In all the various and vain experiments in government the one cause of failure is eternally manifest; the general moral and intellectual delinquency that makes government necessary—the folly and depravity of human nature.
Do the socialists think that they can alter that?—do they believe that after all these centuries of thought and experiment in government in all possible conditions, it has remained for them to devise a system powerful to chain or persuasive to charm the hitherto indomitable and vigilant selfishness to which, despite its ghastly perversions, the race owes its continued existence? Do they believe that under Socialism the laws will execute themselves without human agency; that less than to-day the state will require a vast and complex administration, with the same and greater temptations and opportunities to ambition and cupidity?
Under any conceivable system the cleverest, most enterprising and least scrupulous men will be at the head of affairs, and they will not be there “for their health.” You cannot keep them down, and you cannot keep the others up. If the socialist thinks that can be done, he must hold in hope a better kind of ballot than the kind that works him present woe, or a brand-new infallibility for its casting.
VIII
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. ——?