A Reply to Miss Le Compte

Mr. J. C. Durant,[1] lecturing to the Battersea Liberal Club, in reply to Miss Le Compte, said there were many people who seemed to think that they lived in the best of all possible worlds, and that apart from some small evils, things could not be better than they were. Thoughtful and observant men knew better. They could not help seeing that society as at present constituted was rotten at the core. One of the most palpable evils was the unequal distribution of wealth and the comforts and necessaries of life which the world produced. Beside Belgravia were the slums of Westminster; a few steps from the Strand there was the squalor of Drury Lane; and close to the West End squares there were people existing in wretchedness. If they looked behind the block of mansions they would find the hovels of the poor. This unequal distribution of wealth produced a serfdom which was none the less slavery because many of the slaves were themselves well fed and cared for. If the position of the workers in the towns was degrading, that of those in the country was on the whole worse. The labourers were compelled to labour for a weekly dole, which barely supported existence; vast tracts of land were lying uncultivated in order that sport might be provided for the squire, while food was being imported from France and elsewhere, where the land was owned by the men who lived on it; the villages were being depopulated; the land was labour starved, and the men were leaving a natural life and wandering into the towns. These were some of the evils that were only too patent to those who had eyes to see, and it was not to be wondered that occasionally extravagant and unwise proposals were offered as remedies. He considered that the remedy of Miss Le Compte was to be condemned as both foolish and wicked. That lady suggested that the working classes should meet force by force, and that they should avail themselves of Science in order to procure the most deadly weapons. To talk of meeting force by force was misleading. She supposed that force was already employed to subjugate the working classes. That was not true. The force of the police was exercised for the benefit alike of all honest men, and if they had any fault to find with the police it was not because they were over vigilant, but rather because so many crimes remained undetected. The true hope of the working classes was step by step towards the ideal, but the suggested remedy – Force – was a step back to barbarism. In primitive times Force was the remedy for everything. They were 

“The good old times 
When they should take who had the power, 
And they should keep who can!” 

If they looked at the advance the working classes had made during the last fifty years, they would see that force was unnecessary – that the means to their hand were all-sufficient if they would but avail themselves of them. But this the working classes were not yet sufficiently well informed to do. Working men must be better informed and more unselfish, then they might procure for their children those reforms which were so much needed. There was another reason why it was dangerous to make light of the sacredness of life, and that was that the mob had always stoned the prophets. The teaching that the taking of human life was justifiable was a dangerous doctrine to preach to badly balanced minds. He did not think it was justifiable to take the life of a bad man, and he shuddered at what would happen to the good men who were brave enough to act in defiance of public opinion. Only the previous Monday they had seen the great heart of the American people wrung with a mighty sob as the remains were placed in the tomb of one who had sprung from the lowest position to the highest, and who yet possessed only £6000.[2] When three years ago the people of this country bent their heads and worshipped a mountebank, they hooted the greatest living statesman – William Ewart Gladstone. If the world could spare the Autocrat of Russia, it could not spare such men as these.[3] Another objection was that assassination always failed in its object, and delayed instead of advancing reforms. – A warm discussion followed, in the course of which the teaching of assassination was strongly denounced.

The Radical, Oct. 15, 1881

Notes

1, John Charles Durant was a Christian Socialist who would go on to be Liberal MP for Stepney from 1885-1886. His talk was advertised as ‘The true hope of the working classes, a reply to the recent lecture by Miss Le Compte.’

2, A reference to the assassination of President Garfield.

3, Alexander II of Russia was assassinated in 1881 by Narodnaya Volya (The People’s Will).