ct of other political societies of the same sort--the destruction
of tyranny and the assertion of the rights of the people. The
principles of the Brotherhood are two. So long as a man's life is
useful, or even harmless only, he has the right to enjoy it. But, if
his life inflicts injury on the well-being of his fellow-men, from that
moment he forfeits the right, and it is not only no crime, but a
positive merit, to deprive him of it. It is not for me to say in what
frightful circumstances of oppression and suffering this society took
its rise. It is not for you to say--you Englishmen, who have conquered
your freedom so long ago, that you have conveniently forgotten what
blood you shed, and what extremities you proceeded to in the
conquering--it is not for you to say how far the worst of all
exasperations may, or may not, carry the maddened men of an enslaved
nation. The iron that has entered into our souls has gone too deep for
you to find it. Leave the refugee alone! Laugh at him, distrust him,
open your eyes in wonder at that secret self which smoulders in him,
sometimes under the everyday respectability and tranquillity of a man
like me--sometimes under the grinding poverty, the fierce squalor, of
men less lucky, less pliable, less patient than I am--but judge us
not! In the time of your first Charles you might have done us
justice--the long luxury of your own freedom has made you incapable of
doing us justice now."

All the deepest feelings of his nature seemed to force themselves to
the surface in those words--all his heart was poured out to me for the
first time in our lives--but still his voice never rose, still his
dread of the terrible revelation he was making to me never left him.

"So far," he resumed, "you think the society like other societies. Its
object (in your English opinion) is anarchy and revolution. It takes
the life of a bad king or a bad minister, as if the one and the other
were dangerous wild beasts to be shot at the first opportunity. I
grant you this. But the laws of the Brotherhood are the laws of no
other political society on the face of the earth. The members are not
known to one another. There is a president in Italy; there are
presidents abroad. Each of these has his secretary. The presidents
and the secretaries know the members, but the members, among
themselves, are all strangers, until their chiefs see fit, in the
political necessity of the time, or in the private necessit