THE EXPLOSIONS.
THE English people is realising this week, under a discipline of pain, a truth we have been preaching for ten years to a most impatient audience. Science is not always beneficent., nor is control over Nature always a gain to man. If man
could fly, the first necessity would be defences against the vultures. Knowledge can give us only power ; and power in the hands of the bad is only a stimulant to bad deeds. Science arms all indifferently ; and when the wicked or the callous are armed, it is not humanity at large which is benefited by a new discovery. The discovery of the explosive power latent in nitro-glycerine has made mining a little cheaper, and has facilitated the removal of rocks under water ; but it has also placed a terrible instrument at the disposal of the enemies of society. The force of the compound under some conditions, though extraordinarily limited in area, is, within that area, so irresistible that a small quantity, which can be readily made, and carried, and concealed, will shatter the strongest masonry, drive heavy weights as if flung from catapults, and, of course, destroy any human lives within its range. The power of effecting a great destruction is given to any one who possesses a little chemical knowledge, is malignant enough to use if, and is callous enough to be careless whether misery is or is not inflicted on the innocent. Naturally those who desire destruction have leaped at the new weapon. It is an entire mistake to believe that its use is confined to political incendiaries. All over the Continent men are using it to gratify private spites, or avenge pecuniary wrongs, or get the better of employers who have dismissed them. We only notice the political use of the agent more closely because the victims are more conspicuous persons, or because the buildings shattered or threatened are important to nations instead of to individuals. Nor is England at all in the position of the most threatened country. The Nihilists in Russia, the Ultra-Socialists in Germany, the Anarchists in France, all resort to the same agent, and there is no reason why England should escape. The only difference between the dynamitards who appear here and those who threaten Czar Alexander or Emperor William, is that they profess to have a definite object, the liberation of Ireland, though, of course, if Ireland were liberated they would at once find another ; that they attack buildings and ships rather than politicians, and, therefore, endanger the poor rather than the eminent; and that they show no readiness to expend or risk their own lives in the work. Otherwise, the Continental and the Isiah dynamitards are much alike ; and we cannot say that experience inspires us with much confidence in the power of society to defend itself. It is natural to suggest that the manufacture of the explosive agent ought to be made impossible ; but the Russian and German Governments, with their practically absolute power, their disregard for trading interests, and their intense dynastic motive,—which prompts them, for instance, to Treaties of Extradition almost insulting to national pride, —have not seen their way to this end. The Nihilists dispose of dynamite by the hundredweight, and Rheinsdorf procured enough to have blown-up the German Emperor and his Staff. Ile was baffled, not by any want of material resource, but by the human fears, and pities, and meannesses of his sentient agents. A little more might be done if the Government's were prepared to give up dynamite altogether, treat the discovery as non-existent, and make its manufacture, even for themselves, a 'capital offence ; but it would be but little. The laws against poisons are peremptory enough ; but every herbalist with a tea-kettle can make the most deadly and undiscoverable of them all. Dynamite can be made in any unwatched room, and by men whose only science is the making of the deadly material. It is natural, again, to condemn the police for not preventing the crimes or detecting the criminals ; but. the Continental Police, with their exaggerated powers and comparative unscrupulousness, and right of interrogation, have not succeeded much better. The Emperor of Russia is guarded by retainers and high walls like an ancient baron ; and the Emperor of Germany, as far as his police are concerned, was in the Niederwald not guarded at all. We can, of course, increase the number of picked detectives, and ought, we think, to do it ; we can increase the watch on suspected individuals and public buildings ; and we ens render all criminals whose warfare is against man, among whom we should class dynamitards, pirates, fire-raisers, and several other classes of criminals, liable to interrogation ; but when we have done those things, the danger will still exist. No material precaution will guard any building or any crowd which can be destroyed by a fanatic, a madman, or a bravo with a parcel less than a foot square filled with a powder which any one can make, and which will explode a quarter of an hour after the assassin has departed. All we can do is to minimise the danger, strengthen our hearts to bear it, apply the means we have with scientific accuracy and steadiness, and reconsider the grounds of the extreme dislike which undoubtedly prevails to the admission of secret evidence. That dislike does not rest altogether upon moral grounds ; and, although its social grounds are strong, we should not forget that, alike in diplomacy and war, they are constantly disregarded.
