protector against aggression, and will maintain it as long as its services are needed in that capacity.
If Mr. Read, in saying that the power of the State cannot be restrained, simply meant that it cannot be legally restrained, his remark had no fitness as an answer to Anarchists and voluntary taxationists. They do not propose to legally restrain it. They propose to create a public sentiment that will make it impossible for the State to collect taxes by force or in any other way invade the individual. Regarding the State as an instrument of aggression, they do not expect to convince it that aggression is against its interests, but they do expect to convince individuals that it is against their interests to be invaded. If by this means they succeed in stripping the State of its invasive powers, they will be satisfied, and it is immaterial to them whether the means is described by the word "restraint" or by some other word. In fact, I have striven in this discussion to accommodate myself to Mr. Read's phraseology. For myself I do net think it proper to call voluntary associations States, but, enclosing the word in quotation marks, I have so used it because Mr. Read set the example.
A MISINTERPRETATION OF ANARCHISM.
[Liberty, March 8, 1890.3
One of the most interesting papers that come to this office is the Personal Rights Journal of London. Largely written by men like J. H. Levy and Wordsworth Donisthorpe, it could not be otherwise. Virtually it champions the same political faith that finds an advocate in Liberty. It means by individualism what Liberty means by Anarchism. That it does not realize this fact, and that it assumes Anarchism to be something other than complete individualism, is the principal difference between us. This misunderstanding of Anarchism is very clearly and cleverly exhibited in a passage which I copy from a keen and thought-provoking lecture on "The Outcome of Individualism," delivered by J. H. Levy before the National Liberal Club on January lo, 1890, and printed in the Personal Rights Journal of January and February:
If we are suffering from a poison, we find it advantageous to take
a second poison, which acts as an antidote to the first. But, if we are
