course. abhorrent or awful crime than the murder of a President of the United States, yet in the three instances in which that has blackened our annals the American people have stood with bowed heads and stricken hearts, "in the passion of an angry grief," and waited for the law to take its If the ordinary process of justice was adequate in those cases, it is surely adequate for all others. Lynching for one crime leads to lynching for any and all crimes, and lynching of negroes will lead to lynching of men of all colors. Thirst for blood is the first instinct of anarchy. Neither will it do to assume that lynching can be permitted in any part of the land and not extend to all other parts. Already the lynching of negroes has advanced from the South into Illinois, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and has been accompanied there with as horrible brutalities as have ever marked it in the South. No man can tell when it may invade any northern State, should an excuse for it be given. Above and beyond all other peril, hangs the menace of a race war unless the nation shows both the inclination and the ability to enforce the law impartially upon all persons without regard to color or to crime. The intelligent American who can see that awful cloud hovering on the horizon and not do everything in his power to dispel it is a very poor patriot. There is only one sure way to keep it from rising and spreading, and that is to make our government in every section of the land a government of law. That a popular reaction on this subject has already begun is apparent in many ways. The firm and vigorous action of the governor of Indiana in using the military force of the State to suppress a mob, which in July last, stormed a jail at Evansville, demolished barns, and sacked shops for weapons in their desire to lynch a negro prisoner, acted like a moral tonic upon the befuddled minds of thousands of people. Even the South is beginning to perceive that the supremacy of law is essential to the stability of social order. In Alabama since the beginning of the present year, ten negroes have been tried in court, convicted, and executed legally for murder or robbery, and during that period there have been only four lynchings. Sheriffs and other officers of the law are making firmer and more successful resistance to mob demands, and southern journals and public men are taking a sounder position than they have held heretofore. The specious plea that lynching is justifiable in order to spare women victims from the humiliation of testifying in court is seldom heard now, for there is no answer to the question, "Why cannot the judges spare them that humiliation by private examination?" It is especially noteworthy that in Georgia, the State which leads the record in number of lynchings, perception of the peril which lies in the practice is especially acute. The Atlanta "Constitution," which in the past looked with a condoning if not with an approving eye upon lynchings for a particular offense, has recently taken the sound position that the nature of the crime does not in any manner justify departure from lawful methods of punishment, that anarchy is the rejection of government," and that the "only excuse that can possibly be pleaded in justification of lynch law is that the State is disbanded." It points out, as I have done in the foregoing pages, that lynching is no longer confined to a particular crime, but is fast being applied to all crimes, and adds :— "The time when the lynching of a certain breed of brutes could be winked at because of satisfaction that punishment came to him quickly and to the uttermost has given way to a time when the greater peril to society is the mob itself that does the work of vengeance. Against the growth of that evil the best sense of the nation needs to combine and enforce an adequate protection." The Macon "Telegraph," of the same State, takes quite similar ground and touches upon one other aspect of the case about which I have deferred comment till the last. It said, in July last, speaking for the South, "We should be honest with ourselves on the subject; we know that race antagonism is the moving motive of those crimes which the black perpetrates against the white, and we know that race antagonism is the cause of the black man's consequent swift finish at the end of a rope or amid the fagots." The Macon editor also says with frankness and truth that "hypocrisy about lynching, instead of bringing the practice to a shamed close, seems rather to encourage it." That race hatred is the impelling force of the lynchings in the South cannot be disputed. Combined with a savage thirst for blood, which is its natural ally and inevitable recruit, it is responsible for all these crimes. It is the same spirit which led to the formation of the Ku-Klux-Klan and the Regulators. Bad as the record is in the South for the past ten years, it is encouraging when compared with that of the period between 1865 and 1872, when negroes were murdered wholesale by the Ku-Kluz-Klan simply because they were negroes and were seeking to exercise their constitutional right to vote. The isolated cases of lynching, which have been diminishing quite steadily since 1892, when they reached their largest number, horrible and unjustifiable as they are, are mild outbreaks of race hatred and savage thirst for blood when compared with the massacres of Yazoo, Hamburg, Edgefield, and Copiah of the Ku-Klux reign of terror. The South saw the peril of that relapse into anarchy and barbarism and turned itself away from it. It is now perceiving that the same peril is menacing it in another but no less insidious form and there are strong grounds for the belief that it will turn itself away from this also before many years shall have passed. QUARTERLY December-March MDCCCCIII K