ARMS ACTS.
THE seizure of arms in Clerkenwell brings up once more the old and exceedingly difficult question of the expedi- ency of Arms Acts. Whenever order is menaced or disturbed, an Arms Act is the first thing thought of by the Authorities, and one of greater or less severity is almost invariably passed, with full popular approbation ; yet it is held by many experi- enced men to be doubtful whether any such Act can be of much practical value, and quite certain that it is not of the kind of value which the public attribute to it. Practically, such an Act only prevents the importation or conveyance of rifles, and this only in part. Rifle-barrels are very easily secreted, stocks are very easily made, and the weapons suffer very little, if greased, from long periods of concealment. The profits of the trade, when it is illicit, are very considerable ; foreign gun-makers will give the law no help, and it is univer- sally found in India, at the Cape, in Ireland, and even in Germany, that some of the rifles required by Revolutionists find their way into their hands. Nor is it absolutely certain that it is always for the benefit of Governments that rifles should be unattainable. If the governing men dread assas- sination—and they do dread it, not so much from physical fear as from horror of its disorganising effect—rifles are not the weapons they have most to dread. Rifles are the weapons of men who wish to escape, who are afraid of the crowd, who desire for any reason that the cause of their attempts should remain unknown,—that is, of men who from nervousness, dis- tance, and pre-occupation, are exceedingly likely to miss their aim. Their action, too, can be foiled in part by armour, by bullet- proof carriages, by an accumulation of guards, and above all, by stopping at home. Orsini bombs, revolvers, daggers, and even bludgeons, are far more dangerous to the great. President Lincoln and President Garfield were both killed with revolver- bullets. The Emperor Alexander II. was blown to pieces with a hand-grenade loaded with dynamite. Lord F. Cavendish was stabbed to death with bowie-knives. Most, if not all, of the Europeans killed in Alexandria were either clubbed or stabbed. The absence of rifles makes no difference to the safety of great men, beyond this,—that more determined persons are told-off for the assassination, and that the criminals use the weapons of science, against which protection is nearly im- possible, or the rough weapons on which it is impracticable to lay a complete embargo. If, again, the governing men dread revolt, it is doubtful if rifles do not make revolt less formid- able. The native armies of India are far less dangerous to the British Government than the populace of any disaffected province, because, if soldiers revolt, they are tempted by their arms and their discipline to take the field, to keep together, and to fight out their quarrel in a way with which regular troops can deal. The true strength of the organised Govern- ment can be fully brought to bear against them, as it cannot be brought to bear against the people. In the same way, a body of disaffected men, once in possession of rifles is sure to
aggregate itself into a sort of regiment, sure to select a posi- tion which allows of movement, and therefore sure to offer to the soldiery a tangible and visible object for their efforts.
The Revolutionaries cease to be everywhere, and are gathered like ordinary enemies, on a spot. A " rising " in Ireland would be indefinitely more easy to deal with than the present fluid disaffection, just as that would be less formidable than the passive resistance which hitherto no insurgent leader has ever been able to organise completely for a sufficient length of time.
