TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE ANARCHISTS IN PARIS.
MHE active Anarchists of the Continent are for all prac- tical purposes dangerous lunatics, and should be regarded as such, both by Legislatures and peoples. Every stroke they strike betrays more completely their want of coherent reasoning power. Their object, for the present at least, would, if they were sane, be to make converts, and they are taking the very best means, even from their own point of view, to make enmity to them a universal passion. So long as they struck at capital they might hope to be regarded by those who think: themselves "the slaves of capital "—and who include, we fear, a large section of the Continental artisans—as soldiers in a war in which they took and gave life as the soldiers in armies do. Even the shocking outrage in Barcelona found defenders, for that was directed against the rich, and there are men all over Europe whose hatred against the rich has risen to the point where, if we may so misuse words, they are unable to distinguish between wealth and wickedness. They re- gard the bourgeoisie as Spanish ecclesiastics once regarded relapsed heretics. But in scattering death or wounds through a Legislative Chamber elected by universal suffrage without distinction either of persons or of parties, whom are they attracting ? The electors, whose representatives they are killing? The Radicals, who know well that every such crime costs them thousands of votes? or the Socialists, whose best advocate in the Chamber, Abbe Lemire, was the first Deputy torn by the nails enclosed in the bomb, and whose official leader's son, then in the gallery, was temporarily rendered deaf and dumb? Or finally, is it the criminal class, which all over the Continent shows a disposition to hang on to the Anarchists' skirts? These want almost universally to profit by crime, not to draw on themselves social vengeance without a chance of pay. Even if the object is only confusion, the method of murdering Deputies is absurd, for a decimated Chamber is a Legislature still, certain to act more strongly than before • and if all Deputies could be extirpated, power would pass at once to soldiers, who can defend themselves against bombs in the street as against shells in the open field. The method suggests lunacy, not reason ; and we do not doubt, if the explosions continue, that this will be the decision of the Governments, and that Anarchists will be shut up as dangerous lunatics are shut up, not to punish them but to secure the general safety of society. Indeed, the French and, if we understand a hint in the Times' Viennese letter aright, the Austrian Government are taking this course now. The Austrian police is " deporting ' Anarchists from the cities, that is, in fact, " interning " them in villages where they are powerless ; and there is a clause in M. Casimir Prier's new Bills under which the preventive arrest of Anarchists by the police, for an indefinite time, is explicitly sanctioned. That is, in fact, a law im- prisoning Anarchists for being Anarchists, even if they have committed no overt act ; and is only one step short of the terrible Lew of Public Safety under which, if it were passed again—and these explosions are hurrying Legislatures to extremes—they would be deportea in heaps to row boats in Cayenne. No party composed of completely sane men would run such frightful risks for objects so visibly unattainable. For the present, the French Government and Legis- lature have acted with a firmness and self-control which have called forth just expressions of admiration all through Europe. The fall of the bomb created no panic. It is true it killed nobody, unless indirectly, but it scattered wounds in every direction. The thrower, Valliant, declares that his intention was to "be rid of Deputies," and the latter had every reason to believe that, as at Barcelona, a second bomb would be thrown after the first. Yet, prompted and controlled by the cool courage of their President, M. Dupuy, who called on them to resume business, and whose splendid pluck has probably brought him very near the Presidency of the Republic, they resumed their ordinary duties, which were, as it happened, hopelessly unexciting,—a mere discussion as to the validity of an election. The building itself, thanks, it is said, to the promptitude of a messenger on a bicycle, who, without instructions, ordered all doors to be shut, was closed before the criminal could escape ; and the services of police, doctors, and nurses were secured, with a promptitude which reflected high credit on French efficiency. There is nothing surprising in all that ; but Englishmen, in their dislike of Southern excitability and rhetoric, are a little too apt to forget the strcng qualities which have kept France, in spite of many misfortunes, so long in the front of Europe. The Government, too, showed no symptom of losing its head. Its Bills, from the Continental point of view, are moderate Bills. We cannot ourselves believe that dan- gerous societies are made less dangerous by being driven into secrecy, or that a doctrine like Anarchy can gain. more from the publicity of print than from the publicity of the low cafe, but every statesman on the Continent is against us, and they must know their own people best. It is quite possible that the latter are greatly " incited " by evil counsel, and still more by evil glorification of criminals, and if they are, there is no moral reason for refusing to punish either inciting oratory or inciting literature. The right of preventive arrest is a frightful weapon to place in the hand of a despot ; but the French police are amenable to responsible Ministers and to the Chamber, and the danger of abuses of power is at all events limited. The law may bear hardly on a speculative. thinker or two, but it was obviously demanded by opinion„ as