CRASSUS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
WE have pointed out in repeated articles that although the interest of the great millionaires is almost always on the side of order, they might, if they took to politics, whether from hope of gain or from sheer desire of excitement, give a great deal of trouble, and we are by no means sure that they are not giving it. The Panama Company, in the height of its ascendency, very nearly mastered a Legislature, and did, we greatly fear, entirely master a Press. Men of immense wealth are managing the Silver party in America in their own interests, and the Silver party, though not the strongest, is one of the most resolute and consistent factors in the policy of the great Republic. We should like to know very much the attitude of the financial magnates of Berlin on this question of the independence of the Transvaal, and also the names of the American syndicate which has applied for or purchased a mining concession on the Venezuelan border. Even here, where the obstacles to millionaire influence are so numerous and powerful, the great capitalists, Jewish and Christian, are showing a disposition towards political adventure which requires attention. Very few of those who understand politics now believe that the British Government had anything to do with the explosion in the Transvaal, or doubt that it was the joint product of the discontent of the British residents and the desire of a group of capitalists to obtain a fuller control of the amazing resources of the Transvaal in mineral wealth. The Outlanders were to furnish at once the cahier des defiance's, as the early Revolutionists of France called it, the schedule of grievances, which, being genuine, would, it was hoped, attract the moral sympathy of the world, and later on the army which would control the Republic. The capitalists were on their part to furnish arms, a drilled force of some sort, and a leader ; and, except as regards the last-named, they supplied these things. The whole history of the movement in Johannes- burg shows that the insurgents had plenty of money, a fair though cumbrous organisation, and weapons enough for one guerilla exploit, and that the one thing wanting was a competent chief. The capitalists and the discontented both blundered there. No man's name comes out in any narrative as that of the trusted dictator, there was no man, soldier or civilian, within the roaring city, whose order was final, no Garibaldi or even Massaniello; and consequently, when the hour of trial arrived, there was the feeblest of muddles, one set of leaders being for helping Jameson out- side, another set for defending the city, and a third set, we fancy, for using the movement only to extort from the Boers certain definite reforms. Of course, under such circumstances, the movement, directed as it was against a fighting oligarchy guided by one of the most astute of mankind, a statesman as like one of the Council of Ten in mind as he is unlike such a man in person, failed discreditably ; the external force was left with- out help, and the leaders inside, whether popular men or agents of the millionaires, were summarily thrown into prison, where their fate will be decided in the main by considerations of expediency. They may be banished, and their large properties may be forfeited to the State. The Transvaal and its population lie at the feet of the Boers, for the moment, at all events, more completely than Monmouth's men lay after Sedgemoor at the feet of James II. The laws, fortunately, are, except as regards property, very lenient, and many considerations forbid even that rough oligarchy to have resort to lynching ; but no insurrection was ever a more complete failure, the insurgents not having even spread terror by their prowess. In the Spanish-American Republics, where also the rich are often prominent in revolutions, insurgents usually die in heaps ; but the Johannesburgers have fallen without even the credit of being martyrs. As they are of the breed of Jameson's men, that must be due to the hesitating leadership of the capitalists.
