The daily morning journal and courier., 1897-09-04
THE CAUSES OF ANARCHY

The causes which have produced the recent outbreaks of anarchy in Europe and especially in Spain, require to be considered For ourselves. we do net believe that there is much mystery about anarchism. The world has had plenty of experience of the thing in the past. though it has called it by other ana less sensational names. The men against whom Sidmouth and Castle reagh legislated With such blundering ferocity, and who planned the Cato street conspiracy, did not profess to be anarchists, but when it came to action their methods were much the same That they and the anarchists are also alike in origin we do not doubt. To give it a plain name, it is in the long run misery and discomfort which make men anarchists, just as it was misery and discontent which made them Lud- dites or Spenceans.
 Sometimes misery and discomfort come directly from the follies and blan- jers of government. Sometimes they are a symptom of national decay some | times. again, a sign that violent ana organic changes are taking place in the | body polite Sometimes, too, they are results of the strain of great and, 1t may be, necessary national effort. or l this kind was the misery and discon- tent which filled England at the end of l the great war Possibly the disease was not very wisely treated, but at any rate. it's appearance was a lesser evil than giving way to Napoleon. Our freedom and the freedom of Europe must be considered well purchased even | if we reckon the full tale of suffarine caused by the drain of blood and treas ure. In Spain the misery and discon- tent in which anarclism breeds so cas- fly seem to be caused by a combination of almost all these elements. The gov crnment is corrupt and inefficient, and it's fiscal policy places terrible burdens | on tho people.
 I Next, Spain is, we fear-at present, at
 any rate-a decaying nation. There
 may be a revival, but just now there are not wanting the signs of senile de-
 generacy. Lastly, Spain is undergoing terrific strain in her attempts to Keep 1 her remaining colonies. People here
 hardly realize what Spain has done Tn
 the course of the struggle with Cuba | She has sent so many conscripts there l to die of fever and homesickness and
 wretchedness that at present the span | ish war office has a greater experlence
 in the matter of the transport of troops | by sea. not merely than any other war
 office of modern times, but of any times 1 Spain in the last few years has put two | hundred and fifty thousand men into | Cuba. That she does not have to pro- vide for bringing them home is the mos dreadful and disastrous fact of all. The | Cuban war has done much to exhaust Spain in three ways. It has cost huge sums of money, has absorbed the eIer- gies of government, and, more import. ! ant. it has robbed the country of bali
 her crop of young men. The con
 scripts have been sent to die in Cuha at the very moment when they ought 1 to have been using their young ener gies in tilling the soil, winning iror
 from the mines, or working in th'
 trades. In d land where the men have
 an invincible longing to rest in the
 shade after forty, and are old at fifty
 the nation cannot do without it: