TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE CRISIS IN THE STATES. THE anarchy which has possessed the Western States of the Union during the past fortnight has brought into strong prominence the capital defect of the American Constitution. The preservation of law and order is not primarily and directly the affair of the Government of the United States, and the Central Executive has no recog- nised and unchallengeable right to force individual States to do their duty in the way of maintaining domestic peace. If the Fathers of the Union had known what we now know, thanks to the Bishop of Oxford and Mr. Freeman, as to the growth of our institutions, they would have noticed that one of the things which most tended to keep the English State healthy, was the ultimate responsi- bility for maintaining order reposed in the hands of the Cent* Power. When "the King's peace " only covered a limited and special class, there was no sure guarantee for law and order. When it grew to be conterminous with the Kingdom, and when every man, woman, and. child came to be "within the peace of our Sovereign Lord the King," an enormous advance had been made in the building-up of a well-founded State. Unhappily, the lawyers of the eighteenth century, both here and on the other side of the Atlantic, did not fully realise this fact, and hence law and order was made a local matter, and "the peace of the United States of America" was not held like the King's peace to embrace the whole land. A very few words would have been enough to give the Union the right to supervise the peace of the country. The States might have been allowed to act as the servants and delegates of the Union, and all that the Union need have possessed would have been a right to see that the States did their business properly. Instead, a pestilent autonomy was secured to them in the matter of law and order. That is purely a State right, the private affair of Ohio or Wis- consin, and until the point of anarchy is reached, the point where all constitutional considerations go by the board, and the natural right of any one who has the power to put down disorder to put it down accrues, the Govern- ment of the United States has no more to do with disorder outside the district of Columbia or the Territories, than Austria has to do with disorder in the territories of the rest of the Triple Alliance. If the Americans as a nation fully recognised this situation, and resolved to abide by it, the original blunder would not so much matter. If they looked solely to their State Governments to stop disorder, and never dreamt of help from Washington, they would no doubt secure' effective means of coping with Anarchy. Unfortunately, however, such a granite-hard sense of Particularism is denied them. It is contrary to the inherited instinct of the race to pretend that law and order is a, purely local affair. Hence, whenever any real and great emergency arises, the people of the States always look to Washington for help. They refuse, that is, to pretend that the Union is only a body to which certain powers have been resigned by a collection of Sovereign communities, but regard it as, what it is in truth but only half in theory, a true State. But the Central Executive, when applied to, cannot act without straining the Constitution and bringing itself into contact with the sacred feeling of State rights. Hence law and order is very apt to fall between the two stools. The innate confidence, that if things go badly, the Central Government will have to put them right, prevents men taking the care and trouble neces- sary to endow the States with sufficient power for dealing with disorder of an exceptional kind. Yet at the same time the conventions and technicalities of the Constitution render it impossible for the Central Executive to act till things have reached the point of anarchy,—till, in fact, it is too late. Is there no hope that an amendment may be added to the Constitution, under which the preservation of public order within the United States shall be declared to be the joint concern of the Central and State Govern- ments, and the President shall, if and when he considers law and order imperilled in any State of the Union, be empowered to restore tranquillity or prevent a threatened breach of the peace ? Such an amendment would give the Central Executive the right to force the State Govern- ment to do its duty. The threat, "If you do not act, we shall," would put the State Governments on their mettle. How great is the difficulty of maintaining' order under present conditions, was well' illustrated at Chicago during the week. To begin with, you had all the influential citizens telegraphineappeals for help not to the State Government, but to the President. When, however, the President intervened, the Governor of Illinois did his best to counteract and neutralise the action of the Washington authorities. He telegraphed. protests ; he declared that the rights of the State were being trampled on ; and he generally obstructed. The, city was being set on fire by incendiaries ; but that was nothing to him compared with making a stiff fight in regard to the sovereign rights and complete autonomy of Illinois.
