THE ARREST OF MR. BEN TILLErT.
WE sincerely trust that Lord Salisbury will not be too forbearing with Belgium, if it proves, as we fear it will prove, that Mr. Ben Tillett's account of his treatment by the Belgian Minister of Justice, is virtually accurate. What Mr. Tillett says in his account of the outrage upon him sent to the Daily Chronicle is as follows,—that, after being solicited by the Antwerp -dockers to give them advice as to the best mode of obtaining better conditions for their work in the Antwerp docks, he, after some weeks' delay, crossed to Antwerp last Wednesday week, having first given .notice of his visit by telegraph ; that he was met at Antwerp by a party of the dockers and also by a number -of the Antwerp police, who warned him that he would not be allowed to address any public meeting in Antwerp, or to promote a public agitation there ; that he stated his intention not to address a public meeting, and kept his promise ; that he twice met the leading dockers in a private room, and gave them the benefit of his advice and English experience; that for this he was arrested on the Friday of last week, and after a good deal of hesitation, was locked up in a filthy cell without being told of what (if any) breach of the law he was accused ; that he was there kept, in physical conditions so disgusting as to make him very unwell, for the rest of the day and a good part of Saturday,—he was in the hands of the police for twenty-six hours,—without being allowed to communicate either with his family or with the British Consul ; and that on the Saturday he was conducted by the police to the British steamer and sent back to England without any explanation or apology. His statement appears to be perfectly straightforward. He makes no complaint of the police, who only executed the orders sent them by the Minister of Justice; and though, of course, it may be that he is accused of having used language in his con- ferences with the dockers that was deemed illegal and likely to incite to some breach of the peace,—for we all know that Mr. Tillett's language is often violent even to English ears, and may have seemed criminal to the ears of the Belgian authorities,—he certainly believes himself to have dissuaded the Belgian dockers from anything like violence. But whether that was so or not, it is quite certain that Mr. Tillett was never informed of what breach of the law he was accused, and that he was not permitted to communicate with the British Consul on the treatment he was receiving, which is surely the right of every British subject arrested and imprisoned without any formal charge. Considering that in the Congo State Major Lothaire has executed a British subject without any authority except the sentence of a court-martial, and that the Belgian Court of Appeal has acquitted him of any breach of the law in so doing, we have good reason to think that the conduct of the Belgian authorities towards British subjects is becoming arbitrary and unscrupulous. It is simply impossible that in Mr. Tillett's case there was any kind of excuse for violent or exceptional measures. According to his own statement, he used his personal influence, and used it successfully, on the side of submission to the orders of the police, not against it, and he was rewarded by an imprisonment which he believes to be quite un- lawful, and was certainly accompanied by treatment contrary to the usages of international courtesy. To specify no charge against him, to deny him any appeal to his own Consul, to put on him the convict's "cowl," to treat him,—untried and uncondemned,—as if he had been a convicted criminal, and to dismiss him without the slightest explanation of the grounds of this arbitrary conduct, was, if his own account of the matter be fairly accurate, a clear outrage on the rights of a foreigner visiting Belgium for a peaceful and, as he believes, a perfectly legitimate purpose. If he did unwittingly offend against Belgian law, he had at least an absolute right to know against what law he had offended, and to claim the protection of his own Consul. This high-handed mode of dealing with a British subject paying a solicited visit to persons who were not even accused of breaking the law by inviting him, has all the appearance of outrage, and certainly ought to receive, and no doubt will receive, immediate attention from our own Foreign Office. The Belgian authorities sometimes appear to us to be inclined to trade upon the weakness of their little State. It is quite right that weak States should be treated with courtesy and consideration so long as they are careful to respect the liberties of others as well as to maintain their own. But when they begin to execute the subjects of other States by martial law,—which really means no law at all,—and to arrest them without even specifying what law they have broken, they should be called to account, and held to be as responsible for their acts, as if they had the full weight of responsibility which attaches to powerful Governments.
In Mr. Tillett's case we are the more anxious that his rights should be jealously defended and maintained, pre- cisely because he is at times so violent in his own country, and gives the impression of thinking that the richer classes are always trespassing on the rights of the poor. The way to treat a politician of that class is to make him feel that he is as much entitled to the protection of the State, and will receive it as freely when he is wronged, as if he were one of the most powerful and influential citizens of his country. The best way to make agitators of his type respect the rights of others is to show them that their own are strictly observed and maintained. It is especially desirable in a democracy to vindicate the legitimate claims of those who are most disposed to push democratic prin- ciples to extremes. But, indeed, in the present case Mr. Tillett appears to us to have acted with unusual modera- ion and circumspection, though we do not know that in his advice to the Antwerp dockers he may not have used language which reasonably alarmed the Belgian authorities. But even if he did, his successful exhorta- tion to the Antwerp delegates who received him, not to resist his arrest, and the frank way in which he absolves the Belgian police from all blame, prove that he was not in his militant mood ; and we cannot think that if he had been as violent and arrogant as he has often been in England, the Antwerp police would have failed to make his language the ground of a specific charge against him. At any rate, he has clearly been used in a fashion which any English subject ought to resent, and we have no doubt that Lord Salisbury will take up his case precisely as he would have taken it up if the same treatment had been accorded to a Member of the House of Lords. It is a great opportunity for showing that there is no respect of persons in the conduct of our Foreign Office. Wherever else there may be respect of persons, there should be no respect of persons there. There seems too much reason to believe that if the Jameson Raiders had been raiders of a very different class, raiders of the artisan class for instance, they would have received very different sentences from those which they actually received. But that is not the fault of our Foreign Office, but rather of the sympathy felt by our Courts of Justice for men whose feelings they can enter into, and whose ill-judged gallantry they admire. In dealing with the outrage of a foreign Minister of Justice on the rights of a peaceful British citizen, we hope and believe that there will not be the slightest trace of class-feeling. If a working man cannot feel pride in belonging to a great country, how can we expect him to be as patriotic and loyal to that country as the man who can ? We hope and expect that our Foreign Office will take up Mr. Tillett's grievance with all the promptitude and spirit with which it would take up a similar outrage on a great merchant or a great statesman. Lord Palmerston may have pushed the Civis .Romanus sum principle too haughtily and too far, but in the new generation we have certainly been too often disposed to ignore it.. It is as much a duty to defend an unscrupulous agitator when he adopts a moderate and reasonable attitude towards the arbitrary Minister of a foreign country, as it is to defend the highest subject in the realm under the same circumstances. A State which should neglect one of its artisans, when it would avenge the wrongs of a conspicuous member of what is called "society," is not a State in which we could expect the people at large to feel the least legitimate pride.
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