6 NOVEMBER 1869, Page 5

THE " RED " CREED.

ENGLISHMEN who care at all to understand the struggles which are evidently approaching on the Continent, and which will more or less disturb France, Italy, Spain, and per- haps Russia, should take some little pains to comprehend the real creed of the great party which is usually nicknamed by those who dread it, the "Reds." It is not summed up in the formula, Down with everything!' nor is it best illustrated by extracts from half-poetic, half-savage leaders in papers edited by men whose judgments have been warped by long-continued wrong. Incredulous as they may be, we can assure our readers that there is a sensible Red party, which is neither anarchical, nor insane, nor given to lyrics, but intent on a definite result, which, immense as it is, is not beyond attainment or reason- able political anticipation. It is because this sensible party exists, and serves as a centre for the whole fluid mass of dis- content, aspiration, and hatred now seething in Southern Europe, that "the Revolution" is so formidable, and so dreaded by old-world politicians. Mere anarchists they could repress, disciplined force being always stronger than force which is not disciplined ; and mere Utopians they could in most instances tolerate, content to leave them to be defeated by the permanent and incurable selfishness of human na- ture, the quality which the dreamers all, in one way or another, ignore. But they dread the sensible Reds, for they know that their creed is one by which masses of men can live without endangering, far less destroying, modern civilization. The first article in that creed is that no form of government can be expedient or righteous which is not Republican, for no other can protect, or indeed acknowledge, that "dignity of man" which to a genuine Red seems the sine qua' non of all effort, the one belief without which politics, philanthropy, education are all sterile displays of power. They admit that the queer fiction called constitutional monarchy has in one State at least preserved liberty, though, as they allege, at the cost of enormous suffering ; but it does not secure their end, which is liberty and something more, that full concession to man as man of every right which we call equality. Every kind of government not. springing from the people, and not avowedly subject to their right of removing it, is an infringe- ment of this equality, and monarchy is an especially offensive one, because by its system of artificial grades it, so to speak, consecrates inequality. It does not merely recognize it, it makes it, deliberately and of malice aforethought, and in so doing, in Red opinion, not only abandons the first object of society, but does a distinctly wicked thing,—deprives millions of a birthright without which their capacities cannot have full development. That this belief is fatal to the medireval system of government now universal in Europe, Switzerland and the States of the Church being the only exceptions, is true ; but to say that it is anarchical is not true, society having been repeatedly and successfully constructed on this basis, notably by settlers in America of a dozen different races, by Germans in Zurich, by Frenchmen in Geneva, and by Norsemen in Norway, where the kingship is not the final authority even in theory. As to the form this Republic must assume no sensible Red ever lays down any dogma at all, though we believe they all more or less incline to what would be in practice federalism. French Reds recoil from that word, but they offer rights to municipalities which are in facts rights of government ; German Reds do the same, and Italian Reds have repeatedly alienated opinion by their open adhesion to the idea.

The second article in the Red creed is that religion is an affair of the individual, and of him alone ; that it should be supported by no tax, exempted from no obligation, and protected by no law,—no doubt, a radical change. No organized community has, we believe, ever existed in which such a principle was theo- retically asserted, though something like it exists in practice in the German section of Ohio. Even there, however, blasphemy is punishable by law, while in Switzerland, if we are not mis- taken, priests are exempt from the conscription. Ireland will next year approach more nearly to the Red ideal than any European state ; but even there the common law is inextri- cably mixed up with the tenets of a particular faith, and clergymen will retain certain legal privileges and immunities, as, for evaniple, from service on juries. Whether a society can be so framed as to act upon this tenet we cannot say ; we doubt it greatly, owing to the close relation between creeds and morals, and to the enormous difficulties presented by the question of blasphemy, difficulties which perplex and harass even avowedly Sadducee Governments like that of India ; but the tenet is not necessarily hostile to religion, is indeed held by many men of intense personal piety, as, for example, by all sincere Quakers. If Reds triumph State churches must go, but the connection between the Red faith and irreligion is a lament- able accident, produced mainly, though not entirely, by the ex- cessive pretensions of the Catholic clergy. Many Reds have been pious men, and thousands maintain, without being pious, that the right to be so is inherent, that to interfere with voluntary worship is as iniquitous as to establish worship by law. We may add, though the speculation is foreign to the purpose of this article, that in our belief, should the Reds conquer Europe, as they probably will, we may witness a strange revival of religious energy, the enthusiasm now expended in politics taking that nearly allied form. That, however, is a dream, our true point being merely to show that the Red faith and atheism have no connection, a point we might, perhaps, make more easily by naming Mazzini, a typical "Red," yet a man of the deepest religious feeling.

