THE MARK OF THE TYRANT.
filHERE is an infallible mark by which you may know 1 tyrants and men of tyrannical temper. It is the blind rage into which they fall when their will is crossed— when they find that there are things which they cannot do, even though the powers they wield are in theory absolute and irresistible. When the tyrant, be he an isolated autocrat or the member of some junta or com- mittee, the controller of a majority in a representative Assembly or a Caesarean Dictator, is thus disillusioned, he bellows like an angry bull, and, bead down and with bloodshot eyes, seeks something on which to wreak his vengeance, careless of all considerations except the desire to strike and kill. That is exactly the frame of mind into which the more extreme and violent section of the Liberal Party have been thrown by recent events. Their will was crossed by the action of the cavalry (men and officers) at the Curragh. Since then they have been raging as only the tyrannical can rage, whether Eastern sultans or Jacobin committeemen. They thought that the will of the House of Commons was now absolutely supreme, or subject only to the time-limit of the Parliament Act—and then suddenly they came up- 'against something which was stronger, something which could not be cajoled or bullied. It might please and enrage a cynic to 'note the frenzy of the" checked despot when he finds that what he imagined was a mere mechanical instrument has thoughts and feelings, and that the British Army is not the slave Army for which his soul craves, an Army which will act like Turkish Janissaries, but, instead, is an Army of Englishmen. 'For ourselves, we are bound to confess that this is a loathsome and degrading exhibition. It causes in us, not amusement, but a positive sense of nausea A notable example of the bellowings and buttings of the infuriated Jacobin bull is to be found in The Soldier and tke citizen, a pamphlet just issued by Mr. John Ward, M.P. (T. Fisher Cfnwin, Is. 'net). Mr. Ward is possessed of 'no small literary ability, and writes, ao far as words and style go, with all the graces and artifices of a practised and cultivated pen. But his literary skill cannot hide the fury of the baulked tyrant—the fury which has again and again, as history shows, caused the sycophant's dagger to -relieve the bitterness of a master's disappoint- ment, as when it moved Henry II. to give vent to the words which slew Becket at the altar. Uncontrolled rage is always contemptible, and no better example of this truism can be found than Mr. Ward's pamphlet. If what be says is true, or even if he believes it to be true, then Mr. Ward cuts the most craven and ignoble figure that it is possible to conceive. His heady outpourings show that he has not the courage of his opinions. He can rage and 'roar, can prove his willingness to wound, but he clearly dare not do more. He is very fond of vaticinating about democracy and the great things that he and his party are going to do in the future, but one " smells the parasite through the prophet." Here is the party hack, the braggadocio of politics, who will not back his words by action. He will curse, but be will not smite; he will bring charges, but he will not make them good.
Here is the proof of what we say. Mr. Ward's first chapter is entitled " Seducing the Army." That chapter is, in effect, an accusation levelled against the Unionist Party and the Unionist leaders of having seduced the troops at the Curragh, and induced them to disobey lawful orders and to abandon their duties as soldiers—we will not say as good citizens, because Mr. Ward's conception of the soldier is the slave conception, the man who will thrust with his bayonet or fire his rifle like an automatic machine. If Mr. Ward's accusation is true, what in heaven's name does he mean by support- ing as he does the present Government ? According to his view, they are convicted of allowing a gross crime against the State to pass without punishment. If the Unionist leaders and other members of the Unionist Party were, as Mr. Ward alleges, guilty of doing what was done by Mr. Tom Mann and Mr. Frederick Crowley during the railway strike, why are they not prosecuted as the Government prosecuted the men just named? Why is Mr. Ward ready to go on lending his vote to keep in office a GoTerament who, on his own showing, will prosecute the poor man and the Trade Unionist and let off the rich and the high-born ? Mr. Ward's pamphlet is full of insinuations about high-born ladies undermining the loyalty of the officers. But if this is so, why are they not placed' in the dock ? 'Again, if the officers refused to obey orders, why are they not dismissed from the Army and punished for their offence ? Why are they not court-martialled and made an example of by a Govern- ment who, according to Mr. Ward, have the vast majority of the people of this country behind them?
