There is no sympathy in this country with the Irish dynamiters; but we are all more or less astonished by the gravity with which English newspapers rail at this country for not preventing the exportation of dynamite. The London Times unconsciously puts its fingers on the proper place for the discovery of such dynamite when it calls attention to the fact that a ninety pound package of the murderous stuff got to London through a British custom house. The British custom house is the spot where the watching should be done. If the importation of goods was as closely supervised in England as it is in this country, no dynamite could reach London. We do not watch exportation closely because no export duties are allowed to be levied by the constitution. It is the inward movement, not the outward, for which we have official machinery of supervision. To invent and carry on machinery for watching exports is an expensive business in which we should not engage. It is entirely unnecessary. Let England watch at her own custom houses. If her officers admit dynamite in ninety pound cases, let her improve that branch of her civil service. The Nation very judiciously says: “If the English custom house can not stop the infernal machines, it is folly to ask any foreign police to do it.”
Our suggestion that laws against intermarriage between races should be repealed (April number) has “shocked” one reader. Our friend does not get shocked at the right time and place. Intermarriage of white and colored persons is very rare, because nature and society exercise adequate restraint. The place for being shocked is in another part of the field. And yet it is an astounding fact that the peoples who are most easily shocked by the marriage of two persons of different races seem not to be shocked by the very large number of illegitimate children of dark skinned mothers. There is an exact parallel in the doctrine of the celibacy of the clergy, and the intense feeling which enforced it, in the days of Hildebrand. A recent writer says of that state of things: “The priest who kept a harem of concubines was simply guilty of a venial sin which did not vitiate his act as a priest; it was the act of marriage, with its more deliberate declaration of principle, which the church could not tolerate.” In both cases, that old case of mock celibacy and the present case of illegitimate mingling of races, the feeling on the subject is very sincere, deep, aggressive, against marriage “with its more deliberate declaration of principle.” But in each case the real evil evades the feeling and defeats its object with demoralizing effects.
They do some things better in France. The government has ordered observations to be made on strokes of lightning and their effects, by a bureau, using postmasters and others as observers. A report for the first half of 1883 shows that in January there was one lightning stroke which injured a man carrying an umbrella with metal ribs; in February there were no strokes; in March and April, four each month; in May twenty-eight; in June one hundred and thirteen. Seventy animals and seven men were killed, and about forty persons were injured. Lightning rods were treated with contempt, and the electric fluid especially attacked the bells and bell-towers of churches, and in one case blasted the gilt wooden figure of the Christ on a church which had a lightning rod. The second half of the year would of course show a longer chapter of accidents. Why can not we have in this country just such a system of collecting the facts about lightning strokes?
An interesting set of experiments is reported by Mr. G. H. Darwin, son of the great author of Darwinism, on right-leggedness and left-leggedness. The subject is of more importance than it seems. Most readers will remember that Charles Reade, the novelist, contended in a recent work that right-handedness is a fruit of bad education, and that, if children were not meddled with by nurses and teachers, both sides of the body would be equally strong and skilful. Mr. Darwin blindfolded a group of boys, having first ascertained whether they were right or left handed, and set them to walking toward a mark, leading them straight for three or four paces. All but one swung round to right or left, tending to a circular path, and the right-handed boys turned to the left, and the left-handed boys to the right. The one exception was a boy about equally expert with both hands. He went tolerably straight. Mr. Darwin’s opinion is that right-handed persons are left-legged, because every strong effort by the right hand is attended with a corresponding effort by the left leg. This does not, however, settle the question raised by Mr. Charles Reade; for left-leggedness is only an effect of right-handedness.
We shall have to study the machine politician a good deal before we dispense with his existence. In New York City, investigations show that the city offices, such as County Clerk, Register and Sheriff, afford from $50,000 to $100,000 a year of revenue to the man holding either office, and that he buys the office, never paying less than $50,000 for it to the bosses who control votes by arts that are as dark to respectable citizens as the mysteries of mediæval astrology. A man on a school board was caught selling teachers’ appointments. He was put off the board and went to selling liquor. In due time he became an alderman. The halls could not agree upon a president of the Board of Aldermen. Then the Republican boss made “a deal” with the Tammany hall and turned over the Republican aldermen’s votes to elect as president the smirched seller of teachers’ places and bad whiskey. This man is mayor of New York when Mayor Edson is absent, and has recently acted as such. An intrigue of that sort is as well worth studying as the farewell letter of Washington. It opens the very heart of our political demoralization. The chief parties to this intrigue will both be at Chicago, one in June, the other in July, with the votes of their respective parties in New York City in their dirty hands. They are engaged in a commercial business the staple of which is ballots, and they amass fortunes by selling votes and offices.