This tendency towards the encouragement of disorder displayed by an enraged Particularism, is one which should be most carefully marked by Englishmen. It is full of meaning for them. If the men who want "Home- rule all round" have their way, we may easily fall into a, situation exactly analogous to that which now exists in America. The Home-rule Bill of last year, which we were told by its defenders was the safest and most moderate type of Bill we are ever likely to see— a Bill which was praised because it could be so easily applied to Scotland and Wales, and even to those cantons of England with which we are to be ulti- mately endowed—handed over the preservation of law and order to the Local Executive. Imagine such a Home- rule scheme established in Wales. Then comes a great Welsh coal-strike and fighting of the desperate kind we witnessed last year—fighting which made it necessary to, send a small army of soldiers and English police. There. was no question then about sending these forces, for the Home Secretary felt himself responsible for the pre-. servation of law and order. It was his business to see that the county authorities did their duty. It might easily happen, however, that, under Home-rule for Wales,, the Welsh Executive would have resisted with the utmost vigour the interference of the Home Secretary. Even the local patriots who disliked disorder might very likely argue, "We must put things right ourselves ; it will never do to allow such a precedent for meddling with our domestic concerns. Those who interfere for one thing may interfere for another." The result would only be too likely- to be a veritable outbreak of anarchy. While the energies of the Welsh Executive were being wasted in strenuous. efforts to repel the threatened interference from London, the rioters would be doing what they have been doing this. week in America. After all, there is little difference except in size between Chicago and Cardiff. One town would burn as easily as the other. Of course, in the long-run disorder would be put down even under "Home-rule all round," but, there is great fear that it would be put down after, and not before, a terrible waste of life and property. A corre- spondent of the St. James's Gazette gives some striking testimony in regard to this point. He was speaking (he writes) to a well-known Yorkshire mine-owner, and de- ploring the strange epidemic of violence which has seized, the American railwaymen. In this country, he argued, even where passions are roused as they were in the great coal-strike, an outbreak of serious disorder over a wide area would hardly occur. "Don't be too sure of that," said the Yorkshireman. "Some of us in the North happen to know that we got very close to a general outbreak of mine-wrecking and engine-house burning in Yorkshire.. It.wanted very little to have had a. hundred thousand men out, burning, fighting, and. destroying by wholesale. "And what prevented it ? " "Featherstone," was the reply. "Nothing else. The shooting there did the trick. Our colliers were not going to get bullets into them if they could help it. But if the soldiers and police had hesitated to shoot or had been overpowered, I tell you all Yorkshire would have been in a blaze in three days." This may be an exaggeration, and we have no desire to insist on it un- duly. We firmly believe, however, that strong action at the beginning of disorder is absolutely necessary, and that you will never get that strong action under any form of Federalism, or where the responsibility for public order is frittered away by, subdivision. Only when and where it is clearly understood that the real responsibility for lase and order rests upon the central and. supreme executive,. will you secure its efficient carrying out. It is of the very essence of Particularism that you cannot cope with disorder until things get to sucka pass that you are.able to declare, as President Cleveland did this week, that men who began as an ordinary disorderly mob "are public enemies," i.e., persons liable to be shot at sight, and unworthy of the protection of the law. We have left ourselves little space to deal with the other aspects of the American rioting ; but one point must be touched on, as it has been largely overlooked. It is no use to haggle over the question whether Mr. Pullman did or did not refuse arbitration ; the causes of the strike, and the con- sequent disorder, go much deeper. They are to be found in the general depression and dislocation of trade. And what has caused this depression and dislocation of trade ? How is it that what is naturally the richest State in the whole world is going through so terrible a crisis ? We believe that the true answer is to be found in the insen- sate, the criminal, adoption of Protection by the United States. Nature meant to make, and if left alone would have made, the lot of the labourer in the States better than anywhere else on the face of the globe. The folly of a majority, and the greed of the selfish minority which misled them, have made it as hard, if not harder, than in Europe. The States are full of men unemployed, or only half employed, for the iniquitous Tariff has as usual brought in its train a complete disorganisation and de- moralisation of business. Just as our Corn-laws bloated but never gave a healthy prosperity to the landed interest, so McKinley ism has in reality injured and debilitated. the manufacturing interests of the United States. Look at it how you will, Protection is a waste of the national re- sources, and that waste has in America been of the most prodigal kind. The country is now reaping the whirlwind. The blood of the men who have fallen at Chicago is on • the heads of the knaves and fools who, in the Committee- Rooms at Washington, strangled the life of the nation with their monstrous imposts. Not till the rope of the Tariff is untied, and America is allowed to breathe again, will the country be able to rest. Convulsion must follow convulsion, till the pressure is removed. The New Tariff is but a poor relief. Only by adopting the principle of tariffs for revenue alone will the people of America escape the nightmare of the Labour question, and make the States what they should be, and what, in spite of every obstacle, we firmly believe they will some day become,—the city of refuge for Labour. Think of what Nature has done to make life easy in the States, and then of what man has done to make it hard !
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