But these laws were of small avail, for, in 1648, the Court is grieved to confess: "It is found by experience that a great quantity of wine is spent, and much thereof abused to excess of drinking and unto drunkenness itself, notwithstanding all the wholesome laws provided and published for the preventing thereof." It therefore orders, that those who are authorized to sell wine and beer shall not harbor a drunkard in their houses, but shall forthwith give him up to be dealt with by the proper officer, under penalty of five pounds for disobedience. In 1636 one "Peter Bussaker was censured for drunkenness to be whipped and to have twenty stripes sharply inflicted, and fined £5 for slighting the magistrates," etc. In March, 1634, it was ordered, "that Robert Coles, for drunkenness by him committed at Roxbury, shall be disfranchised, wear about his neck and so to hangg upon his outward garment a D made of red cloth and set upon white; to continue this for a year, and not to leave it off at any time when he comes amongst company, under penalty of 40s. for the first offence and £5 for the second." What was the efficacy of the whipping or the "scarlet letter," we are not informed. Of course, people capable of such legislation must frame fantastic definitions of Liberty. Here is an old one whose sentiments have been often parroted by unthinking humans of modern times. It reads: "True Liberty consists in a freedom of doing and receiving good under the protection of a government solicitous for the people's good." Such has always been the tyrant's conception of freedom, and, strange to say, finds many endorsements even to this day. It has recently been solemnly announced from the judicial bench that the only liberty an American has is the liberty to do the right thing, of course according to other people's conception of right. That is precisely the kind of tyranny or liberty that was enjoyed by the victims of the paternalistic laws above described. Persons afflicted with newspaper intelligence express their conception that the individual has no rights that government may not invade, by that hollow phrase, "Liberty under the Law." Liberty under the law is what the government-ridden peasants of Russia enjoy. Liberty under the law was the pleasure of those who expired with indescribable agony on the rack and amid the flames. Liberty under the law was meted out to the millions of victims of the witchcraft delusion. Liberty under the law was also the liberty of our Southern chattel slaves before as well as after the war. Liberty under the law is the same old idea of liberty which every tyrant has ever advanced. As for myself, I shouldn't object to a little liberty in spite of the law, when that does not conform to the rule of liberty as laid down by Herbert Spencer in these words: "Every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man." AIM AND TACTICS OF THE TRADE-UNION MOVEMENT. By MAX BAGINSKI.