The Bossier banner., 1886-07-08

butcher. In France it is called Commun-
ism, in the United States it is called So
cialism, in Russia it is called Nihilism.
That last is the most graphic and de-
scriptive term. 1t means complete and
eternal smash-up. It would make the
holding of property crime, and it would
drive a dagger through your heart and
apply torch to your dwelling, and turn
over this whole land into the possession
of theft and lust and rapine and murder.
The philosophy of the whole business ia
that there is a larger number of people
who either through their laziness or their
crime own nothing, and are mad at those
who, through industry and wit of their
own, or of their ancestors, are in possess
ion Of large resources. The honest labor
ing classes never had anything to do with
such murderous enterprises. 1t is the viii
lainous classes, who would not work if
they had plenty of work offered them at
large wages. Many Of these suppose that
by the demolition of law and order they
would be advantaged, and the parting of
as wreckers, to carry off the
cargo. 1t offers it's hand. to this
fair republic. 1t proposes to
tear to pieces the ballot box, the legis-
lative hall, the Congressional assembly. 1t
would take this land and divide it up, or,
rather, divide it down. It would give as
much to the idler as to the worker, to the
bad as to the good. Nihilism! This
panther having prowled across other
lands has set it's paws on our soil, and it is
only waiting for the time in which to
spring upon its prey. 1t was Nihilism
that massacred the heroic policemen
of Chicago a few days ago, and
that burned the railroad property at
Pittsburgh during the great riots: it was
Nihilism that shot black people in our
Northern cities during the war; it was
Nihilism that again and again in San
Francisco and in New York mauled to
death the Chinese; it is Nihilism that
glares out of the windows of the drunk
cries upon sober people as they go by.
All! its power has never yet been tested.
It would, if it had the power, leave every
church, chapel, cathedral, school house,
college and home in ashes.
Yet this Nihilism, with feet red with
slaughter, comes forth and offers it's
hand for the republic. Shall the banns be
proclaimed? If SO, where shall the mar
riage altar be? and who will be the off,
ciating priest? And what will be the
music? That altar will have to be white
with bleached skulls, the officiating priest
must be dripping assassin, the music
be the smothered groan of multitudin-
Gus victims, the garlands must be twisted
of nightshade, the fruit must be apples
of Sodom, the wine must be the blood of
st. Bartholomew's massacre. No! 1t is
not to Nihilism, the sanguinital monster,
that this land is to be married.
Another suitor for the hand of this Ma
tion is Infidelity. Mark you that all An
archists are infidels. Not one of them be-
lieves in the Bible, and very rarely any of
them believe in God. Their most con-
spicuous leader was the other day pulled
by the leg from under bed in house of in
t amy, cursing and blasphsming. The po-
lice of Chicago, exploring the dens of the
Anarchists, found dynamite and vitriol
and Tom Paine's Gage of Reason" and
obscene pictures, and complimentary biog-
raphies of thugs and assassins, but not
one Testament, not one of Wesley's hymn
books, not one Roman Catholic breviary.
There are two wings to infidelity-the one
calls itself liberalism. and appears in
highly literary magazines, and is for the
educated and refined; the other wing is in
the form of anarchy and is for the vulgar.
But both wings belong to the same old
filthy vulture, infidelity! Elegant in
fidelity proposes to conquer this land to
itself by the pen; Anarchy proposes to
conquer it by bludgeon and torch.
The only impulse in the right direction
that this world has ever had has come
from the Bible. 1t was the mother of Ro.
man law and of healthful jurisprudence.
That book has been the mother of all re-
forms and all charities-mother of English
Magma Charta and American Declaration
OF Independence. Benjamin Franklin,
holding that holy book in his hand, stood
before an iDfidel club at Paris and read to
them out of the prophecies of Hahakkuk,
and the infidels, not knowing what book it
was, declared it was the best poetry they
had ever heard. That book brought
George Washington down on his knees in
the snow at Valley Forge, and led the
dying Prince Consort to ask some one to
sing "Rock of Ages"
tell you that the worst attempted crime
OF the century is the attempt to DESTROY
this book; yet infdeiity, loathsome
stenchful, leprous, pestiferous, rotten
monster, stretches ont its hand, ichorous
with the second death, to take the hand of
this republic. il stretches it out through
seductive magazines and through carica-
lures OF religion. It asks for all that part
OF the continent already fully settled
and the two-t thirds not yet occupied.
1t says: "Give me all east of the
mississippi with the keys of the Church
and the Christian printing presses; then
give me Wyoming, give me Alaska, give
me Montana, give me Colorado-give me
all the States and Territories west of the
Mississippi, and I will take those places
and keep them by right of possession long
before the gospel can be fully intrenched.n -
And this suitor presses his case appa ling
~. Shall the banns of that marriage be
mo" say the home missionaries of the
West-a martyr band of whom the world
Is not worthy, toiling amid fatigues and
malaria and starvation.
mo! not if we can help it. By what we
and our children have suffered we forbid
The banns Of that marriage?"
GNafU Ill