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 denial to the masses of the right to cut
their own throats and ours. It means grasp and control of all social
forces and material enginery—a vigilant censorship of the press, a
firm hand upon the churches, keen supervision of public meetings and
public amusements, command of the railroads, telegraph and all means
of communication. It means, in short, ability to make use of all
beneficent influences of enlightenment for the general good, and to
array all the powers of civilization against civilization’s natural
enemies—“the masses.” 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 trend of government has been toward
liberalization. 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 can beat tranquilly
under clean linen. Such is the gratitude, such is the wisdom, such the
virtue of “The Masses.”
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 grandfathers acted somewhat in the
spirit of the Irishman who cudgeled the dead snake until nothing of
it was left, in order to make it “sinsible of its desthruction.” They
meant it all, too, 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 the
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.
The anarchist himself is persuaded of the superiority of our plan of
dealing with him; he likes it and “comes over” in quantity, impesting
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 first
fall. 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 the least
dangerous when most free. And here is nothing between him and his
task of subversion—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 solely for aggression upon one another
and protection from one another, nor for fun. These vast forces are
mainly 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. Parliament of the people. Divided counsels.
Pandemonium. The man on horseback. Gusts of grape. ——?
The gods kept their secrets by telling them to Cassandra, whom nobody
believed. I am entrusted with the secret that the shadow on the dial
of civilization is moving backward. Believe or disbelieve—what matter?
Revelers with wine-dipped wreaths upon their heads do not care to know
the hour. Yet there are signs and portents—whispers and cries in the
air; stealthy tread of invisible feet along the ground; sudden clamor
of startled fowls at dead o’ the night; crimson dew-drops on the
roadside grass of a morning. But pray do not disturb yourselves: eat,
drink and be merry, for to-morrow comes Logical Democracy.