We look, however, for protection, we confess, to immater;a1 causes, to the long-observed dying-out of the evil energy which produces epidemics of crime—for instance, the poisonings of the seventeenth century ; to the dislike of useless crime which comes even to criminals ; and, above all, to the awakening of that universal horror which, wherever a crime requires intelligence, has such a penetrating force. That horror is rising fast, as witness the Resolution of the United States' Senate, and the Bills brought into the New York Legislature; and might easily reach a point at which all white men would become active detectives raging against dynamitards, who would then find earth only a dreary and dangerous prison. They will not long be so fortunate as they have been in avoiding masetcre ; and with the first holocaust the temper of mankind towards them will be felt, even in Ireland, where. hitherto the popular leaders have found it safer to abstain from denunciation, and so to thres.v over men whom they, of all mankind, ought to abhor, the shield of a presumed approval. All the laws we could pass, all the rewards we could offer, all the police we could collect, all the watchfulness we could ensure, would be worth nothing to prevent explosions, compared with that awakening of the national Irish conscience which, had Ireland not turned scepticsl, would long ago have happened ; and which, as a nation cannot live without a moral sense, may happen yet. There is one opinion before which dynamitards would crouch, and it is that of insurrectionary Ireland ; for that would scorch-up the pretence under which they hide themselves from themselves, and bring to a summary end their
material resources. We are not without a hope that this opinion may be generated, and that even Mr. Parnell—. with all the cold cruelty of his policy—may yet recognise an obligation towards God and humanity of which he denies the existence towards the British Government. Is it a Government that is hurt when children are carried to hospital, and quiet sight-seekers are maimed for life by men who rejoice in the success of an explosion because it may bring in dollars ?
We have only one word to add. We object most earnestly and strenuously to the suggestion that., if any of the dynamitards are csught, they should be tried for treason. The history of mankind has invested treason, grave offence though it often is against the first principles of morality, with a certain dignity, which ought not to be associated, even in the imagination of the foolish, with crimes like these explosions. They are not attacks upon a Government, or even menaces to it, but ordinary crimes, like munic is am son, or mutilation. Their victims are not servants of the Government, but ignorant eitisens, who are quite innocent, even in Irish eyes, of any offence, and who may, indeed, be Irish, and sympathisers with Mr. Parnell. The ctiminals know perfectly well that destroying buildings and killing children does their caase no good, and are actuated quite as much by their own need for continuous notoriety as by any loftier idea, even if we consider hatred to England to be one of the lofty ideas. To try them for treason is to pander to their vanity, and fix on thew that attention from the whole world which is one of their actuating desires. They should be tried with as little of the fuss of a State-trial as is possible, with slight reporting and no discussion as to their ultimate fate. If it is considered needful to make the offence capital in future, that can be done by statute. We should ourselves rather doubt the expediency of that course, believing that, although death may cow the many, it will increase the desperation of the few ; but there is no moral objection, and experts in Irish government can best give an opinion on results. Even as it is, if any one were killed, death would be the penalty. Nothing ought to be done which can in any way diminish the public horror of a crime which is essentially base in kind, as base as the now frequent and most detestable offence, the attempt to wreck a train ; and a diminution in that horror would be the consequence of calling the crime treason. It is in that general horror and its extension to Ireland that the best hope lies ; and so ill has mankind been governed, that treason is of all charges the one which excites least the borror naturalis.
THE IRISH CRIMES' ACT AND THE GOVERNMENT.
