MR. LABOUCHERE AND THE POLICE.
IT threatens to be a misfortune for the English people that they have enthroned the democracy in power before they have themselves become penetrated with the democratic idea. It is of the essence of that idea that the people form the State; that the ultimate right of sovereignty, which must always exist somewhere, is deposited in the community ; and that, consequently, all officials are the agents of the people. That is not only self-evident, but is acknowledged both in America and France, the only two States of any size which are as yet consciously democratic. If that idea, however, had entered clearly into the English popular brain, Mr. Labouchere's monstrous letter to Mr. Harrington about the Police could never have been written, at least in his character of a man anxious to be recognised as a tribune of the people. He says : —"If a policeman tries to force his way through an orderly and legal meeting, be is a disturber of the publics peace ; he may and ought to be resisted. If he strikes a blow, that blow ought to be returned, in order to prevent him striking another. If he seeks to take life, any one who is in danger may defend himself by taking the life of the policeman." Those sentences are either direct incitements to civil war, the levying of which is just as much treason under a democracy as under a Sovereign, or a passionate expression of the old idea that policemen are mere agents of an outside tyranny, whom it behoves freemen to resist. They are nothing of the kind, but are appointed by the people, derive their powers from laws passed by the people, and perform their functions solely for the benefit of the people. A vote of the House of Commons, elected by a suffrage really universal, could in a week dissolve the whole body, terminate their autho- rity, and dismiss them from their employment. To say, therefore, that a crowd has a right to resist the police in the performance of their duty, or to kill them if attacked, is simply to say that a section of the community, casually selected and assembled together, has a right to declare war upon the whole community, to defy its laws, and to slaughter down its agents. It is the absolute denial not only of the right of any Government to exist, but of the right of the community to rule. Mr. Labouchere states his view with his customary clearness, and affirms positively that a policeman has no right to pass through an orderly meeting ; but let us just test that. Take the commonest of instances. A police- man watching an orderly crowd—say, a May Meeting of philanthropists—sees a thief pick pockets, and makes for that thief. The crowd bar his passage, and he uses force. Mr. Labouchere says the crowd have a right to strike him ; and if he uses weapons, to put him to death there and then. If that be true, then the democracy, whose recognised and uniformed agent the policeman is, has absolutely no rights at all, can neither make laws nor enforce them, and popular sovereignty is but the emptiest of dreams. The only sovereign is a mass meeting, which is on the theory beyond all law, can be con- trolled only by itself, and may punish control, if assumed by the agents of the entire community, with immediate death. No function of government can be carried on if a certain number of persons dislike that particular section of the work ; for example, the special hopes of philanthropic Radicals are all in vain. They all hope that many great evils now pressing on the working people, labourers, miners, spinners, sailors, and the like, may be cured by careful State inspection. That plan is being extended every day, and is so popular that Mr. Bevan, the Trades-Union orator, recently advised its extension to most of the operations of labour ; but it must be finally arrested. There is almost always a minority in every trade who do not want to be inspected ; and, according to Mr. Labouchere, they have only to meet in a crowd, to refuse the Inspector admission, to strike him if he pushes, and to kill him if he defends himself with lethal weapons. What is the difference between an Inspector, say, of mines, and a policeman, except that the duties of the former are less peremptory than those of the latter, and that their exertions protect the people against rather more remote dangers Y Both equally derive their power from the community, and both are entitled to the protection of the community in executing the functions they are ordered to
perform. On Mr. Labouchere's principle, a gang of smugglers have only to constitute themselves a public meeting, and the revenue officers have no right to ride through them in search of brandy-kegs ; they may, if the revenue officers produce arms, shoot them down. That is pleasant news for smugglers, whose profitable trade would eoon be revived by a temporary immunity ; but in what way is such a theory consistent with democracy f Has the commonwealth no right to collect taxes, as well as no right to put down treason / Or are its rights terminated because, in obedience to an old tradition, derived from very different days, the community, when in executive movement, is habitually called " the Government "I Mr. Labouchere will, of course, say that for a policeman to make way through a crowd in order to report speeches, is a very different thing from making way in order to seize pick- pockets or smugglers ; but where is the difference in principle The community, which is sovereign, directs its agents to pre- serve order, and leaves them some discretion as to the means. If they, possessing that discretion, think that careful report- ing tends to preserve order—as when agitators are about, it certainly does—they must have some moral right to employ that exceedingly innocent preventive means. It is stated, in a sort of tone of horror, that one of the reporters at Mitchelstown was a policeman. Does that terminate the right of the community V Surely, if it may do anything at all, except suffer violence tranquilly, it may station single policemen in a public place, when a riot is expected, where it pleases. To advise a mob to strike that policeman, and to kill him if he uses arms, is to advise it to resist popular government by force. It is the sovereignty of the people which is struck at as much as civilisation. The New Radicals would acknowledge this if they were themselves in power, and only deny it because the people have for the moment, and in recoil against a par- ticular policy, chosen Tories as their agents. That, however, is within the clear right of the electors, and can in no way affect the moral right of the whole community to the obedi- ence of fractions of it, even though those fractions do happen to be aggregated together in public meetings. There is nothing sacred in a public meeting that it should be allowed to disturb the public peace with impunity, still less that it should be permitted to kill the agents of the commonwealth appointed to watch its proceedings. Suppose a Church, which is usually better organised than a public meeting, and governed by higher impulses, were to claim the rights Mr. Labouchere claims for his meetings of electors, citizens, and roughs, what would he say? We think we could write the letter, full at once of violence and of scorn, in which he would denounce that Church for impudence, and call upon the people at large by a distinct exercise of their ultimate power to bring that Church back to a sense of its position as a mere atom in the general commonwealth.
The question of results is not essential to the argument, which is independent of the consequences of anarchy ; but as a matter of fact, letters like Mr. Labouchere's tend to produce the very bloodshed he professes to deplore. We do not mean only that he incites the populace to acts which must result in grave collisions, but that he is helping to destroy all authority not supported by physical force. It is perfectly certain that in the long-run,if the commonwealth can procure obedience in no other way, it will resort to force. It is only its moral hold upon the multitude which enables it to be so lenient. In England, men usually obey the police, and therefore firearms are dis- pensed with ; but in New York, the police habitually carry and make use of the revolver. On the Continent, where anarchist passion is bitter, and most men have been soldiers, the police expect to be defeated ; and, therefore, the moment resistance grows serious, the soldiers are displayed, and you read the accustomed sentence, "It was necessary for the soldiers to use their arms." It was incessant resistance which in Ireland forced the Government to arm the police, and it is re- sistance carried still further which compels the police to use their arms. That necessity is a lamentable one, marking a distinct deterioration in the civilisation of the time. A wave of the hand ought to be sufficient, and will be when the people understand that their responsible agents are only them- selves over again. So far are we from wishing to " hound on " the police, as an acrid critic suggests, that we gravely doubt whether it is the best course to arm them, and whether, when force is indispensable, soldiers ought not to be invariably displayed, because their presence warns the crowd and makes resistance visibly impossible. Our argument is only that the community must rule and will rule, and that every incitement to resist its just right only diminishes its lenity, and forces it to display the strength which lurks behind its reasonable commands. It is not by accident, but in obedience to a historical law, that an American community, whenever it is forced to act against a mob, scatters death broadcast. It has lost beforehand moral authority, and losing it, is driven back on the authority it cannot lose.,
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