A great many good Christians think that when they have read a pamphlet or two against Darwin by an unscientific but reverend gentleman, they are quite competent to lecture on or discuss Darwinism and Evolution. In the same way many persons believe that because they have read some shilling primer on Political Economy, or a few books likes Mr. Ely’s (brimful, by the way, of most amusing blunders), they are competent to write or lecture on Socialism. The Christians — judging from their own hearts — think Atheism must mean persecution, injustice, crime; and the bourgeois ignoramus, full of the “wise saws and modern instances” of his primer or penny paper, believes the Socialist to be as one-sided, as unscrupulous, as egotistic as himself, and that his only object is to hang the last landlord by the side of the last capitalist. Truly, the Socialist loves neither priest, nor landlord, nor capitalist; but the Socialist is of necessity an evolutionist, and he makes no individual, even when he must attack him, answerable for his milieu.

To consider the use of physical force as anything very desirable in itself, is what no Socialist dreams of doing — save in the imagination of our scurvy politicians. We know we are engaged in a terrible class-struggle — a struggle not, as so many believe, for the replacing of one class despotism by another, but for the abolition of all class rule.

There are those among us who think this can be brought about by “gradual development” and moral force only. Others of us believe we shall not be allowed to thus bring about a “silent moral revolution.” History teaches us that no great social revolution has ever come about by the use of mere moral force, and history has taught us that no class willingly expropriates itself. In the struggle between king and noble, between noble and bourgeois, something more than moral persuasion was resorted to. It was not quite by “gradual development” that England confiscated the Church lands or that America freed her slaves.

No doubt if all human beings were capable of developing equally, force would never be needed. Had Charles of sainted and headless memory developed so far — even gradually — as to see the error of his ways, the Ironsides would not have had to cut off his bead, and England would have been spared not a little trouble. Had French Louis and his aristocrats and priests evolved to something higher, there would have been no necessity for the revolution. Had the slave-owners voluntarily freed their slaves there would have been no need for the American Civil War. But the reactionary — i.e., undeveloped and unevolvable — class, whatever it is, will make a stand for its vested wrongs. When the time comes, I, for my own part, believe the bourgeoise will resort (as it does now, for the matter of that) to force, and that we shall be driven, by the very circumstance, to fight for our cause — a cause which, as it is that of Humanity, must triumph.

But be this as it may, no Socialist looks on “outrages” as a virtue or thinks that violence can ever be anything but a miserable necessity. When it is not a necessity it is naturally a crime. With the acts of the Irish dynamiters Socialists do not and cannot sympathise — but are we therefore to be unjust to these men? Why should they be called cowards and dastards? Surely they risk their lives for what they foolishly believe to be the good of their unhappy land. No man — no matter what his folly — -is wholly despicable or a “dastard” who is willing to die for what he believes is a good cause. It is positively grotesque to hear the penny-a-liners who come so smug into Fleet Street, and who would not fight with their own quill-armed shadows, brand these men “cowards.” It is grotesque to hear some of our bold shopkeepers, who probably would not have the poor courage to sell the Freethinker, denounce these men as “dastardly wretches.” Wicked as are their acts, foolish and mistaken as are their notions, cowards at least these fanatics are not.