V.
THE FORCES ARRAYED AGAINST CIVILIZATION.
“There are worse things than dynamite. The godless and law-defying forces back of it constitute the real danger. These forces are arrayed against civilization. All over the world the masses are in a state of agitation. New ideas and false theories are being presented and expounded by fanatics, charlatans, and demagogues. In an age of free speech and free print new doctrines spread rapidly. The poor, unsuccessful, dissatisfied, and lawless elements of society are boiling over with the maddening thought that somebody is doing them a great wrong. The restlessness of these people has been intensified by the teachings of earnest and well-meaning but misguided men. Henry George’s opinions have spread like wildfire, and taught millions to believe that private property in land is against the laws of nature and of God. Hyndman, in England, and other writers are spreading the notion that capital is the enemy of labor, eating up all the profits and keeping the working-man on starvation-wages. Others follow Prudhon, and declare that ‘all property is robbery.’ Others argue that religion, morality, government are all tricks of the oppressor, designed to keep the people down and out of their rights.”—Editorial in The Atlanta, Ga., Constitution, March, 1885.
VI.
THE PROSPECTS OF AN ALLIANCE BETWEEN
DYNAMITERS AND COMMUNISTS.
“The communists were in high feather last night at the Germania Assembly Rooms. They met to commemorate all operations of rebellious societies against governments in general and the Paris revolution of 1871 in particular.... When the speaker referred to the barricades, and prophesied an early recognition of the ‘establishment of human liberty’ and the destruction of all crowned heads by an agent more powerful than the dreaded guillotine, the sons of Clavis sent up a roar of applause and bravos, intermingled with an occasional ‘hear, hear!’ from a dozen nitro-dynamiteurs who came to explore the prospects of an alliance, offensive and defensive, with their fiery Continental brothers on behalf of the ‘rights of man.’”—New York Tribune report, March 23, 1885.
VII.
TWO CONTEMPORARY CRITICISMS.
“The existence of passion, favoritism, nepotism, and subjection to the behests of party, instead of love of country, thoughtfulness, and systematic business principles in the administration of government, with too much esotericism in its conduct, gives posts of honor to servants that impede, and retains officials that resist reform and accuracy in the civil service of the country. They forget that they are chosen to be about their country’s business, in which every citizen has an interest. Thus the want of business capacity and fidelity to the people’s trust furnishes many causes for the law’s delay, and some for its death.”—Chief-Justice Thomas F. Hargis in the North American Review for April, 1885.
“The predominant vices of America, especially as represented by its great cities, are its irreverence, its recklessness, its impatience,—in one word, its materialism. A nation in which the artistic sense is almost dead; which is practically without a literature; which is impatient of all sanctions and indifferent to all religions; which is corrupt from the highest pinnacle of its public life down to the lowest depth of its primalism; which is at once thin-skinned under criticism and aggressive to criticise; which worships material forces in every shape and form; which despises conventional conditions, yet is slavish to ignoble fashions; which, too hasty to think for itself, takes recklessly at second-hand any old or new clothes philosophy that may be imported from Europe, yet, while wearing the raiment openly, mocks and ridicules the civilization that wove the fabric,” etc.—Robert Buchanan in the same number of the same Review.