Nevertheless, all statesmen, in all countries except America, where the physical and moral difficulties in the way of an Arms Act would be endless, have always in times of trouble pleaded earnestly for the seizure of arms. In every country of the Continent, every Government, even when Republican, has regarded the collection of a concealed store of arms as a serious danger, has made the carrying of weapons an offence, and has either permanently or in certain crises authorised the search for arms. The statesmen can hardly be all wrong, nor are we inclined to believe that in their searches it is the insurgents and not the weapons for which they make their hunts. No doubt, they are glad to seize Guy Fawkes, but they are still more pleased to lay their hands upon his powder barrels. The truth is, the secret distribution of arms involves two dangers about which statesmen in Parliaments say little, but which they never forget. One is that the possession of arms encourages resistance to every public force except soldiers when employed in numbers, and Governments justly dread above all things overt resistance to the public force. The strength of a Police rests in a great degree upon opinion, they cannot be massed like soldiers, they may be beaten by an armed crowd, and once beaten, civil war, with all its horrors, is upon the country. No Government wishes to call out its soldiers against citizens, or to create an antagonism which may become chronic between the people and the military. Even the Government of Germany waits long before the soldiers are summoned from their barracks ; while that of France organ- izes with extreme care a force of gensdarmes intended to be as effective as the soldiers, yet distinct from the Regular Army. As civil war means the suspension of the objects for which States exist, the necessity of protecting the Police from volleys would of itself in times of trouble justify an Arms Act, with all its inquisitorial and oppressive incidents ; and there is another reason yet. Every civil trouble of the more serious kind tends to become a social war, and social war is indefinitely aggravated by the free distribution of arms. Fifty men will commit crimes, whether of assassination, or intimidation, or resistance to authority, if they have rifles in their hands, for five who will commit them unarmed, or with arms useful only in close combat. The disorderly are tempted by the arms them- selves. The majority of men are not cowards, but they are very much afraid of being hurt ; and insurgents or assassins, except in Russia, are neither braver nor more self-devoted than other people. All experienced men know that to induce a crowd to defy a charge is far easier than to induce it to charge —the exact opposite being the ease with soldiers—and that reluctance to come to close quarters proceeds in great part from the distrust of the majority in their arms, and a dislike for close fighting, which is felt equally by individual assassins or small groups. We condemn insurgents as cowards when they fire from behind hedges and walls ; but patriotic citizens defending a position against foreign soldiers do exactly the same thing. The assassins know they are stronger for a breastwork if they have rifles in their hands, and in the absence of rifles is the absence of the temptation to use that knowledge. With rifles in every man's hand in Ireland, we might have to face insurrection instead of outrages ; and that would be a good thing, for we should either defeat the insurgents in fair fight, or come to terms with them as with other enemies ; but we might also have to face murderous warfare in every village, and that would be a worse evil than any we have ever yet encountered. Governments are bound to think of the State, but their first duty is the protection of the people, if needful, from each other, —and for that Arms Acts, in times of excited feeling, are indispensable.
Whether Arms Acts are usually well devised, is another question. It is a little doubtful whether more perfect protec- tion might not be secured by directing the whole weight of the law against the manufacture, sale, or possession of explo- sives, including cartridges. They cannot now be manufactured in private houses in any quantity, and one would think it pos- sible to keep up a strict supervision over their manufacture, their import, and their transit. Such strictness is, how- ever, very difficult, in countries where there are many sportsmen and many gamekeepers, where trade is free, and where public sentiment is exceedingly opposed to police interference. Moreover, make what laws we may, the prohibition of arms, whether directed against the weapons or against ammunition, must ultimately involve the worst feature of all Arms Acts, the right of domiciliary visitation. The object is to prevent the arms being used, and the only mode of prevention is to seize them ; and that involves, of necessity, the right of search. It is a vexatious right, a right liable to endless abuse, a right which constantly inflicts much annoyance and even suffering upon the innocent. But without search the arms will never be seized, and seizure is the end in view. There is no way out of the dilemma, except to allow the collection of arms, and that a Government once in the presence of angry disaffection cannot do. The State may not be much threatened by 400 rifles and a few cartridges hidden in a warehouse, but the arms are intended for distribution, and their owners might head a riot in Dublin or Liverpool, which, simply because the rifles were there, could not be put down without a lamentable effusion of blood. A body of police can disperse a crowd armed only with bludgeons or knives, when the crowd, if it possessed only twenty rifles, could not be dispersed without a volley, under which, if we may judge from the nearly unbroken experience of city riots, at least one-half the victims would be innocent. Governments are bound to anti- cipate such evils, and the only duty of Liberals, while strength- ening their hands, is to insist that they shall choose trustworthy agents, and shall make the abuse of the right of search an unpardonable official offence.
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