Fergus County argus. [volume] (Lewistown, Mont.) 1886-1946, 1891-04-09
Donnelly an Anarchist.
1Pioneer Press.l

Senator Dean seems to have inferred
from some remarks of Mr.. Donnelly
that the latter was an anarchist. The
Donnellian remarks which led him to
this conclusion were to the effect that
the constitution of the United States
was entitled to no particular rever-
ence or respect and the supreme court
of the United States to still less. The
fathers of the Republic, he said, never
dreamed that an oligarchy OF twelve
judges, sitting in their robes in Wash
ington, would govern the destinies of
the nation, or that they would dare to
declare laws enacted by the people un-
constitutional, meaning thereby that
1T was the intention OF the fathers
aforesaid that the legislatures and the
acts they passed should be superior to
courts and constitutions. 1t would
certainly appear that these views JUS
titled the inference that their utterer
was something OF an anarchist. Those
who have watched the course and are
familiar with the utterarces of this
.'eminent man" must have come to
that conclusion long ago. For DON
nelly is and always was an anarchist
in the broadest sense of that term.
And he cannot helpit, except under the
counteracting influence OF something
more powerful, for the time being, than
his natural inclinations. For he was
born an anarchist. He is a detruc-
ZIONIST by force OF temperament. The
desire to tear down and break to
pieces, instead of to conserve and
build up, is a congenital disease of his
nature. He is always plotting destruc-
ton, preaching destruction, prophecy
ing destruction; but he is not implac-
able. He is ready to avert or postpone
the impending catastrophe for con-
sideration. As Macauley says of Ber-
nier, he revels in pictures of misery and
despair, like the fiends in Dante's "In-
| ferno," who are forever watching the
pool OF boiling pitch in Malebols. He
would have you know that he is a
walking volcano in a perpetual state
of fiery eruption, ready to overwhelm
all existing institutions in his floods OF
seething lava; but he is always willing
to clap the lid on the crater if the
terms are satisfactory.
| AS in politics, SO in literature; de-
struction is the pervading theme or
aim of all his literary ventures. In
the first of these, "Atlantis," q trs-
mendous convulsion OF nature sinks
Atlantis, the tabled abode OF a happy
and superior civilization, a thousand
fathoms deep in the yawning abysses
OF the angry ocean. In the next,
"Ragnarok," he undertakes to set
aside the scientific glacial theory ol
the drift deposits and to account foI
the presence and distribution of drift
upon the hypothesis OF another ter
rible cataclysm caused by the collision
OF comet with the earth. The slow
secular process OF the ice movement
which required many ages to perform
it's work with the drift, were too tedi
GUS for Donnelly, Just as all the pro
cesses of orderly and free development
in civil life are too slow for him Sc
he invents this tremendous convulsior
of colliding worlds, with all its attend
ant horrors of earthquake and flame
and tempest, to perform in one terri
BILE instant the work which science as
signs to unnumbered ages of slow tran
sition, just as in politics he is always
invoking some sudden and terribl,
revolution to set things right which
will right themselves by the natura
laws of development. His next bool
was his attempt to destroy Shake
J speare; to tear down the splendid
fabric of his worldwide fame and en-
throne Lord Bacon upon the ruins al
the author of his immortal dramas
There was another cataclysm here
: too, but it was the explosion of tn
clumsy fraud of the cryptogram, ant
it hurt no one but it's illustrious in
ventor. In his last book, Caesar
Column" he fulfills his favorite dream
, of perpetual and relentless confiic
, of class interests ending in universe
, social destruction and chaos. AM
so, whether he writes or whether b
talks, he is always the same bird OF il
omen. He is an anarchist by natur
and still more so by calculation. An
archy, under all its forms of social an,
, physical ruin and chaos, is his stoc
in trade. He speculates in it as othe
people speculate in wheat or tow
: lots. He has been specializing in it 10
nearly a quarter of a century, and D
= has now a bigger stock OF it on hand
apparently, than ever before.