Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1881-08-23
SOCIALIST BLusTka.

world than with the 'effete despotisms, " :.
which are commonly supposed to furnish
the motive OF their action. The United
States, England, and now Switzerland,
have deeply offended these mild hammered
cut. Threats, and to judge from their recent
rawlings they contemplate, as preliminary
to more serious work, the total destruction
Of free institutions and everything else in
those countries. England Disguised them
by prosecuting Herr Most; the United
States, by failing to welcome the assassin
Hartmann with enthusiasm; and now poor
! little Switzerland has incurred their bit
terest hatred by declining to allow them
to hold upon her soil convention OF
lunatics, demagogues and murderers.
1t is very probably the case that
Switzerland could have afforded to
permit the Socialist Convention to be
held, for these gatherings as a rule only
bring contempt upon the fanatics and
fools who air their raw philosophy and
their Jacobinicalt ravesties ofliberty at their
sessions hut Switzerland happens to be
surrounded by neighbors who are as
powerful as they are sensitive, and who
have had during the past few years very
substantial cause for Directing to the
combination of Socialist atrocities by the
little republic. 1t has become too plain
for doubt that the liberty of publication
and assemblage hitherto allowed in Swift.
erland has been abused by the advocates
of assassination, and that these men have,
moreover, used the Cantons, not only as
convenient refugees, bat as equally con.
venient headquarters for the dissemination
Of their favorite doctrines, and for the
dispatch of their murderous expeditions.
Under the circumstances, therefore, the
authorities of Zurich may have exhibited
a wise discretion in denying to the Social.
lists the privilege which they solicited.
In this country the general tone of the
press regarding Hartmann has exasperated
our Justus Schwabs exceedingly, and one
of their organs, German sheet published
at Chicago, has recently issued an ad-
dress to the American journals which is at
once ludicrous and offensive. 1t begins
with an apostrophe to ''our" honored
forefathers, George Washington, Thomas
"Paine, Benjamin Franklin, and others, "
and proceeds to classify them with Leo
Hartmann, asking if they also are to be
stigmatized as common murderers, "
"bscause they killed, or assisted in kill.
"ing, British soldiers while fighting for
life and liberty" The only difference
between the revolutionary fathers and this
Russian hero" the address says, is
that they used powder and shot and he
"employs dynamite. and the American
press is informed that '.by casting oppro-
"brium upon Hartmann you, by implica-
ton, dishonor the great leaders of our
Gown National Revolution. In con.
clssion the recreant American Journals are
threatened with great threat And
"know also," says the address, ''you
q" treacherous, unworthy sons of our t?l
.great forefathers, that there will be war
Gin this country-war to the knife
before we allow our country to be
"run into monarchical channel by the
assistance of corrupted and venal CAPT.
"talistic press" 1t is perhaps pity that
the writer of this address, with all his
passionate veneration for "our" fore
fathers, cannot apparently speak their
language, but is obliged to convey his
patriotic denunciations in a foreign tongue.
The familiarity with which these foreign
Socialists appropriate the traditions and
history of America, and the unconscious
way in which they burlesque both, may
possibly excite in the mind of the sane
reader twinge of doubt in regard to the
general effects of indiscriminate and prema-
ture naturalization. An ideal of George
Washington which harmonizes with the
actually OF Leo Hartmann would certain
ly seem to have very little in common with
the American conception of the truth of
history, yet this ideal is evidently quite
natural to the Socialist intelligence.
These people are in fact Enthusiastically
disappointed to find that IN the countries
where true freedom has longest existed,
and where. in the language of the poet,
it has E" broadened slowly down, from pre-
"cedent to precedent" there not Only is
no tendency towards Socialistie theories,
but, on the contrary, there is very de-
cided repulsion from them. Socialism
has really nothing in common with the love
OF ordered liberty. II has much more
in common with the despotism il de-
nounces. The worst tyranny ever inflicted
upon people was that Of the French ia
collins during the great Revolution, and
these Jacobins were the true forefathers of
the modern Socialists. They were at once
Ignorant, conceited and dogmatic. They
insisted upon forcing al mankind into one
category, and when they found that great
many people could not be SO forced, they
proposed to exterminate them. We recog-
nize the relationship, and the full force of
the ancestral tendencies, in these recent
assaults upon the free governments Of
the world. The Socialist has in truth
NO. moro love for Anglo.Saxon free
dom than for Russian autocracy. He
hates everything that prevents him
from dragooning all the world into
submission TO his own theories. In his
eyes there is no liberty but that which he
is prepared to administer, and all who deny
his positions are aacthema. There is
nothing new in the phenomena. They are
atleast as old as civilization. Bat civiIiza.
ton has acquired in the last century an
experience which will guarantee it against
| any future deception at the hands of PEG.
pie Of this kind. The buster Of the
Socialists is harmless, but, like the threats
and curses of Giant Pope in the Pilgrims
Progress. it serves to show what they
would do if they possessed the power, and
it suggests the necessity of keeping the
malignant imbeciles who utter these windy
rnenaeas under constant surva;iiapce and