ADDRESS 
 
 Lyman /AD 
 
 (Editor “The Outlook’*) 
 
 at a Mass-Meeting in 
 Carnegie Hall, New York, 
 March Fourth, 1907 
 
 auspices 
 
 FRIENDS OF RUSSIAN 
 FREEDOM 
 
 Issued from Headquarters 
 
 500 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 
 
3 
 vVY 
 
 O r l 
 
 > I 
 
 X 
 
 VSA 
 
 FRIENDS OF RUSSIAN FREEDOM 
 
 500 Fifth Avenue, New York 
 
 r 
 
 Edward M. Shepard, President (Attorney), 
 New York 
 
 Rt. Rev. David H. Greer, Vice-President 
 (Bishop-Coadjutor Prot. Ep’l Diocese), N. Y. 
 
 Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 
 Vice-President (Author), Boston 
 
 George Kennan, Vice-President (Author), 
 New York 
 
 Seth Low, Vice-President (Publicist), New York 
 
 Herbert Parsons,' Vice-President 
 (Member of Congress), New York 
 
 William Jay Schieffelin, Treasurer 
 (Merchant), New York 
 
 Theodore Hardee, Secretary , New York 
 
ADDRESS 
 
 or 
 
 OF 
 
 2 
 
 * t 
 
 Dr. Lyman Abbott 
 
 When an American invites his fellow- 
 citizens to give their moral and material 
 aid to revolutionists who are endeav¬ 
 oring to overthrow the government of a 
 country with which his own country is 
 at peace, it behooves him to state clearly 
 and concisely the reasons for such ac¬ 
 tion. The presumptions are always 
 against war; they are always against 
 revolution; they are always against in¬ 
 terference in the affairs of one nation by 
 the people of another nation. This 
 threefold presumption must be overcome 
 in order to justify the extension of moral 
 and material aid to the revolutionary 
 party in Russia. The reasons for ex¬ 
 tending such aid must indeed be very 
 . compelling. I may be permitted to state 
 the considerations which, in my own 
 mind, have overcome this threefold pre¬ 
 sumption against the cause with which 
 we are asked to identify ourselves. 
 
 The primary object of government is 
 % the protection of persons and property. 
 We differ among ourselves widely as to 
 other functions. Some of us are social- 
 
 A 
 
 I 
 
 o i. o o o 
 
ists and some individualists. We differ 
 widely among ourselves as to the best 
 form of government, and some of us *' 
 believe, as I do, that there is no one 
 best form, that different political organ¬ 
 izations are needed for different com- ^ 
 munities and different epochs, and that 
 is the best government which best fulfills 
 its appointed ends. But monarchists, 
 aristocrats, democrats, individualists, 
 socialists, all agree in this, that the pri¬ 
 mary function of government is to pro¬ 
 tect persons and property. If it fails to 
 do this, whatever its form, whatever 
 other’ functions it may pretend to fulfill, 
 it fails in that which is primary and fun¬ 
 damental and which justifies its exist¬ 
 ence. We may differ on the question 
 whether governments derive their just 
 powers from the consent of the governed, 
 but no American questions that govern¬ 
 ments are instituted and should be ad¬ 
 ministered for the benefit of the gov¬ 
 erned and primarily for the protection of 
 their persons and their property, and few 
 Americans will question the affirmation 
 of our Declaration of Independence “that 
 whenever any form of government be¬ 
 comes destructive of these ends it is the 
 right of the people to alter or to abolish 
 it, and to institute a new government 
 . . . and provide new guards for their 
 future security.” Because the Russian 
 Government signally fails to protect per- 
 
 2 
 
 f 
 
sons and property; because it has be¬ 
 come destructive of those ends for which 
 * governments are instituted among men; 
 because the last vestige of hope that it 
 can be so modified as to become an in¬ 
 strument for the preservation of life, lib¬ 
 erty, and the pursuit of happiness has 
 disappeared, we believe that it is the 
 right and duty of the Russian people to 
 overthrow their present government and 
 to provide some new guards for their 
 future security. 
 
