V.

The kind of government that we have seems to me one of the worst kinds

extant A government that does not protect life is a flat failure, no

matter what else it may do. Life being almost universally regarded as

the most precious possession, its security is the first and highest

essential--not the life of him who takes life, but the life which is

exposed defenceless to his hateful hand. In no country in the world,

civilized or savage, is life so insecure as in this. In no country in

the world is murder held in so light reprobation. In no battle of modern

times have so many lives been taken as are lost annually in the United

States through public indifference to the crime of homicide--through

disregard of law, through bad government. If American self-government,

with its ten thousand homicides a year, is good government, there is no

such thing as bad. Self-government! What monstrous nonsense! Who governs

himself needs no government, has no governor, is not governed. If

government has any meaning it means the restraint of the many by the

few--the subordination of numbers to brains. It means the determined

denial to the masses of the right to cut their own throats. It means

the grasp and control of all the social forces and material enginery--a

vigilant censorship of the press, a firm hand upon the church, keen

supervision of public meetings and public amusements, command of the

railroads, telegraph and all means of communication. It means, in

short, the ability to make use of all the beneficent influences of

enlightenment for the good of the people, and to array all the powers

of civilization against civilization's natural enemies--the people.

Government like this has a thousand defects, but it has one merit: it is

government.

Despotism? Yes. It is the despotisms of the world that have been the

conservators of civilization. It is the despot who, most powerful for

mischief, is alone powerful for good. It is conceded that government is

necessary--even by the "fierce democracies" that madly renounce it. But

in so far as government is not despotic it is not government. In Europe

for the last one hundred years, the tendency of all government has been

liberalization. The history of European politics during that period is

a history of renunciation by the rulers and assumption by the ruled.

Sovereign after sovereign has surrendered prerogative after prerogative;

the nobility privilege after privilege. Mark the result: society

honeycombed with treason; property menaced with partition; assassination

studied as a science and practiced as an art; everywhere powerful

secret organizations sworn to demolish the social fabric that the slow

centuries have but just erected and unmindful that themselves will

perish in the wreck. No heart in Europe can beat tranquilly under clean

linen. Such is the gratitude, such is the wisdom, such the virtue of

"The Masses." In 1863 Alexander II of Russia freed 25,000,000 serfs. In

1879 they had killed him and all joined the conspirators.

That ancient and various device, "a republican form of government,"

appears to be too good for all the peoples of the earth excepting one.

It is partly successful in Switzerland; in France and America, where

the majority is composed of persons having dark understandings and

criminal instincts, it has broken down. In our case, as in every case,

the momentum of successful revolution carried us too far. We

rebelled against tyranny and having overthrown it, overthrew also the

governmental form in which it had happened to be manifest. In their

anger and their triumph our good old gran'thers acted somewhat in the

spirit of the Irishman who cudgeled the dead snake until nothing was

left of it, in order to make it "sinsible of its desthroction." They

meant it all, too, the honest souls! For a long time after the setting

up of the republic the republic meant active hatred to kings, nobles,

aristocracies. It was held, and rightly held, that a nobleman could not

breathe in America--that he left his title and his privileges on the

ship that brought him over. Do we observe anything of that in this

generation? On the landing of a foreign king, prince or nobleman--even a

miserable "knight"--do we not execute sycophantic genuflexions? Are not

our newspapers full of flamboyant descriptions and qualming adulation?

Nay, does not our President himself--successor to Washington and

Jefferson!--greet and entertain the "nation's guest"? Is not every

American young woman crazy to mate with a male of title? Does all this

represent no retrogression?--is it not the backward movement of the

shadow on the dial? Doubtless the republican idea has struck strong

roots into the soil of the two Americas, but he who rightly considers

the tendencies of events, the causes that bring them about and the

consequences that flow from them, will not be hot to affirm the

perpetuity of republican institutions in the Western Hemisphere. Between

their inception and their present stage of development there is scarcely

the beat of a pendulum; and already, by corruption and lawlessness,

the people of both continents, with all their diversities of race and

character, have shown themselves about equally unfit. To become a nation

of scoundrels all that any people needs is opportunity, and what we are

pleased to call by the impossible name of "self-government" supplies it.

