The Island of Anarchy.
A Fragment of History in the 20th Century.
BY
E. W.
“Bind thyself with one cord.”
[Illustration]
PUBLISHED BY MISS LANGLEY,
LOVEJOY’S LIBRARY, READING.
1887.
Chiswick Press:
Charles Whittingham and Co.,
Tooks Court, London.
THE ISLAND OF
ANARCHY.
CHAPTER I.
“As for my particular, I am verily perswaded, that since that age
(thirtie yeares), both my spirit and my body have more decreased than
encreased, more recoyled than advanced. It may be that knowledge and
experience shall encrease in them, together with life, that bestow
their time well: but vivacitie, promptitude, constancie, and other
parts much more our owne, more important, and more essentiall, they
droope, they languish, and they faint.”—MONTAIGNE (_Florio’s
translation_).
The ending of the nineteenth century, like that of the eighteenth, was a
time of terrible and strange things, as if it were coming to be the law
of human affairs that the sunsets of the centuries should be red with a
“Terror” and dark with despair.
In England—then, as in the past, the refuge of banished men—social
disorder reached a height that would soon have driven all her quiet
dwellers to seek more peaceful homes on the other side of the globe, had
not a new and strange thing changed the whole aspect of affairs.
It began to be perceived, and was soon widely acknowledged, that the
cause of the great weakness and futility of our government lay in the
advanced age of those by whom the most important offices were held. Age
is wont to trifle, to take things lightly, and to study life, of which
it can at best hope to possess so little, from a frivolous and temporary
point of view.
“Things are well enough as they are,” say they; “a little tinkering
here, a little fancy legislation there, and they will last our time;
meanwhile, let us hear ourselves talk.”
The only wonder now seemed that the world had been so slow to perceive
this, that it had taken the human race so many thousand years to
discover a truth which now seemed as simple and patent as the converse
one, that it would not be wise to entrust grave affairs to children in
their first decade.
And so the younger men of England, by a sudden and united effort at the
general election of 19—, secured the return of a House of Commons
containing no man over the age of thirty-five, and no woman: (for women
had begun to come in and to make matters worse).
This House of Commons, strong, in earnest for real work, and not divided
by Party, that frivolous pastime of politicians who were too old for
other games, passed without difficulty a wise “superannuation law.” And
the government of the country, thus at last able to govern indeed, made
the almost foundering ship of our unhappy State once more answer to the
helm, and steered for that haven of peaceful order and settled rule
which men remembered sadly as a lost Paradise or longed for as an
undiscoverable “Atlantis.”
That _laws are made to be obeyed_ had glided in those days from the
place of a truism into that of a fallacy. It was the first principle of
the new Cabinet.
To two classes this principle had to be made clear—Criminals, or
law-breakers; Anarchists, or law-deniers.
Of the first of these we will speak first. It will now hardly be
believed that there existed at that time in England what were called
“the Criminal Classes”—thousands of men, women, and children known to be
living in the continual commission of crime, as other people are engaged
in commerce, husbandry, and the like, spending much of their time in
prison, and never doing or desiring any honest work.
This state of things the young government set themselves to bring to an
end.
Instead of progressing towards that universal slipshod leniency which
the philanthropists of an earlier time had set before themselves as a
goal—with capital punishment evaded for awhile and eventually
abolished,—these rulers, with all the ruthless severity of youth,
extended the area of crimes punishable by death. To those whose lives
were hurtful to the innocent community, mercy could only be shown, so
they held, at the expense of those to whom mercy, that is, protection,
was really due. Not only all who compassed, or even attempted the lives
of others, but all who after repeated smaller punishments still lived
the lives of evildoers, were counted unworthy longer to live,—and this
without any attempted distinction of sane or insane,—the existence of
the latter being considered even more hopelessly injurious to the State
than that of the former, and, on the other hand, less valuable to
themselves.
But while the punishment of death was certain and frequent, it was no
longer inflicted in the barbarous manner which continued, a ghastly
anachronism, through the reign of the tender-hearted Victoria.