 We do not protest against autocracy 
 because it is autocracy, nor against 
 bureaucracy because it is bureaucracy; 
 nor demand that the Russian people 
 adopt our form of government or use 
 our methods for the protection of funda¬ 
 mental rights; nor insist that it shall 
 extend its functions and become more 
 socialistic or limit its functions and be¬ 
 come less socialistic; nor even demand 
 that it shall adopt what we are accus¬ 
 tomed to regard as fundamental guar¬ 
 antees of liberty, such as the separation 
 of Church and State, a representative 
 assembly, the responsibility of the min¬ 
 istry to that assembly, and the respon¬ 
 sibility of both to the people through 
 some form of popular suffrage. All 
 these ideas we believe in, but we have 
 no wish to impose them upon another 
 people. We believe that the people of 
 Russia have the right to have their per- 
 
 % 
 
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sons and property protected by their 
 government; that this is a fundamental 
 right; and that it is palpably, flagrantly, * 
 and continuously violated by the Russian 
 Government. 
 
 The indictment which our fathers pre- j, 
 sented against George the Third is in¬ 
 significant in comparison with the indict¬ 
 ment which the history of our times 
 presents against the Czar of Russia. He 
 has caused or permitted thousands of his 
 Jewish subjects to be massacred in cold 
 blood, and other thousands to be pillaged 
 and driven poverty-stricken into exile. 
 
 In a single year he has caused over thirty 
 thousand persons to be fined, imprisoned, 
 or exiled without semblance of trial. He 
 has habitually allowed both men and 
 women to be tortured within fortresses, 
 and this when no definite accusation by 
 any responsible accuser had been brought 
 against them. He has allowed scores of 
 villages to be pillaged, hundreds of 
 homes to be burned, and unnumbered 
 girls and young women to be given over 
 to shameful violation. He has allowed 
 massacres, planned or carried into effect 
 by government authorities, civil and mili¬ 
 tary, for the purpose of terrorizing the 
 population. He has contemptuously dis¬ 
 regarded the Constitution of Finland, 
 openly and flagrantly broken his solemn 
 pledges to the Finnish people, and made 
 of what was once the most loyal and 
 
 4 
 
happy part of his Empire a disloyal and 
 wretched province. He has plunged his 
 country into an unjustifiable war of ag¬ 
 gression, for which it was wholly unpre¬ 
 pared ; and has driven at the point of the 
 bayonet thousands of Russian peasants 
 to fight in a distant land for no other 
 purpose than to gratify the greed or the 
 ambition of court favorites. This war 
 has been conducted without competence 
 and without mercy—the Red Cross not 
 respected, non-combatants frequently 
 killed, the wounded often put to death, 
 hospitals deliberately fired upon. He 
 has allowed both in the civil and military 
 administration a corruption unparalled in 
 modern times; soldiers furnished with 
 shoddy clothing and insufficient and un¬ 
 fit food, a navy sent to sea so ill-prepared 
 as to fall an easy victim to the first ef¬ 
 fective assault upon it, and even bread 
 sent into famine districts made of rotten 
 flour and infamously adulterated with 
 earth. When his people have marched 
 to the palace appealing for relief, he has 
 permitted them to be shot or sabered in 
 the public square. When public clamor 
 grew too loud to be disregarded, he has 
 promised freedom of the press, freedom 
 of assembly, and freedom of worship, 
 only to disregard each promise whenever 
 the exercise of such freedom appeared 
 inconvenient to any subordinate official 
 of the bureaucracy. He has called upon 
 
provincial governors to report on the 
 conditions of their provinces, promising 
 them that their reports should receive *■ 
 careful consideration, and then has pun¬ 
 ished by dismissal from office or with 
 exile governors whose reports were dis¬ 
 tasteful to him. He has convened an 
 assembly of the people, promising them 
 freedom of deliberation, and then has 
 dissolved the assembly as soon as the de¬ 
 bates became perilous to his autocratic 
 power. He has proved himself equally 
 unable to protect from the assassin the 
 lives of his ministers and the lives of his 
 peasant population. His policy has been 
 as vacillating as that of Louis XVI., his 
 promises as futile as those of Charles the 
 First, his despotic exercise of authority 
 immeasurably more intolerable than that 
 of George the Third. The civilized world 
 justly holds the Czar responsible for 
 these high crimes, for they are perpe¬ 
 trated in his name and under his author¬ 
 ity. If the Russian Government author¬ 
 izes them, it is intolerably despotic; if it 
 is unable to prevent them, it is intoler¬ 
 ably incompetent. In either case it is 
 intolerable; and it is the right, it is the 
 duty, of the Russian people to throw off 
 such government and provide new 
 guards for their future security. A po¬ 
 litical organization under which such > 
 
