Execution of Anarchists.

America is much more famous for the rough and ready justice known as lynching, than for the justice of the law courts. The former is sudden and effective, the latter follows the crime slowly, and with a lame and uncertain step. There are so many loopholes, so many delays, such a protracted process of appeal, that the worst offender may always hope for the mitigation of his sentence. After the lapse of months the deed is half forgotten, and as it has ceased to rouse public interest, greater leniency is naturally shown to the perpetrator. Thus the fatal riot in Chicago, for which four anarchists have now been executed, occurred on the 4th of May last year, and the interval has been spent, not altogether unhappily by the prisoners, who have been allowed to receive visits and presents from their friends, in using the legal forms of appeal. Expectations have inevitably been raised, as the memory of the black event in which they were the aggressors faded, that they would ultimately escape their own friends worked for them, and a large number of benevolent people, recovering from the first panic, began to pity them. Yet they richly deserved their fate, and the American authorities have only done a simple duty to the country and to free institutions in hanging them. Whatever excuse or palliation or humane cloak may be used to screen lawless revolutionaries in nations that are despotically governed, and to prevent their aggressive violence from appearing in its naked repulsiveness, no plea can be urged for them among a free people. If the Continental methods of agitation are once tolerated, we might come to the Continental method of government, and therefore it is that we are glad to find in America no truckling to the violent spirits of the community, and no compromise with ideas that are of foreign origin, and the outcome of different circumstances.

Every great city has its thousands who seem to be always ripe for mischief. Though they are in reality disorganised, yet so quickly do they spring up on occasion, like the armed men from the seed of the dragons teeth, that they would almost seem to lie in wait for an opportunity. But Chicago in especial has long been, like London, a centre of the doctrines carried by refugees from Russia and Germany, and the forces of destruction have, therefore, been more or less organised. It has witnessed socialistic and dynamite conventions, and its printing presses have poured forth revolutionary new papers and tracts. Hence it was chosen as the first scene of an anarchic outbreak in America, and the members of the destructive cults attempted there to sacrifice the state upon their altar. The time was supposed to be fitting. Labour disputes were raging, and the large bodies of men on strike were far from being scrupulous in the means they adopted for preventing others from working. At a meeting held on the 4th of May, 1886, which was harangued by two of the foremost socialists, language so glaringly seditious and violent was used that the police warned the orators to desist. A bomb was almost immediately exploded among the police, and this appeared to be a signal of attack to the mob. A desperate fight ensued, during which firearms and bombs were freely used, twelve policemen were killed, and 200 of the anarchist mob wounded. Ultimately the guardians of order dispersed the crowd, arrested the ringleaders, seized a large collection of dynamite bombs in the city, and confiscated the seditious literature. In August the prisoners were tried and convicted. Then followed, in accordance with the usual form, an appeal to the Supreme Court, which has at length, after an absurd interval, upheld the verdict. Lastly, petitions on their behalf were signed by Americans, and a maudlin appeal for mercy was sent by the radicals and communists of Paris. But the efforts have been in vain. Though the law has travelled at a snail's pace, it has been in the end effective, and four of the anarchists have paid the last penalty for their crime, and can now be worshipped as heroes and martyrs in the secret meeting places of revolutionists.

Among the Chicago rioters, as in recent London disturbances, were some of the unemployed, and a large number of foreigners, bent on propagating socialist and anarchist ideas. Between these two classes there is little in common, and we have no reason to fear that the genuine labourer, even if he is out of work for a time, will cast in his lot with the revolutionary parties. But it would be a mistake to imagine that the latter are harmonious and unanimous. They agree on one point only, on offering opposition to the Government. The socialist distinguishes himself from the communist, the anarchist from both, while the dynamiter looks with contempt on his more peaceful fellow worker. The socialist would suppress the individual by means of a rigid all pervading system of grandmotherly government, the anarchist curses governments of every sort, and is as bitterly opposed to socialism as he is to despotism. As at the time of the Reformation there were sects whose only mission was to hate other sects—a feature not wholly lost, perhaps, in the course of ecclesiastical progress—so there are parties in modem Europe whose only object is to war against every form of government. The true anarchist is opposed to all law and rule and coercion. In his creed everything should be left to individual reason or caprice, no man being governed by another under any pretext. He represents an extreme reaction against Russian despotism, of which he is the product. The Czar is master of eighty millions of human beings , the anarchist holds that every man should be lord of himself alone. Everyone should be free to do as he pleases, to enter into a voluntary combination with his neighbours or to withdraw from it at his own sweet will. He dreams of a millennial world, in which each man will live on a quarter of an acre of land, co-operating with the rest of humanity or not as the humour seizes him. What is to be done with women, whether they are to be governed, or whether they are to receive a share of the quarter acre, and be free to follow every caprice, is not evident; anarchists having not yet gone so far in reconstructing the ideal society. It is, of course, useless to point out the palpable defects. One man might be pleased to oust his neighbour, and then the ideal society would be at an end. When humanity becomes perfect the whole world may become anarchist, but we do not see that this peculiar fruition is to be gained by dynamite which savours strongly of compulsion.

The delusion, that free countries can escape the revolutionary spirit, has now melted into thin air like a morning mist. To all appearance England stands in as much peril from anarchists and socialists as Russia or Germany. The truth is that these classes are encouraged by weakness, suppressed by the firmness of the Government, and whether the constitution be free or not makes little difference. If they are encouraged and tolerated, if they meet with flabby rulers, they will assail England as readily as Russia. The conclusion is, that for men who try peaceful persuasion there should be a patient hearing , for those who resort to arms, the gallows.

The Argus 17 November 1887,