Those whose lives were forfeit were placed for a time—the length of
which depended on various circumstances—in a place of solemn
sequestration, to the care of which a society of holy men and women
devoted their existence, and which was placed rather under the authority
of the Church than of the State. The State, indeed, had done with them;
they were already cut off from their place as citizens; it only remained
for the Church to lead them with kind hand through paths of penitence
and prayer to the door of a new life, a new hope—where this was
possible. With some, with many perhaps, the soul seemed already dead
before the body.
When the time came, surrounded by a serious company of the “Brethren of
Death,” whose prayers and solemn hymns made the last moments beautiful
to those who were repentant, and awful to those who were hardened, the
condemned drank an opiate, which closed their eyes in a painless sleep
from which there was no waking, while those about them still prayed for
the departing spirit on its way to a higher judgment.
Beautiful histories were told of some who in the quiet of their cells,
aided by the gentle ministrations of the Brothers and Sisters, came to
see with an anguish of repentance the sinfulness of their past, and to
rejoice in the thought of passing, sprinkled with fresh dews of
penitence and forgiveness, away from a world whose temptations had been
too strong for them. Of their forfeit lives they made a willing
sacrifice, and they were glad to be allowed to lay them down.
Children who had committed crimes, after fitting punishment were placed
in settlements where they were kept under strict discipline and
carefully instructed, the rudiments of some useful art being added to a
simple education in general subjects. Girls were trained in household
work, and all, as soon as they were grown men and women, were removed
from these settlements to places where their past was unknown, unless
they showed themselves so dyed with their early habits and so resolved
to return to them that this would have been harmful to the State.
In these cases, which were very few, they were treated in the same way
as the hardened offenders of whom I have just spoken.
There were not wanting intelligent persons to whom the punishment of
death for a misused life seemed a terrible and even a wicked thing. Yet,
not only had such punishment been in use for just such offences in the
time of Queen Elizabeth and of other sovereigns, but at so late a time
as the commencement of the present century, war among civilized nations
was considered justifiable, and the profession of a soldier was even
held to be a noble and Christian calling. The very women whose tender
hearts cried out against the new law would send their young sons away
with their blessing to face death in compassing that of other innocent
and unwilling victims in a cause for which, often, none of them cared.
Those who thus perished in war, believing that it was for their
country’s honour that they fought, were among the best and bravest of
the nation—men to whom discipline and order were their very breath.
Those whom the new law excluded from life were scarcely worthy of the
name of men, and more hostile to their country than any of the soldiers
of other states.
This then was the course adopted with reference to the Law-Breakers. We
must now speak of the Law-Deniers. Anarchy, Socialism, free-land
leagues, communistic democracy more or less indigenous, and every shade
of Nihilism and Dynamitism introduced from the East and the West, had so
long had free course that a large mass of the population had come to
believe practically that might was right, and the problems of the
earliest stages of barbarism were staring men in the face as the
products of an over-ripe civilization.
It was true, and the young rulers recognized this, that much of the
discontent of the poorer classes had had just ground in the indifference
and selfish luxury of the rich, but that cause was already in great part
removed, and in two ways.
Women as highly educated as men, and now wise enough to see that they
were made for better things than the dust of politics, turned their
thoughts to home reforms. Their higher standard of principle and
refinement of taste led to a contempt for what was gorgeous or costly in
dress or equipage, food or furniture, as essentially vulgar, or at best
barbaric. Thus their quiet ways and simple attire left little space to
be bridged over as regards outward show between them and the thrifty
women of a humbler class, and that space was bridged by kindly
intercourse, by knowledge shared, and by the ready sympathy which is the
gift of the highest intelligence.
This was one great power for good. The other was the fact that so many
owners of land had devoted large portions of it to sites for Industrial
Villages, and even those who had no sympathy for the poor or enthusiasm
for the good of their country, partly for fashion’s sake, and partly
because these schemes proved not only useful to the poor but beneficial
to the landowner, joined to aid the great work of withdrawing the
population from the towns into the country.
The gradual disuse of steam, with all its dismal accompaniments of
blackened skies and unlovely chimneys, allowed of almost all
manufactures being carried on under healthy and cheerful conditions. On
every hill, rows of windmills gathered the force which produced
electricity and stored it for the use of the village below; while by
every stream, and on every shore visited by tides, the forces of water
were in the same way brought into a service which, being no longer
intermittent, was of permanent and continuous value.