 crimes are perpetrated is not worthy to 
 
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be called a government; it is organized 
 anarchy. 
 
 Is it said that the Slav is unfitted for 
 freedom? I reply that no people are 
 ( fitted for despotism except they who 
 I supinely submit to it. Whether Russia 
 is ripe for a republic is not the question; 
 the question before us is whether the 
 Russian is to hold his life and his prop¬ 
 erty as a tenant at will of an unscrupu¬ 
 lous bureaucracy. So far as I can judge, 
 if I were living in Russia to-day, I should 
 be a Constitutional Democrat. Anglo- 
 Saxon temperament and tradition com¬ 
 bine to incline us to take one step at a 
 time; that one step for Russia would be 
 the organization of an assembly contain¬ 
 ing in some form representatives of all 
 classes and able to speak for them with 
 untrammeled liberty of speech. Is it said 
 that conditions in Russia are no concern 
 of ours ? Whatever concerns our fellow- 
 men concerns us. Human brotherhood 
 is not confined within the limits of church 
 creeds, political boundaries, or race lines. 
 Are precedents desired for that expres¬ 
 sion of popular sympathy which this 
 meeting is convened to afford? They 
 are abundant: in the sympathy of France 
 for America in our Revolutionary War; 
 in the sympathy of England, moved by 
 \ the eloquence of Gladstone, for the Ital¬ 
 ians suffering under the oppression of 
 King Ferdinand II.; in the sympathy of 
 
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 7 
 
America for the Greeks in 1824, and for 
 the Hungarians under the leadership of 
 Kossuth in 1849; an d * n the act of * 
 Russia herself intervening in 1877 h 1 the 
 name of humanity to rescue the inhabi- ( 
 tants of Bulgaria from the unspeakable * 
 Turk. 
 
 It is true that the criminal classes have 
 taken advantage of the general disorder 
 to pillage and murder; it is true that in¬ 
 dividuals aroused to a frenzy of despair 
 by cruel oppression have employed as¬ 
 sassination in private revenge; it is also 
 true that some of the methods resorted 
 to by the secret revolutionary tribunals 
 do not commend themselves to the Amer¬ 
 ican judgment and the American con¬ 
 science. But we do not judge a 
 revolution by the sporadic acts of vio¬ 
 lence which sometimes accompany it, nor 
 even by the methods which the revolu¬ 
 tionists sometimes employ; we judge a 
 revolution by the causes which have led 
 to it, and by the ends which it has in 
 view. If revolution is ever justified, the 
 revolution in Russia is justified by the 
 causes which have provoked it; and the 
 end that the revolutionsts have in view— 
 the substitution of a representative for 
 an autocratic government—must com¬ 
 mend itself to all who believe in justice 
 and liberty. 
 
 * 
 
 8 
 
Executive Committee 
 
 < 
 
 James Bronson Reynolds, Chairman 
 (Publicist), New York 
 
 Joseph M. Price, Vice-Chairman 
 (Manufacturer), New York 
 
 Mrs. Isabel C. Barrows (Journalist), 
 
 New York 
 
 Robert Erskine Ely (Director League for 
 Political Education), New York 
 
 Hamilton Holt (Editor The Independent), 
 New York 
 
 Julian W. Mack (Judge Circuit Court of Cook 
 County, Ill.), Chicago 
 
 John Martin (Publicist), Grymes Hill, S. I. 
 
 Miss Lillian D. Wald (Henry Street Settle¬ 
 ment), New York 
 
 and the President , Treasurer and Secretary , 
 ex-officio