control the modes of our existence and determine the directions in which alone economic and social liberty can go. ”

“ It can only act by wielding some one or more of the forces of nature. Forces, therefore, that can be applied to the desired use must exist; and will only act according to their own laws. We can not make the river run backwards; but we do not therefore say that watermills "are not made, but grow." In politics, as in mechanics, the power which is to keep the engine going must be sought for outside the machinery; and if it is not forthcoming, or is insufficient to surmount the obstacles which may reasonably be expected, the contrivance will fail. ”

“ These, sir, ever have been used as the grand machines to suppress the liberties of the people, and will ever awaken the jealousy, of republicans, so long as liberty is dear, and tyranny odious, to mankind. ”

“ The principle of the American Government is good; the power that puts it in motion is enormous, and therefore, like the complicated machinery I have compared it to, it requires constant attention, and proper regulation of the propelling power, that it may not become out of order. The propelling power is the sovereignty of the people, otherwise the will of the majority. The motion of all propelling powers must be regulated by a fly-wheel, or corrective check, if not, the motion will gradually accelerate, until the machinery is destroyed by the increase of friction. ”

“ An enlightened zeal for the energy and efficiency of government will be stigmatized, as the offspring of a temper fond of despotic power, and hostile to the principles of liberty. ”

“ Now, all the schemes about voting, and districts, and annual Parliaments, and the rest, are engines, and the water or steam—the force that is to work them—must come out of human nature—out of men's passions, feelings, desires. Whether the engines will do good work or bad depends on these feelings; and if we have false expectations about men's characters, we are very much like the idiot who thinks he'll carry milk in a can without a bottom. ”

“ Nowhere is so vast a mass of mechanical power collected. Nowhere does man exercise such a dominion over matter. These are the works of the nation. Compare them with the works of the rulers of the nation. Look at the criminal law, at the civil law, at the modes of conveying lands, at the modes of conducting actions. It is by these things that we must judge of our legislators, just as we judge of our manufacturers by the cotton goods and the cutlery which they produce, just as we judge of our engineers by the suspension bridges, the tunnels, the steam carriages which they construct. ”

“ On the one hand, we want the machinery of the government to be all-powerful, able to do anything, and on the other hand we want the engineer, the people, to have great power so as to be able to control that all-powerful machine. ”

“ This tendency to ascribe every thing to the visible proximate agency, and to forget the hidden powers without which the agency is worthless—this tendency which makes the child gazing at a steam-engine ascribe every thing to the combination of parts it sees, not recognizing the fact that the engine can do nothing without the steam-generating boiler, and the boiler nothing without the water and the burning fuel, is a tendency which leads citizens to think that good government can be had by shaping public arrangements in this way or that way. ”

“ They shew that a paper system was not introduced for national defence, and that it can transfer property, transform parties, and change the nature of governments. Avarice, and a conviction of its power as a political engine, suggested its introduction j and events have proved that this conviction was correct. It is an engine which is able to usurp and hold a government; therefore it will contend for dominion. As it will contend, it must experience defeat or victory. It is also an engine having no resemblance in interest to land, labour or talents ”

“ Given the conditions supposed in this book, I repeat—a complete monopoly of the air, with an absolute suppression of all political rights—no other outcomes are possible than slavery or violent, physical revolution. As I have made Gabriel Armstrong say: "The masters would have it so. Academic discussion becomes absurd, in the face of plutocratic savagery. And in a case of self-defense, no measures are unjustifiable."
I believe in political action. I hope for a peaceful and bloodless revolution. But if that be impossible, then by all means let us have revolution in its other sense. ”

“ Let me at the outset urge upon you to remember that, while machinery is important, it is easy to overestimate its importance; and, moreover, that each community has the absolute right to determine for itself what that machinery shall be, subject only to the fundamental law of the nation as expressed in the Constitution of the United States. ”

“ It is like coming out of a stifling cellar into the open where we can breathe again and see the free spaces of the heavens to turn away from such a doleful program of submission and dependence toward the other plan, the confident purpose for which the people have given their mandate. Our purpose is the restoration of freedom. We purpose to prevent private monopoly by law, to see to it that the methods by which monopolies have been built up are legally made impossible. ”

“ It is, in every view of it, a blessing truly sacred and invaluable.—Without Physical Liberty, man would be a machine acted upon by mechanical springs, having no principle of motion in himself, or command over events ”

“ As he sees the constant disregard for law all around him, liberty becomes license in his mind. Then as he prospers and grows well-to-do, building laws, factory inspection, fire protection, and other attempts at government regulations, often seem to him restrictions which are to be evaded as much as possible. ”

“ We were led to believe that a machine-gun government would transform itself into a printing-press government once the old régime was shattered. We saw it shattered—and the vast Empire became a shambles.
Freedom is in the hearts of a people, and not in legislative halls. The congress of a nation is but an expression of the freedom which the people feel in their hearts—the machine, but not the fuel which drives it. It is futile to send representatives of the people to a congress if the people do not know what they want to express. It results only in autocracy, in exploitation. ”

“ Our own Federal Constitution is a striking example of this machine conception of government. It is probably the most important instance we have of the deliberate application of a mechanical philosophy to human affairs. Leaving out all question of the Fathers' ideals, looking simply at the bias which directed their thinking, is there in all the world a more plain-spoken attempt to contrive an automatic governor--a machine which would preserve its balance without the need of taking human nature into account? ”

“ Is, then, the boasted Liberty a liberty of life? One comes and goes with ease as great in England as in America. There are even certain restrictions imposed in the home of Freedom, of which we know nothing on this side the Atlantic, where we fear the curiosity of the Press as little as we dread the exactions of hungry monopolies. Of many examples, two will suffice to illustrate the hardships of a democratic tyranny. ”

“ Might not the discovery of the new engine be lost to America forever? If the daring act had been perpetrated on behalf of another nation, might not that nation, having Thomas Roch in its power, be eventually able to extract from him what the Federal Government had vainly endeavored to obtain? ”

“ There is some force at work in this town which, year after year, brings forward groups of men who proclaim a new dispensation. They are, in so far as they have any cohesion, held together without bonds now. All formal bonds will chain them to the past. For electrical force you must adopt electrical machinery; for moral force, moral bonds. All this political system is the harness for the wrong passion. Every scrap of it imprisons your power. The average American citizen is slow to see that you can exercise political influence without the current machinery. ”