The capital defect of republican government is inability to repress

internal forces tending to disintegration. It does not take long for a

"self-governed" people to learn that it is not really governed--that an

agreement enforcible by nobody but the parties to it is not binding.

We are learning this very rapidly: we set aside our laws whenever we

please. The sovereign power--the tribunal of ultimate jurisdiction--is

a mob. If the mob is large enough (it need not be very large), even

if composed of vicious tramps, it may do as it will. It may destroy

property and life. It may without proof of guilt inflict upon

individuals torments unthinkable by fire and flaying, mutilations that

are nameless. It may call men, women and children from their beds and

beat them to death with cudgels. In the light of day it may assail the

very strongholds of law in the heart of a populous city, and assassinate

prisoners of whose guilt it knows nothing. And these things--observe, O

victims of kings--are habitually done. One would as well be at the mercy

of one's sovereign as of one's neighbor.

For generations we have been charming ourselves with the magic of words.

When menaced by some exceptionally monstrous form of the tyranny of

numbers we have closed our eyes and murmured, "Liberty." When armed

Anarchists threaten to quench the fires of civilization in a sea of

blood we prate of the protective power of "free speech." If,

"Girt about by friends or foes,

A man may speak the thing he will,"

we fondly fancy that the thing he will speak is harmless--that immunity

disarms his tongue of its poison, his thought of its infection. With a

fatuity that would be incredible without the testimony of observation,

we hold that an Anarchist free to go about making proselytes, free to

purchase arms, free to drill and parade and encourage his dupes with a

demonstration of their numbers and power, is less mischievous than an

Anarchist with a shut mouth, a weaponless hand and under surveillance of

the police. The Anarchist himself is persuaded of the superiority of

our plan of dealing with him; he likes it and comes over in quantity,

inpesting the political atmosphere with the "sweltered venom" engendered

by centuries of oppression--comes over here, where he is not oppressed,

and sets up as oppressor. His preferred field of malefaction is the

country that is most nearly anarchical. He comes here, partly to better

himself under our milder institutions, partly to secure immunity while

conspiring to destroy them. There is thunder in Europe, but if the storm

ever break it is in America that the lightning will fall, for here is

a great vortex into which the decivilizing agencies are pouring without

obstruction. Here gather the eagles to the feast, for the quarry is

defenceless. Here is no power in government, no government. Here an

enemy of order is thought to be least dangerous when suffered to preach

and arm in peace. And here is nothing between him and his task of

supervision--no pampered soldiery to repress his rising, no iron

authority to lay him by the heels. The militia is fraternal, the

magistracy elective. Europe may hold out a little longer. The Great

Powers may make what stage-play they will, but they are not maintaining

their incalculable armaments for aggression upon one another, for

protection from one another, nor for fun. These vast forces are

purely constabular--creatures and creators of discontent--phenomena of

decivilization. Eventually they will fraternize with Disorder or become

themselves Praetorian Guards more dangerous than the perils that have

called them into existence.

It is easy to forecast the first stages of the End's approach: Rioting.

Disaffection of constabulary and troops. Subversion of the Government

A policy of decapitation. Upthrust of the serviceable Anarchist.

His prompt effacement by his victorious ally and natural enemy, the

Socialist. Free minting and printing of money--to every citizen a

shoulder-load of the latter, to the printers a ton each. Divided

counsels. Pandemonium. The man on horseback. Gusts of grape. ------?

Formerly the bearer of evil tidings was only slain; he is now ignored.

The gods kept their secrets by telling them to Cassandra, whom no one

would believe. I do not expect to be heeded. The crust of a volcano is

electric the fumes are narcotic; the combined sensation is delightful no

end. I have looked at the dial of civilization; I tell you the shadow

is going back. That is of small importance to men of leisure, with

wine-dipped wreaths upon their heads. They do not care to know.