With this issue, I begin a new series of Free Life. As it is somewhat different from the old, I feel obliged to explain myself to my readers.

Some changes flow from the fact that I am now responsible for producing as well as editing Free Life. Since I have not Brian Micklethwait's eye for design, its appearance must inevitably be different in many respects. By far the greater changes, however, are in the journal's size and frequency. So far, it has been a 32 page quarterly. It is now to be an eight or twelve page monthly.

The reason for this is that I never found the old format convenient. The publication dates were too far apart. They did not allow much currency of opinion. Something important might happen in the fortnight before producing an issue, in which case it would be dealt with in the Editorial or in the "Editorial Jottings", or perhaps a review article could be written or amended to take note of it. But mostly, things tended to happen long before an issue was planned.

It was because of this that I began early in 1994 to release articles directly onto the Internet. At first, these were intended to advertise Free Life, and several people did subscribe on the strength of what they read on the Internet. But the immediacy of communication and the size of the audience I could reach soon seduced me from this limited purpose; and I found that I was publishing articles on the Internet every few weeks and then placing these on my Web Page. These sometimes appeared in Free Life, but more often did not.

Eventually, in late 1997, I formally began Free Life Commentary, a regular article by me published on the Internet. This is read by thousands and has made me effectively the voice of English libertarianism. By comparison with what I could do in the new medium, Free Life and its hundred or so readers has often seemed unimportant. Even when I was most committed, issues never came out quarterly. Since 1997, they have been dribbling out at one a year; and suggestions have been gently made that I should give up the embarrassment of editing a journal that hardly ever appears.

But Free Life is important. It is more than my own writings. It is a collaborative effort that, however intermittent, has been one of the great achievements of the Libertarian Alliance in the 1990s. It is worth continuing. Therefore, I have decided to make it a monthly publication and to vary its length according to how much material I can gather from others or write myself. This will give me the immediacy of comment that I have long envied in other libertarian journals, and should free me from the straitjacket of having to give all my free time for weeks in advance to fill 32 pages.

A further innovation is that Free Life is to be published simultaneously on the Internet as well as in hard copy. It is already available in HTML format. But it is now to be converted from its final camera ready version to an Envoy file and sent out via the Internet. Electronic subscribers will be able to download and print their own copies complete with formattings and pictures. There will be no costs of stuffing and posting, and Free Life will in theory circulate as easily in Los Angeles or in Calcutta as it does in London.

Back in November 1991, when I became Editor, I defined the purpose of Free Life as to stand on the side of right, truth and justice. Though I knew then that things would be worse at the end of the 1990s than at the beginning, I was unable to imagine how bad they would become. I did not suppose that we would languish under a Government of traitors and warmongers and be lied to by a media filled with that Government's hirelings and supporters. I do not suppose that my efforts and those of my contributors will ever be essential to the destruction of this Government. But every little helps.

I commend the new Free Life to my readers.

Sean Gabb