This kind of thing will not do. We are not disposed, under the conditions of South African life, to make too much of the guilt of the Outlanders, or of Dr. Jameson either, though he of course, being under no grievance, had not their first, and indeed only, excuse. We cannot for our own part see that the Johannesburg grievances were such as to justify the large sacrifice of innocent life which must have attended on the uprising, or to palliate that defiance of international law which is involved in the fact that the Outlanders rose in arms in order to tear up a treaty signed by their own Sovereign at a time when they, the aggrieved, were not within the State. The planters of Ceylon might as well claim the right of marching on Colombo, overthrow. ing the non-elective Government there enthroned, and passing laws to suit their own convenience and thirst fel making profits very quickly. We are aware, however, of the conditions of South African life, of the reliance on force which nearly a century of battle has developed in the colonists, of the democratic conviction which makes the rule of a minority seem of itself an oppression, and of the terrible bitterness which had been begotten, not so much of the Boer laws as of the Boer arrogance of demeanour and conversation. Scrupulous legal relations with the natives have not been observed, either by if Boers or the English, and so many provinces lif,ve been taken from their owners, that we can easily understand why the taking of one more did not strike those on the spot as anything very monstrous or immoral. We are not disposed, therefore, to be hard on the Outlanders, so far as they acted for themselves ; but we confess we shall regard the intervention of the capitalists, if they shall be proved to have intervened, with deep disgust. If any such men intended to shed blood in order to make money, they deserve to be ostracised. Great capitalists exist because there are strong laws which secure their gains, and give them fluidity ; and for them to evade those laws, and fall back on the early regime of force in its most naked form, is, to begin with, a monstrous exhibition of ingratitude. We have always thought that the haughty legalists who pro- nounced Garibaldi a " brigand " had something to say for themselves, though we fully admit that his provocation, his disinterestedness, and his success made him an ex- ception to all rules; but it is impossible to permit financiers in search of 50 per cent. to imitate his devices. We might as well authorise private war at once, or exempt all robbers rich enough to engage bodies of troops, from the action of the laws. We should find our- selves in a. few years thrown back into the position of the Roman Republic just before it was overthrown, when Crassus could claim a third of the Dictatorship solely on the ground of his wealth, and when immense property helped a man to political power more rapidly than any quality, except the ability to defeat enemies in battle. Indeed, our position will be even worse, for Rome had no equals to consult or dread ; while we, who own a fifth of the world, impinge at almost every corner on the territories of armed and equal rivals. Suppose our mining engineers discover that gold exists in Wadai—the curious little State between Chitral and Russia, which always feels or alleges Russian sympathies —or in the No-man's-land between Venezuela and British Guiana, or in the German section of New Guinea, or in the French division of the Niger Valley, are the barons of the Exchange to " rush " those mines with irregular troops, at the risk of bringing Russia, France, Germany, and the United States upon our backs at once ? It is im- possible to conduct negotiations, or to protect the Empire, under such conditions ; yet if the popular suspicions are correct, they exist in this Empire already in one place, and may speedily exist in more. It is absolutely necessary that statesmen responsible for the country should, even if they admire their enterprise or their hardihood, abso- lutely refuse to accord such capitalists any sort of toleration, and even on occasion should exert against them the powers which criminal jurisprudence places in their hands. With what face can we protest against aggres- sions by French officers on our own " sphere of influence " near the Nile, if we allow officers holding her Majesty's commission to invade States to which we have conceded at least internal autonomy ?
Above all, it is needful that when the Government has any cause to suspect such proceedings, it should order investigation, and see that such investigation is honest, rapid, and thorough. If there is not the power to make such orders already—and we never yet have seen clearly the limits of prerogative when sustained by opinion—it should be taken by statute, so that the Government could send into any part of the Empire a " Jueticiar," as he used to be called, with power to examine, report, and com- mit for trial any offender of the kind. The financial baron is not a public enemy, but a most useful tradesman in credit so long as he acts above-board and under the eyes which never fail to follow all other persons possessed of great powers of influencing events ; it is only when he works in secret that he becomes politically dan- gerous. Plots are impossible under bright light, and no men who are liable to full inquiry will, without the order or permission of a regular State, authorise the shedding of blood. We would not allow a secretly organised attack even on a wretched " King " of savages on the West African Coast, who may be perhaps as deserving of attack as a pirate or a leader of brigands, and to permit such an attack on a regular European Government, or tribes pro- tected by a regular European Government, is to surrender the very means of governing altogether. The Spectator, at least, will not be accused of any hostility to capitalists, whom it regards as it regards the owners of reservoirs of water, that is, as men who potentially may be benefactors of humanity : but there mukt be limits on their wilfulness in using their great powers. The man who secretly cuts a reservoir of his own in order to drown a valley deserves death, and the man who, for his own gain, uses huge capital in order to provoke civil war, or in such a way that civil war must follow, is morally little better. Crassus in the nineteenth century is an intolerable anachronism.
Previous page