Thus the real misery of the honest poor in England was becoming a thing
of the past, and the large class of people whose stock-in-trade was the
discontent of others became at once more reckless and more dangerous
when, flinging away all disguise and separated from those whose wrongs
had lent colour to their schemes, they appeared under their true flag as
the enemies of all law and duty, industry and religion.
The young Cabinet saw at once the way to meet them. Those who would not
obey the laws of one country must seek a home in another. Banishment
seemed at once the mildest and the most reasonable punishment (if indeed
it can be so called),—not transportation to some special spot, but
simply exile from England and from all British dominions and
colonies—the Great Federation being absolutely united in this important
matter—under penalty of death if the banished returned.
On conviction the Anarchist was marked, by an indelible brand in a
painless manner, with a red O in sign of outlawry, and received his
sentence of banishment—and in this way some thousands of the disaffected
and idle were at once removed from our shores.
Some of them were of the lowest and most violent class, who are
naturally rude and lawless because bound by no inner law themselves
(though, as has been shown, those leading an actually criminal life were
dealt with in other ways); and associated with them, indignant at the
new law, and therefore enthusiastically determined to share the fate of
the exiled, were men and women of a far higher type, mistaken, yet nobly
in the wrong. Some few were poets, historians, religious visionaries,
women whose dreams of a millennium were based on a false notion of the
origin and essence of law. All these last gave themselves up at once,
and stretched out the right hand that had held the pen, or blessed the
chalice, or soothed the dying forehead, for the circle in which they
gloried as a sign of their fellowship with the oppressed.
At first the result was, of course, that in other countries the
Anarchists found hearers for their doctrines and ready adherents to
their destructive schemes, the false notion that lawlessness is liberty
being one readily welcomed by the unthinking. But one by one the
countries to which they had fled followed the precedent of England, and
banished from their shores also the men and women of the red right hand.
In those days the States of Europe were already bound in a sort of
confederation, with an International Court in which matters of common
interest were discussed, and it was agreed that a place must be found
for the growing nation of outlaws, who else might justly plead for a
home in a law-obeying state as a mere necessity of humanity.
In the terrible era of volcanic action which began about the year 1885
and lasted nearly half a century, many coasts and islands had been
submerged, with great loss of human life and of the results of human
industry. Among others the beautiful Island of Meliora in the South
Pacific had been the scene of the sudden formation of a volcano and of a
fearful eruption. It seemed as if the whole heart of the Island were
poured for many days and nights into the sultry sky, and then sank into
the sea and was seen no more.
After a period of several years, the captain of a merchant vessel,
looking with his corrected chart for the circle of coral reef which
marked the place of the lost Island, saw with wonder Meliora re-arisen
from the sea, crowned by the wide crater of its fatal mountain and
already clothed with brilliant vegetation. It would seem strange that
its re-appearance had not been noticed by other vessels, as the trees
upon it showed that it must have been some years above water, but this
will not appear remarkable when it is known that no ordinary course for
vessels carried them within sight of the Island, and that the new reefs
which had been raised around it by the action of the volcano were so
dangerous that captains who entered those seas avoided their
neighbourhood. The line of coral reef which encircled the Island had not
sunk more than a few feet, hence the thick growth of Coco-palms that
covered it had not been submerged, and no doubt directly Meliora arose
from the waves seeds from these would at once begin to take root and
make rapid growth in that wonderful soil and climate.
When the captain of the “Ville d’Is,” driven out of his way by adverse
winds, saw the wonder of the restored land, it was at the moment of
perplexity of which I have spoken as to where the outlawed nation should
find a home.
It was at once resolved by the united governments of Europe that they
should be offered transport to this Island—an offer which the most part
gladly accepted, chased as they had been from country to country, and
very weary of their wandering.
Indeed, what other chance remained for them, since to enter any
civilized country, any country governed by settled rule of law, was to
die?
From all points of the compass ships with various flags entered the
circle of reefs that surrounded Meliora, and set down their strange
passengers on that beautiful shore.
A land large enough for all, fertile as a garden of romance, perfect in
climate, and abounding in all they could need for food, clothing and
shelter, what more could the outlaws desire?
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