Al R. HERBERT GLADSTONE, in his speech at Leeds on JJL Tuesday, has suggested what we have long been convinced was the best way out of the difficulty as to the renewal of the Prevention of Crime (Ireland) Act, which seems likely to be the great problem of the remainder of the Session. He suggested that there are certain portions of that Act,—and these, in our opinion, much the most important,—which it would not only be reasonable, but eminently desirable, to extend to the rest of the United Kingdom, so as to get rid of the difficulty which all Liberals feel to be a very grave one, of putting a single portion of the United Kingdom,—and that the one most free from ordinary crime,—under exceptional and very stringent restrictions on the liberty of the subject entirely unknown in other parts of the British Islands. We hold that Liberals are not by any means too fastidious in disliking very deeply the principle of subjecting Irishmen to one law and Scotchmen and Englishmen to another. Doubtless, if that be the only way in which the rights and liberties of the great bulk of the Irish people can be protected, the dislike which we feel to that course, deep-rooted as it is, must be overcome. But is it the only way ? Is it not clear that if, in some respects, life and property are much safer in Great Britain than in Ireland, yet in other respects life and property are much safer in Ireland than in Great Britain ? And is it not possible so to strengthen the law, that society in both islands shall gain the full advantage of a more effective system of dealing with the lawless, without any substantial curtailment of the rights and liberties of the law-abiding population ? Let us just consider the chief heads of the Prevention of °Hine (Ireland) Act, and ask ourselves how far Ireland needs them, how far Great Britain would suffer from them where Ireland needs them, and how far Great Britain might gain as much, or even more, by them than Ireland herself. Well, the first general head of the Irish Prevention of Crime Act refers to the constitution cf a Special Commission for trying, if necessary without Jury, the prisoners accused of a particular class of crimes in Ireland. Now, so far as this part of the Act gives power to try without a Jury, we believe that it has sever in practice been applied in Ireland. The Judges there were so profoundly and so naturally indisposed to take upon themselves the invidious task of condemning to death without that guarantee of impartiality afforded by the concurrence of at least some respectable Jury, that that part of the powers conferred by the Crimes' Act has practically been a dead-letter. We suppose that a portion of the Act whieh has never been put in force can hardly need to be renewed ; and even if it had to be renewed by way of security that the rest of the Act should be energetically enforced, the very reasons which make it so especially invidious to put it in force in Ireland would have very little applicability to Great Britain. Either the power to dispense with a Jury might be dropped altogether,—as we should suppose,—or, at all events, if it seemed necessary to reserve the abstract power, there would be far less dislike to sanctioning that power in Great Britain, where there is no likelihood of a grave conflict of feeling between the Judges and the popular mind, than there is in Ireland, where such a conflict is not improbable. We do not suppose that the reasons for empowering a Special Commission to try without a Jury really hold even for Ireland ; but if they hold for Ireland at all, though they have never been actually enforced, there appears to be no reason why they should not be extended, under similar exceptional circumstances, to Great Britain. Probably in neither country would it become necessary to act upon this power, even if it seemed desirable to give it ; more probably still, it would not be necessary to give the power. The present writer is not sufficiently well versed in the law to say how -far the other powers conferred on the Special Commission Cenrt—the powers of varying the venue and summoning special jurors instead of ordinary jurors—would need alteration before they would be in conformity with the present laws of England and Scotland ; but certainly there appears to be no great reason why the la* Of all three countries should not be assimilated in reaped of
crimes likely to excite great local prejudice, or to need exceptional intelligence in the juries to which they should be submitted : so that we cannot see any substantial difficulty in assimilating the law, as regards this part of the Crimes' Act, for all the portions of the United Kingdom. As regards the constitution of a Court of Criminal Appeal for all criminals tried by a Special Commission, the opinion of Great Britain has long been strongly in favour of such a Court, even in the ease of ordinary crimes, so that there can be no reason why, in the case of a special class of crimes,—not by any means limited to the soil of Ireland,—such a Court of Criminal Appeal should not now be constituted.