If we assume Mr. Ward's facts, his is the most tremendous indictment that has ever been brought against the Present Government. He ought never to rest till he has made them bring the offenders to book. But instead of arraigning the Government for supineness and insisting upon their taking action, he by his speeches and his votes in the House of Commons lends a servile support to Ministers, and helps them to maintain a policy which he must regard as the condonation of a crime. The alleged criminals are to be raged at, but nobody must venture to touch them for fear of losing votes ! -
Let us turn from a spectacle so unpleasant as that
we have just described to the spectacle_ which underlie Mr. Ward's fairago of sophistry, bluff, and humbug. Why, in truth, do the Government notprosecute the Ulstermen and the Unionist leaders for seducing the Army ? Because no such seduction occurred. Because no plot or conspiracy was ever formed to induce the Army to disobey orders, or, in fact, to do, or not do, anything. But, it will be urged, the Army, or a section of it, did do, or not do, something. Undoubtedly it did, just as it did in the time of James H. over a very similar quarrel, and as we hope it always will, when anyone seeks to make it the instrument, not of the will of the people, but of a clique of log-rolling tyrants. The next question we must ask is—Why did the Government not deal with the officers at the Curragh in a way which should have seemed inevitable ? Why, if the action of the cavalry was disloyal, did the Government not bring them to the punishment which they deserved ? The answer is the answer which must be given when we ask why James II. did not bring Marlborough and the Protestant officers to book the moment he saw that the Army at Hounslow was not going to prove a willing instrument for the establishment of a Roman Catholic tyranny in these islands.
The present Government could not dismiss or court- martial the officers at the Curragh or treat the Armv to a Pride's Purge, which would have left only officers and men willing to accept the slave Army theory, because they knew that the country would not support them in such action. The Cabinet were up against something which was too strong for them. They found that there were limits to the power even of an unchecked Single Chamber, and, being men of the world with some sense of political reason still left in them, they determined that, like plenty of Govern- ments before them, they must yield, however disagreeable they might find it to the inevitable. Again and again statesmen, though naturally enough they do not talk about it much after it has happened, have had to cut their coats according to the cloth of public opinion. A capital example is to be found in what happened when the Duke of Wellington was in 1832 for ten days the actual, if not the nominal, ruler of England. The story of what then occurred is told in a very striking article entitled "The Struggle for Freedom " contributed by Mr. Harold Cox, the editor of the Edinburgh Review, to the current number of that periodical. It may be remembered that " the political unions " in 1831 had raised a force of something like two hundred thousand men in the Midlands and the North, and entered into a Solemn League and Covenant to devote themselves and their children to their " country's cause." In May, 1832, when the House of Lords threw out the Reform Bill, Lord Grey resigned, and the Duke of Wellington received the King's command to form a Ministry. The Duke's idea, like that of Mr. Ward, was to use the soldiers and stand no nonsense, and accordingly orders were sent to the barracks at Birmingham that the Scots Greys " should be daily and nightly booted and saddled, with ball cartridge ready for use at a moment's notice."
Then 'something happened which made the Duke of Wellington recognize that the game was up. He found that the Army was not a slave Army, and could not be relied upon to act against the reformers. Here is the passage quoted in the Edinburgh Review from Miss Martineau's History of the Thirty Years' Peace which describes what happened. A better example of how history repeats itself it is difficult to imagine :—
"Letters were found in streets of the town, which declared in temperate language that the Greys would do their duty if called on to suppress riot, or any kind of outrage, but that they would not act if called upon to put down a peaceful public meeting or to binder the conveyance to London of any petition, by any number of peaceable persons. Some of these letters contained the strongest entreaties to the people of Birmingham to keep the peace, that they might not compel their sympathising friends among the Greys to act against them. Letters containing similar avowals were sent to the King. to tho Duke of Wellington, and to Lord Hill at the' War Office."
• Perturbed Liberals who find it inconvenient that Unionists should hold the views that we and the bulk of Unionists hold in regard to the behaviour of the Army, and who find the clothes of the tyrant something of a misfit, in their agitation and discomfort ask querulously whether the Unionists may not some day find their policy as regards the Army very inconvenient. We are not in the least alarmed by such inquiries. We devoutly hope, if a Unionist Government are ever mad enough to try to do anything comparable to what the Liberal Government are now trying to do, that once more the Army will save the situation by refusing to be an instrument of pure tyranny, and will maintain that, though when they became soldiers they had to resign some of the privileges of citizens, they did not forfeit the last and supreme right—the right to say that there are some things which it is beyond the power of the State to do. For example, it is quite possible that, if we go on with an unchecked Single Chamber, some day the Socialists may " corner " the Legislature and endow us with a system of compulsory arbitration in the matter of strikes, under which the strikers will be forced to obey the decision of a Court, and may be peremptorily ordered to go back to work under conditions settled by the Judges, though the men declare they will rather starve than accept them. No doubt in that event the advocates of the slave Army will invoke the use of the military to enforce the decision of the Arbitration Court upon the men. In a case of that kind the Army will, we feel sure, respectfully decline to deprive men of their fundamental right to say whether they will or will not work at a particular trade.
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