POLITICAL SATIRE ROLLO OGDEN NEW YORK IPLING'S primeval devil, who mocked and gibed with his sneering question, "But is it Art?" might be claimed as con gener of the original political satirist. The civil leer, the grin, the burlesque, appear to have been instinctive weapons of man, and as soon as human government began, it doubtless began to be satirized. Jotham's parable of the trees choosing the bramble to reign over them shows how early was employed a form of "lèse-majesté" with which it was difficult for the rulers in Israel to deal. You cannot imprison a gesture. Laughter cannot be handcuffed. Open rebellion may be put down, but what is outraged authority to do with dislike just hesitated in allegory or fable? Aristophanes, as we know, was exceeding bold. In the "Clouds" he boasts that he "struck Cleon in the belly when at the height of his power." But even the great satirist of Greece had really to hint his meaning, and was compelled to be on his guard. Cleon was always, discreetly, "the Paphlagonian," or was girded at in punning plays upon his name. His vulgar demagogue's ways were brought out in all their grossness only by their being held up to the mirror of his impudent outbidder, the sausage seller. By the time Tacitus wrote, it was possible for him, with his guillotine phrases, to be a public executioner only half in shadow, while Juvenal, that "Tacitus of the private life," as he has been called, immortalized the satire by name. In the modern world, the satirical art has flourished most where men were freest; which Copyright, 1903, Frederick A. Richardson, all rights reserved. accounts for the fact that English literature is so rich in political satire. France probably comes next. To bring a government into ridicule is the natural desire, as it is the assumed task, of the Opposition. Hence it is that political satire is usually the work of the outs. Those in power have to preserve, or try to, the dignity of office, and to present an Olympian front to the slings and arrows of their detractors. Yet this makes it all the easier to exaggerate the pride and lampoon the pomposity of mortals clothed with a little brief authority. Such satirical attack is not only effective, but is often the only form of political assault available. What can you do with inflated dullness in high places? You cannot argue with it. It is all very well to furnish arguments, but who will supply the understanding? Darts of raillery can better puncture a swollen sense of importance than can direct buffets knock the folly out of it. Suppose the case more grievous. Let there be a fanatical or tyrannical monarch in power, or an overweening Directorate, or a First Consul with his clutch on the country's throat, satire may be for a time the only sword within the grasp of liberty. You may have to submit to a despot, but you can cover him with inextinguishable laughter; you can make him hateful, contemptible, pitiable, according as you have mastery over the resources of the satirist. Terrify the newspaper press, and the pamphlet and pasquinade remain; hunt these to earth, and the café and salon have to be reckoned with. "The salons were then open," remarked Napoleon bitterly at St. Helena, referring to a time when his embarrassments were thickening upon him. These considerations help to make clear what otherwise might seem surprising, the fact, namely, that political satire has so largely been employed in the service of human freedom and progress. This does not mean that all the wit is out of power, and only stupidity in office. But wit in high station has a way of undergoing what Lowell called "a professor-change." It has to become magisterial and solemn. It dares not publicly unbend. The cares of state weight it down. There's a formality doth hedge a minister which admits of his doing wise things, but not of saying them,-to paraphrase Charles II.'s retort. To being so conspicuous an exception to this general rule, the "Anti-Jacobin owes a great part of its almost unique distinction in English satire. It had style, of course, by the antiseptic property of which it was preserved and is still enjoyable, but its really remarkable quality was that it satirized the French Revolution and brought into ridicule those aspirations and bright hopes which that world-shaking cataclysm carried across the Channel. The strange thing was to find learning and vivacious humor rising in defence of the established order. This was nearly a reversal of the ordinary rules of satirical combat,-Laertes changing rapiers with Hamlet. Swift had, of course, emptied his vitriolic satire upon the heads of high and low; Dryden had satirized right and left and been satirized in turn :— "-venial vices, in a milder age, Could rouse the warmth of Pope's satiric rage,' but it was left for Canning,-" youthful Canning guides the rancorous quill,"―and Frere and Ellis and the other writers of the "Anti-Jacobin to turn the laugh on the mockers themselves. Where Burke attacked them with his vehement and almost frantic eloquence, where others cowered before them in terror, Canning plied them with his irritating banderillas. Take these stanzas from "The Jacobin" (one cannot be denied the pleasure of quoting from the pieces least familiar) as an example of the exasperating ridicule which was used with such powerful public effect :— "I am a hearty Jacobin, Who own no God, and dread no sin, "And when the Teachers of Chalk-Farm "By Bedford's cut I've trimmed my locks, Of thumpers; "My eye a noble fierceness boasts, My voice as hollow as a ghost's, My throat oft washed by Factious Toasts In bumpers. "Whatever is in France is right; Terror and blood are my delight; Parties with us do not excite Enough rage. "Our boasted Laws I hate and curse, Bad from the first, by age grown worse, I pant and sigh for univers al suffrage." |