Again, as to the special position given in the Crimes' Act to the offence of intimidation, that is, the attempt to frighten people out of their right either to do what is lawful, or to refuse to do what they are quite justified in refusing to do, there seems no difficulty in extending this portion of the Act also to Great Britain. Intimidation of that kind is not unknown at all in this island ; and though it usually arises more in the tyranny of class-combinations than in the efforts of secret societies, yet it seems probable that it exists even in England in both forms, and that there would be advantage rather than disadvantage in the enactment of special provisions against it in either form.
On the other hand, it is impossible to deny that either the extension of the Press provisions of the Irish Act to Great Britain, or the extension of the principle of prohibiting by proclamation, as likely to lead to violence, certain political assemblies, would be very objectionable, and, we suppose, hardly possible. If we are assured, as we probably shall be assured, that, for the present at least, the latter power is absolutely essential to the preservation of order in Ireland, we must pass a short Act of two or three clauses empowering the prohibition by proclamation of public assemblies likely to lead to violence for Ireland only, and make it expire in some five or ten years, when it might well be hoped that all need for it would have ceased. But it would be a very different thing indeed to enact that, under certain circumstances, the Executive Government of Ireland should have the power of prohibiting public meetings otherwise permissible, and to pass again so elaborate a Crimes' Act for Ireland as the one now in force. On the subject of the Press and of the Curfew Law, we sincerely believe that the provisions of the Crimes' Act might be allowed to expire, not only without reasonable fear, but with very great advantage to the condition of Ireland. These parts of the Crimes' Act have always been disliked heartily by the Liberal Party ; and even the Government has not been very earnest in assuring the country that they are of any very substantial use.
Thera remains the very important provision which we believe would be as useful and serviceable to Great Britain as it has ever been to Ireland. empowering Magistrates to summon witnesses whom they believe to be capable of giving material evidence concerning any offence that has been committed, to examine such persons on oath, and to take their depositions, and bind them over to appear and give evidence on the subject when the offence comes on for trial. No doubt there have been great objections felt to those provisions, as involving something like espionage, and putting people in a position in which it would be difficult for them to avoid criminating themselves ; and we are not insensible to the objections to such a course. It would need to be used with the utmost caution ; and we would certainly never entrust it to any but regularly-trained Stipendiary Magistrates, who would be well aware of the danger of abusing it. But seeing how often in Great Britain,—perhaps even oftener than in Ireland,—great criminals go quite undiscovered, and society suffers frightfully from their escape, we do think that the time is come when we should arm ourselves with this powerful weapon against the enemies of society, even though it would be necessary to control its exercise with the most jealous care. It is not only in Ireland, it is not only in places where the community favours crimes of a particular class, that it is becoming almost hopeless to detect crime. The advance of science has put new instruments into the hands of the criminal which he is far too acute to ignore ; and if society chooses to deprive itself of the advantage of a little extra liberty for the sake of the advantage of a little more safety, we cannot see that any moral question is involved in that decision. Why should the legal power to examine witnesses be given only where the author of a crime has been, primei facie at least, discovered ? Supposing there be good reason to believe that certain persons hold the clue to the origin of an undiscovered crime, is it not
due to the State that they should communicate that knowledge ; and if they will not do so voluntarily, have we not just as much right to compel them to do so, as we have in the case where a particular criminal is suspected of the crime ? It seems to us that Great Britain would benefit just as much as Ireland now benefits by the extension to Great Britain of this right of the State to secure all the evidence that it can secure as to the true origin of crime not yet traced to its authors. And if this be so, we believe that with the one exception of the provisions prohibiting by proclamation dangerous public meetings—a power very prudently and frugally used even by the Irish Government—all that is of permanent value in the Irish Crimes' Act might be extended to this country, while all that is specially irritating in it might be allowed to drop.
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