witness the crushing vote in its favour ; and in France, if panics are to be avoided, Governments must be seen to be armed with great protective powers. As to the law making it more difficult to obtain explosives, it is only a pro.. duct of common-sense. That it will work sufficiently well is doubtful, for dynamite can be, and is, stolen as well as bought ; and as M. Girard, the bead of the Municipal Laboratory of Paris, testifies, the art of manufacturing explosives advances every year, till they can be made in a garret, and, we suppose, according to formulas which require no extent of chemical knowledge. But still the law warns all chemists not to sell certain things ; it compels the bomb-makers to adopt a suspicious secrecy, and it alarms all but the extreme desperadoes, who are prepared to face all risks. It will probably be found as efficient as our own law on poisons, which does not prevent occasional suicides by poison, but does render it excessively difficult to obtain any poison such as men, half-determined on suicide, would, if they could, employ. Legislatures can only do what they can, and can no more totally prohibit a bad use of modern explosives than they can totally prevent any other crime. For the rest, the Govern- ment is going to trust its police, armed with a largely increased grant of secret-service money ; and that is the reasonable, as well as the courageous, course. There is nothing gained by violent laws, which offend the instinctive sense of justice, and still less by autho- rising torture, to which, we deeply regret to see, the Russian police are reported, in a new outburst of the Nihilist panic, once more to have had recourse. Apart from its utter immorality, on which we should insist even if it succeeded, the police get from torture a morsel of evidence here and there, at the cost of losing all the evidence with which men who cannot tolerate the use of torture might supply them. They rouse a secret rage against themselves among all who might assist them, which destroys at once half their efficiency as detectives. The ordinary methods of repressing crime are the wise methods, subject always to one reserve, the willingness of Courts to act upon the evidence collected, It is not yet certain that the Parisian jurymen, who voted "extenuating circumstances" for Ravachol, will have the spirit to declare Valliant guilty, even upon his own confession.
As to the question, hotly debated, we believe, among the Continental police, whether Anarchists are a class of individuals to be found in all countries, or are an organised international society, having a defined aim and a common plan for reaching it, there is as yet no sufficient evidence. The police everywhere seem to think such a society exists, and search everywhere for documents which may reveal its secrets or the names of its members. They probably have by this time a score of agents supposed to be Anarchists, and whose one occupation and hope is to' discover the centre of the mysterious fraternity. They have, moreover,- as they say, made from time to time important hauls, a Dutchman, for example—presumably a Jew from his name—having this week been arrested with a thousand letters from all parts of Europe in his possession. The Viennese police are even reported to believe that all Anarchists obey central orders and that one of them commands them to "disturb society" by an explosion once a month. We suspect all such stories. They appeal very strongly to the popular imagination, and are therefore widely circulated; but they rarely rest upon more than the thinnest substratum of fact. That Anarchists in one country may be in com- munication with Anarchists in another is likely enough, and that in each country there may be a club which acts as a central point is also possible, but that a true International Society with rules and discipline exists requires still to be proved by evidence not produced. Such a society requires a keen brain to manage it, and the absence of the sort of broad design which a clear brain would devise is as yet of all the facts about Anarchy the most patent. Such a Society to keep up its internal discipline would, moreover, require considerable funds, and an army of obedient agents ; and of neither has any trace as yet been discovered. It is much more probable that the impatience of existing society, which is visible in large classes every- where in Europe and in North America, poisons the minds of a few in every class up to the point when they resolve on making their enmity felt in an overt way, and that the sequence of the explosions is a result of imita- tion and excitement. We are, in fact, in face of an epi- demic of crime, such as has not unfrequently broken forth in the world, and which disturbs and attracts certain desperate men, usually, like Ravachol and Valliant, pre- viously criminals. It is a Jacquerie of a new kind, appearing in many places at once, and resting, no doubt, like every Jacquerie, upon a broad basis of dis- content, rising in individuals to a hatred of the governing class of the most deadly kind. It will burn itself out, we i =gine, like all such movements, but it may intermediately produce many disasters for mankind, the greatest being a sudden and severe recoil from true Liberalism,—that is, the wise and gentle government of the world. It would hardly take two more explosions in France to produce a dictator- ship with a soldier at its head, while one in England would throw the whole country into a fever of reactionary fury. It is in the interest of iAberalism as rightly under- stood, that it is necessary to arrest any progress of Anarchism ; but that cannot be done by panic-stricken legislation. That the French Ministry have kept their heads under such provocation is the best sign reported from France for many a long day.
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