n which wrecked Clerkenwell prison?"
Well, we need not foolishly and timidly deny it. Let it be fully
granted. Let us grant, further, that all this lies in the nature of
things; that the most ardent Socialist, if he owns property, can by no
means do otherwise than Conservative proprietors until property is
forcibly abolished by the whole nation; nay, that ballots, and
parliamentary divisions, in spite of their vain ceremony, of discussion,
differ from battles only as the bloodless surrender of an outnumbered
force in the field differs from Waterloo or Trafalgar. I make a present
of all these admissions to the Fenian who collects money from
thoughtless Irishmen in America to blow up Dublin Castle; to the
detective who persuades foolish young workmen to order bombs from the
nearest ironmonger and then delivers them up to penal servitude; to our
military and naval commanders who believe, not in preaching, but in an
ultimatum backed by plenty of lyddite; and, generally, to all whom it
may concern. But of what use is it to substitute the way of the
reckless and bloodyminded for the way of the cautious and humane? Is
England any the better for the wreck of Clerkenwell prison, or Ireland
for the disestablishment of the Irish Church? Is there the smallest
reason to suppose that the nation which sheepishly let Charles and Laud
and Strafford coerce it, gained anything because it afterwards, still
more sheepishly, let a few strongminded Puritans, inflamed by the
masterpieces of Jewish revolutionary literature, cut off the heads of
the three? Suppose the Gunpowder plot had succeeded, and set a Fawkes
dynasty permanently on the throne, would it have made any difference to
the present state of the nation? The guillotine was used in France up
to the limit of human endurance, both on Girondins and Jacobins.
Fouquier Tinville followed Marie Antoinette to the scaffold; and Marie
Antoinette might have asked the crowd, just as pointedly as Fouquier
did, whether their bread would be any cheaper when her head was off.
And what came of it all? The Imperial France of the Rougon Macquart
family, and the Republican France of the Panama scandal and the Dreyfus
case. Was the difference worth the guillotining of all those unlucky
ladies and gentlemen, useless and mischievous as many of them were?
Would any sane man guillotine a mouse to bring about such a result?
Turn to Republican America. America has no Star Chamber, and no feudal
baron