The third article in the Red creed, and the one which brings upon the party the most discredit in this country, is that property is a privilege. They do not deny that it may be a privilege which it is absolutely necessary to grant in some form or other, but they do say, as we understand them, that it is granted by the community, and must be exercised subject to such conditions as the community may please to impose. That belief in the abstract does not differ very much from the one current in England, that property has duties as well as rights, but the Reds are logical and Englishmen are not, and their deductions from their theory often strike Englishmen as monstrous. There are more maniacs upon this point among the Reds than upon any other, many holding that all property should be in common, and many more that all land should belong to the State. The sensible Reds, however, who are perfectly aware that if they alarm the peasants they doom themselves to per- manent defeat, hold a theory which we believe to be very nearly this. The community has a latent right over property which on the Continent it has never used, but which it ought to use to facilitate the growth of the equality which, in Red ludgnsent, is essential to develop manhood. It ought to pre- vent pauperism entirely ; first by securing constant redistribu- tions of property at death ; secondly, by throwing all it can of the State burden off labour and on to property ; and thirdly, by securing work to those without it. How far it may be wise to proceed in these directions depends on considerations of expediency, but the right of the State is complete, and it may morally go as far as the majority please. For example, it might justifiably fix the maximum of land which one individual might acquire, or impose a progressive income- tax for the maintenance of workshops for the poor, or levy severe succession duties, or even fling all taxation on to realized property. The old Reds practically did do all these things except the first ;—to this hour the sheet-anchor of French finance is a tax which it would be impossible, or at all events most difficult, to impose in England, a direct and a severe land-tax almost amounting to a rent,—but we suspect the modern Reds in power would pause before they made any further attempt in the same direction. They would probably content themselves with some form of poor-law—either in the shape of a right to work, or what is infinitely more probable, because the peasantry would like it, by a grant of pensions to the aged, to be supplied from the proceeds of an income-tax—with State assistance to co-operation, and with some tax or another upon rents, the unparalleled increase in the wealth of rent-receivers, an increase not due to themselves, having excited a kind of disgust not very easy to explain in England, where the notion of property has come to be almost antagonistic to that of earn- ings. The governing idea throughout would be not to attack property, but to remove as far as possible those inequalities which in modern society property so visibly creates.

We are not in the least disposed to eulogize this creed, which is in no way our own—though we sympathize with the scorn of the Reds for meaningless monarchies which are not even intended to be monarchical and which have no historical root —but we believe we have stated it fairly, and we would ask what there is in it that should induce average Englishmen to condemn those who hold it as crazy or anarchical. They may like it, but surely it is as practical as any of the very few systems yet tried in Europe, and much more honest ancl straightforward than most of them. That the Reds are wrong in trying to establish it by force we have always asserted, but even on that point the sounder minds among them have a great deal to say for themselves. They allege that the force complained of is exerted against them, that any attempt to realize their ideal by discussion or voting is prohibited an& punished. The one political project which cannot be legally discussed in any Parliament of Europe is the one upon which they have set their hearts, and which they think indispensable- to the welfare of mankind,—the proposal to establish a Republic. This prohibition is permanent and perpetual, and extends even to universal suffrage, the right of appealing to a plebiscitum even in the country where it exists being reserved to the Monarch whom a Republican vote would first of all dethrone.