, 1894-08-08
7 HE AVIS
Christiansted, St. Ceeix.
Wednesday, Sth August 1894.

:" sum llequeuCJ III Inese Gays INA II may
BE desirable TO consider cal e~fully What they
mean. The word anarchy is closely assO-
ciated in everybody's thoughts with ruinous
confusion ami strife, and very reasonably 50.
yet thut is not what the word means. 1t means
simply the absence Of government, nothing
more. Let us imagine a newly -discovered and
unihhaBited island being settled by men and
wotkeh SO upright, so Industrious, so yener-
Gus, i'll short SO angelic in character that they
needed no contracts, no laws, no governor,
no judges, no police; and therefore never in
stltuted any of these things nor appointed
any OF these persons, then there would be
anarchy. yet there would be DO confusion.
There would in fact be the greatest harmony,
peace and happiness, yet, being without GO
vernment, the community would neverthe-
less be in a state of anarchy. A community
such as this is the community which the
philosophical anarchist wants to see univer-
sally established. He argues that men have
not sufficient freedom, that we are all afraid
OF each other, that we hold each other in
check, and submit toithe cheek ourselves, be-
cause we will not trust each other. All this,
lie says, must be altered, if mankind is TO
make any great progress. Each must be a law
unto himself, there must be no masters, no
rules, no control except what springs from "a
mans self. The name of their notorious
cluO III LondOn ntOnOmie (self1aw) express
es their chief doctrine in the most concise
possible form. The motto Of the club only
slightly expands it. mi dieu hi maitre"-
neither God nor master. That men Of cult
walton should hold views like these is id difficult
to comprehend, but it is not at all difficult to
comprehend that the criminal classes find
such views very attractive. What q glorious
day for the thief and the murderer when there
Will be no vile policeman to arrest him, no
judge to condemn him and no sheriff to see
him locked up or hanged! Hence the anarch-
lists are made up of half crazy fanatics ON
the one hand, and perfectly sane and cold
blooded villains on the other. Some of the
latter, We may reasonably suppose, care little
for the theoretical side of aharchism; they
are merely animated by a blind hatred of all
auth rity, so inconvenient for them, and by
sullen feelings of revenge against the society
that restrains them. These men and a few of
the most extreme of the theorists make the
party terrible for the moment; but the terror
cannot last; the retribution which it calls
down may do something to crush out the party,
but not SO much as the r%Ottenness Of the
cause itself. A system which Ia based on a
radical error as to the nature of man cannot
endure. Men like freedom well enough, but
even if they suspect that they have not
enough of it, they are never going to believe
that the path to it lies through the destruc-
ton of constituted authority in order that
every man may have license to do as he pleas
es. The word anarchy,a as we said before, is al
ways associated with the thought of confu-
sion and violence, and it is Sc because the
thing itself is always associated with confu-
sion and violence. Before we can lave an
allarc y that is not so associated, we must
turn men and women into angels, and to set to
work on that great process by killing a few
individuals here and there in a cafe or a
theatre, scarcely offers any likelihood of sue
cess. AS an active force anarchism will be
crushed out of the world, and az a theory it
will be laughed out. The same cannot be
said of socialism, which is a very different
thing.
The names anarchist and socialist are so
Frequently used togethe&, as if the two were
merely varieties Of the same species.
that it may surprise some of our readers to be
told that their aims are exactly the opposite
of each other. Yet such is really the case.
If We conceive of the present condition of
society as represented by the equator, then
the anarchists must be placed at one of the
poles. the socialists at the other; or PERHAPS
may say more correctly that the anarch-
wish to remove society to the one pole
while the socialists wish to remove it to the
For anarchIsm. as we have seen. ex.