inexorable as a physical law of nature. When he threatened to burn Paris rather than surrender it, he meant it, and he was the man to do it or to see that it was done if within the limits of the possible. Mr. Phillips seems also to appear, at least, to threaten incendiarism as a means of accomplishing his purpose. What means this, the closing sentence of his lecture: “The lesson taught by Chicago is that wealth cannot afford to neglect poverty”? Does this mean that the Internationals burnt Chicago? or does it simply mean that other cities may be burnt as well as Chicago, and will be, if wealth continues to neglect poverty or refuses to yield to the demands of the International Association of Workingmen? This gives the question a startling aspect. Certain it is that the Association holds itself free to introduce its socialism or communism by murder, assassination, robbery, plunder, and conflagration at the pleasure or dictation of its chiefs. Take the following letter, read and endorsed by Mr. Phillips before a New York audience:
“Before proceeding to speak of it, you will allow me to read a notice which has been placed in my hand, and in the object of which I sympathize cordially, because the great foreign movement can be commemorated by it. The French Commune has always seemed to me to deserve the cordial respect of every lover of the progress of the masses throughout the world. I have no doubt that in due time its good name will be vindicated, and its leaders lifted to the unqualified respect of the civilized world. The notice I hold in my hand is as follows:
“‘To the Workingmen of New York, friends of humanity, enemies of bloodshed, and lovers of justice: Citizens! The recent barbarous executions in France, in cold blood, six months after all struggles are over, and the ferocity with which the conquerors pursue their victims, are a disgrace and shame to humanity. We must not allow the human race to be stained by the shedding of its own blood without a protest. You, workingmen, would you let your friends
the workingmen be murdered because they have defended our rights in any part of the world? No! certainly not without raising your voice and making it heard across the ocean. To give effect to these purposes, a grand funeral procession will take place in New York on Sunday, the 10th of December, at 1 o’clock, forming opposite the Cooper Institute. All men, without distinction of party, of race, of nationality, friends of justice and freedom, are invited to join. By order of the Committee of Arrangements of the Federal Council.’
“I hope every man who loves his fellow will show himself there. There was never nobler blood shed, never more high-minded and disinterested effort made in the long history of Freedom’s struggle, than in Paris, when, in defiance of all the oligarchies of Europe, that city stood up for the individual and for liberty in the nineteenth century.”
The impudence of the writers of this letter is sublime, and only surpassed by that of the lecturer in endorsing it. Why, these fellows would persuade us that they are “enemies of bloodshed and lovers of justice,” meek as lambs, timid as sheep, and harmless as doves—they who, without a shadow of justice or excuse, made the streets of Paris run with the blood of the innocent, the noble, and the saintly. “Enemies of bloodshed”!—they whose hands are reeking with blood! Yes, to having their own blood shed, but not to the shedding of the blood of others. “Enemies of bloodshed and lovers of justice”! Good God! can hypocrisy or self-delusion go so far? Let the assassination of Generals Le Comte and Clement Thomas, the horrible murders, when it was known that the cause of the Commune was lost, of the holy and unoffending Archbishop of Paris, of Jesuit fathers, and a dozen Dominican friars and lay brothers, to say nothing of other murders hardly less horrible, reply to that false pretence. It would seem that these miscreants count for nothing the blood they shed without authority, in violation of law, religion, morality, and every principle of justice, and every sentiment of humanity; it
is only when justice overtakes them, and, after trial and conviction by legitimate authority, orders them and their fellow-criminals to be shot or sends them to the guillotine in punishment for their crimes, that they have a horror of bloodshed! Then, and only then, they ring out their dastard cry against injustice and for the sympathy of that humanity they have so greatly outraged! The men who have been executed by the government at Versailles deserved their fate—men without a single virtue or noble quality except personal bravery in face of death. Deluded were they? Yes, as every great criminal, murderer, or assassin is deluded.
What most excites our indignation is to find an educated and refined American gentleman, of no mean ability and rare eloquence, and past middle age, coming forward before an American audience to express in a written lecture deep and unreserved sympathy with, and approval of, these horrors and abominations, equal to those of ‘93, and applauded by his auditors for such an outrage on common morality and decency. Yet it is no more than we might have been prepared for, since Mr. Phillips only gave a logical expression to the principles he had always defended as an abolitionist; and while there are fools enough among us who imagine that the issues of the war have endorsed them and they have been sanctioned by the God of battles. We love our country, and have been proud of our countrymen; but, if they have fallen so low as to applaud the Paris Commune and its horrid butcheries and profanations, we can only say, Alas for them!
It may have become unsafe to oppose the Internationals, since the police has taken them under its protection, and granted them their impudent demands. We are surrounded
by Internationals—our city is at the mercy of men who are restrained by no law, by no religion, by no morality, by no sentiment of humanity, from using any means or methods they judge likely to serve their ends, and New York is hardly less wealthy and more combustible than Paris. Herein is there a grave danger. At its head are men who are in dead earnest, desperate men, who shrink from nothing likely to further their ends. We are not surprised that Prussia and Austria have taken the alarm—consulted together as to the means of protecting themselves and society against their machinations. France keeps them in check only by her army, and knows not how soon even the army may fraternize with them—and fraternize with them it certainly will if it loses all hope of restoring the Empire or the monarchy. Great Britain is now using them, but will soon find herself obliged to suppress them, as she did or as she attempted to suppress the Thugs in India, if she means to preserve her institutions. Here they will make trouble, for each party will bid for their votes, and fear to offend them for fear of losing an election; but they can acquire less power out of our cities here than elsewhere, unless they enroll in their ranks the recently emancipated negroes, and rouse their savage instincts to dispossess the planters and to take possession of their plantations; for the passion for individual property is too strong in our agricultural laborers, and the facilities for individuals to rise from proletaries to capitalists, or to the ownership of land, are too great to afford them, when it comes to the test, any appropriate support. Yet they will confuse our politics, corrupt still more the morals of our community, and defeat any wise and salutary action of the government. They