Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/457

Rh leader, a man of wealth, ability, and influence, who has held high position, and was this year a prominent member of the National Republican Convention, who first proposed that the Pacific Mail steamers should be burned at their docks if they did not cease to bring Chinese; it was a bitter opponent of Kearneyism who, amid thunders of applause, in the largest hall of the city, first suggested that the Chinese quarter should be purified with fire and planted with grass; while as to bitter denunciations of parties, classes, and individuals, and prognostications of violence and calamity if this, that, or the other was or was not done, there is probably nothing that Kearney or his fellows have said that could not be matched from previous political speeches or newspaper articles. That dangers may sometimes arise from an abuse of the liberty of speech may be true, but it is so exceedingly delicate a thing to attempt to draw any line short of the direct incitement to specific illegal action, that the only course consistent with the genius of our institutions is to leave such abuses to their own natural remedy. It is only where restrictions are imposed that mere words become dangerous to social order, just as it is only when gunpowder is confined that it becomes explosive. Had the energy of the authorities been reserved for any lawless act, and these agitators been left to agitate to their full content, except so far as they might interfere with the free use of the thoroughfares, any momentary interest or excitement would have soon died out, and the contempt which follows swelling words without action would soon have left them powerless. But the timidity which attaches to great wealth gained by questionable means, and at once arrogant in its power and keenly sensitive of the jealousy with which it is regarded, renders its possessors, surrounded as they must be by sycophantic advisers, insensible to reason in moments of excitement. "The thief doth fear each bush an officer." And the man who from the windows of a two-million-dollar mansion looks down upon his fellow citizens begging for the chance to work for a dollar a day can not fail to have at times some idea of the essential injustice of this state of things break through his complacency, while murmurings of discontent assume vague shapes of menace against which fear urges him to strike, though reason and prudence would hold back a blow which can only irritate. The dangers to social order that arise from the glaring inequalities of wealth come as much from this direction as from the discontent of the less fortunate classes. It was this feeling that, organizing the "pick-handle brigade," prepared the way and gave the hint for agitation; it was this feeling that, now striking blindly through the authorities, gave to that agitation dignity and power.

More efficient means to provoke a public sentiment in favor of the agitators could not have been taken. Not only were the speakers arrested on charges which would not bear legal scrutiny, but new warrants were sworn out as quickly as bail was offered. A pledge made