Two more societies of Anarchists have been discovered, through the
premature explosion of chemical mixtures, one in Belgium and one in Spain. The Belgian society is apparently an offshoot of the French one, but the Spanish is native, and very formidable. The Anarchists, it is stated, are taking advantage of the distress existing in Andalusia, -where the tenure is very bad, and labourers can get neither land nor good wages, and are threatening the holders of pro- perty. They have been guilty, the Minister of the Interior says, of many outrages, and obey the orders of a society calling itself " The Black Hand," the object of which is the destruction of capital and its owners, and which numbers 500 leaders and 7,000 known followers. This form of fanaticism, with its strange contempt for human life and still stranger touch of sordidness in its objects, seems to be running like an epidemic through Europe. We presume the truth is that, as in the days of the Jacquerie, which also burst out everywhere, and was marked by extreme ferocity, some class exceptionally miserable has become suddenly conscious of its misery. That would explain the readiness with which agents are found, but the belief of the leaders of the Societies that you can build by mere destruction remains inexplicable. It is not probable that the disease, for it is rather that than anything else, will last long. There is too much readiness in making revelations.
