Liberty - Saturday, July 13, 1895

A "Liberal" Comstock

It is not agreeable to pass harsh judgment upon opinions uttered by a friend, especially so good a friend of Liberty and its editor as Dr. E. B. Foote, Jr., has been and is; but, since he forces upon my notice his view of the State's attitude toward Oscar Wilde, I do not see that I can well avoid the necessity of saying that the letter from him which is printed in another column seems to me the most intolerant, fanatical, and altogether barbarous utterance that has come from a professed ultra-liberal since I have been engaged in reformatory work. Even were the claim made out that Oscar Wilde has been guilty of invasive conduct, the mere expression of the wish that he were to spend twenty years, instead of two, at treadmill service or at oakum picking, would still betray such an inability to distinguish between the varying degrees of interference with liberty as is generally due to the fanatic's hatred of sin rather than to the sane man's desire to protect against crime. To exhibit ferocity in this degree a man must be as ready to punish for indirectly and theoretically harmful consequences as was the Catholic Church when it burned men at the stake for what it considered the most pernicious of all practices, the teaching of heresy.

But the claim of invasive conduct is not made out. In the first place, I believe Dr. Foote to be entirely mistaken in his conception of the crime of which Wilde was convicted. I have nowhere seen it stated that he was tried for "seducing others to his evil ways." It is true that the absurdly squeamish public opinion which has forced upon a press that usually shrinks from filth only when it sees no money in it a certain degree of circumspection in its accounts of this affair has left us all a good deal in the dark, not only as to the seduction, but as to the "evil ways" themselves. Still it is my understanding that Wilde was found guilty of illegal practices, not of inducing others to participate in them. This view is borne out by the remark of the foreman of the jury, made in the court-room, that, if Wilde was guilty of the charge preferred against him, then Lord Alfred Douglas was guilty also. Such a remark conveys the idea that the charge was not seduction, for the law does not consider mutual seduction a possibility in such a case. If any of my English comrades can inform me definitely what the charge was, I would be glad to have him do so. Meanwhile, unless Dr. Foote can show that the charge was seduction, I adhere to my view that seduction did not enter into the case, even legally; and, if this be so, then Dr. Foote's entire argument falls to the ground. For he seems to admit, though with numerous "ifs" and "buts" and an evident reluctance that is significant of the authorltarían spirit within him, that mature and responsible persons who simply "revel in their own debasement" are entitled to be let alone.

In the second place, supposing the charge to have been seduction and the facts to have been as claimed by the prosecution, the indictment, in a court of equal liberty instead of ordinary law, would have been promptly dismissed on the ground that the alleged victims (not only Lord Douglas, but the others) were themselves mature and responsible persons and, as such, incapable of any seduction of which justice can properly take cognizance. Will Dr. Foote maintain that there is anything sacred and God-appointed about the age of twenty-one which certain men have undertaken to fix as the age of maturity and responsibility? In the eyes of an Anarchist every person is mature and responsible who can assert and maintain his self-sovereignty. Every such person has a right to do as he chooses, provided his conduct is non-invasive; and no one can rightfully be punished for persuading such a person to perform an act not in itself invasive and punishable. All of Oscar Wilde's associates, so far as known, were in this sense mature and responsible, and therefore it is entirely unjust to charge him with seducing them. Dr. Foote, in treating these persons as irresponsible minors, is simply paralleling the absurd and outrageous agitation of the "Arena" people for a high-age-of-consent régime. He desires to force upon boys, as they desire to force upon girls, a condition of infancy unnaturally prolonged, — and with even less excuse, because under present conditions boys are able to assert and maintain their self-sovereignty at an earlier age than girls. This being the diagnosis of Dr. Foote's case, I am not the proper party to attend to it. I commend him to the attention of Mrs. Lillian Harman.

Dr. Foote is not an Anarchist, and has never claimed to be one; though not adhering consistently to any political philosophy, for some years he has seemed to me State Socialistic in his tendencies. But I did suppose that he had arrived at a degree of understanding of what Anarchism means. I now see, however, that equal liberty is a complete mystery to him. This is shown conclusively by the following sentence: "If the State have no function in this matter, it will also have to let alone the marquis who uses a gun against his son's ‘uncle.'" It is obvious that Dr. Foote here uses the word State, not in accordance with the Anarchistic definition, but as covering voluntary association for defence; and his declaration, then, is that, if associated citizens may not punish Oscar Wilde, then the Marquis of Queensberry may. Now, it directly follows from the doctrine of equal liberty that what one individual may rightfully do a number of individuals voluntarìly associated may rightfully do, and, conversely, that whatever such associated individuals may not rightfully do, no one of them may rightfully do. Applying this to the case in point, we see that, if the Marquis of Queensberry is entitled to punish Oscar Wilde, then the community of which the marquis is a member is equally entitled so to do; and that, if the community has no such right, then neither has the marquis. Assuming that Oscar Wilde is not an invader, it would be incumbent upon the defensive association to punish any one, even the Marquis of Queensberry, who should assume to treat him as such. How absurd is Dr. Foote's mísconception of Anarchism when he declares that it must allow an individual to assault a non-invader!

