In an article on “Anarchism in England Fifty Years Ago,” reprinted in the February 1906 issue of Liberty, Max Nettlau discussed two very early anarchist publications printed in England. One of these was an edition of Edmund Burke’s Vindication of Natural Society, published By Holyoake and Co., in 1850, under the title The Inherent Evils of all State Governments Demonstrated. The particular interest in this edition of Burke’s work comes from the Appendix which followed it, probably the work of Ambrose C. Cuddon, in which Josiah Warren’s “system” (he hated the word but…) of equitable commerce is presented as an alternative to all those inherently evil state governments.
Cuddon was one of the few people that Warren seems to have treated as something like a partner in reform. Cuddon was Warren’s contact in England, and Tucker remarks that he remained involved in the promotion of equitable commerce into his old age. It would be interesting to get a look at the issues of Cuddon’s 1861 Cosmopolitan Review, which appears to be scarce, if available at all, in the U. S.
Nettlau’s article is very interesting, and contains some leads to be followed with regard to Henry Edger, though it is also probably, as some readers may remember, the source of possible misinformation about John Gray.
Liberty Archive update: 303 of the 411 issues of Liberty and Libertas are now available as pdfs. That’s about 1980 pages, out of 3610. Another two issues, 120 or so pages, have been transcribed, and posted at From the Libertarian Library. That puts the archive over the 2000 page mark: not quite the home stretch yet, but getting there.