The question of Oscar Wilde's sanity I do not propose to discuss, though I will allow myself the remark that, comparing Wilde's writings with Dr. Foote's present letter, I find Dr. Foote the less sane of the two. But we have no occasion to consider the matter of sanity. All non-invasive persons are entitled to be let alone. whether sane or insane. The question of sanity arises only after invasion has been established, and it arises then only to determine the manner in which the invader shall be treated.

The claim that there is no possibility of useful life on the part of Wilde after be comes out of prison (putting aside, of course, the fact that the imprisonment itself may cripple him forever) is best met by the statement that, even if everything alleged against Wilde be true, he has been from the beginning of his career one of the most useful of men. Not only are his writings a permanent addition to the world's literature that cannot be offset by his personal vices, but even his enemies admit that he has been perhaps the most influential factor in the achievement of that immense advance in decorative art which England and America have witnessed in the last decade. Now, unless it be true, as some foolish persons think, that art is a matter of little or no importance, Wilde has here contributed to the world's welfare a great, broad, far-reaching, and long-enduring force beside which the influence of his personal habits, however objectionable, must appear only as dust in the balance. If Wilde's two sons, "who look like him," turn out to be really like him, I think he will be forgiven for fathering them. The impertinence of authoritarianism reaches its climax in this proposition of the Foote family, father and son, that the State shall decide who may procreate. Moreover, it tends to verify my prophecy, in "State Socialism and Anarchism," regarding the culmination of governmentalism.

Answering now the questions put to me in Dr. Foote's concluding paragraph, I will say that, if the "little girls" seduced by the librarian in Prospect Park were as big as those "boy" victims of Oscar Wilde, whose cases Dr. Foote finds so interesting, then the persons who "caught"' the librarian ought to be deprived of their liberty for a period long enough to enable them to learn what equal liberty means; that, if, on the other band, the girls had not reached an age of responsîbility (as defined above), a similar deprivation of liberty should be inflicted upon the librarian; and that Jack-the-Ripper should be treated precisely as any other murderer. Upon the "varied assortment of sexual perverts" ranging between the librarian and Jack-the·Ripper I must decline to pass in a lump. Simple sexual perversion is not a crime, and I refuse to sentence any sexual pervert until I know precisely what he has done.

And now, if I may apply the argumentum ad hominem, let me ask Dr. Foote, Jr., if he is aware that his own father, Dr. Foote, Sr., by the unorthodox attitudes that he has taken in his public and medical career (and I refer to them for my part only to his credit), has "so conducted himself as to give his sons a public stamp of opprobrium"? If his sons are so sensible as to accept this stamp as an honor rather than a shame, the fact is accidental; perhaps, too, Oscar Wilde's sons may not be ashamed of their father. Of course, I must not be misunderstood as instituting any intrinsic analogy between the course of Dr. Foote, Sr., and the acts of Oscar Wilde, but the necessities of the argument justify me in reminding Dr. Foote, Jr., that, in the eyes of the public, to be convicted by Comstock is scarcely a less disgrace than that which has fallen upon Oscar Wilde, and that, if to bring opprobrium on one's family is in itself a crime, then Oscar Wilde and Dr. Foote, Sr., are alike criminals. It is within my knowledge that there are not a few people in this community (some of them radicals, too) who look upon Dr. Foote and his son as leading lives, if not of villainy, of something bordering upon it. I hope it is needless to say that I do not agree with them, and that I hold, in fact, precísely the opposite opinion. In referring to this, my sole purpose is to warn Dr. Foote, Jr., of the tyrannical attitude which he takes when he advocates the imprisonment of non-invasive persons whom he happens to consider dangerous. The letter which he has just written might have been penned by Anthony Comstock himself; even its phraseology is Oomstockian. It forces me to look upon its author, much to my regret, as another Comstock, not yet in power.[T.]