第56章

What was understood by the `federal republic?' There were those who took it to mean the emancipation of the provinces, institutions akin to those of the United States and administrative decentralisation; others had in view the abolition of all authority and the speedy commencement of the great social liquidation.The socialists of Barcelona and Andalusia stood out for the absolute sovereignty of the communes; they proposed to endow Spain with ten thousand independent municipalities, to legislate on their own account, and their creation to be accompanied by the suppression of the police and the army.In the southern provinces the insurrection was soon seen to spread from town to town and village to village.Directly a village had made its pronunciamento its first care was to destroy the telegraph wires and the railway lines so as to cut off all communication with its neighbours and Madrid.The sorriest hamlet was determined to stand on its own bottom.Federation had given place to cantonalism, marked by massacres, incendiarism, and every description of brutality, and bloody saturnalia were celebrated throughout the length and breadth of the land."With respect to the influence that may be exerted by reasoning on the minds of electors, to harbour the least doubt on this subject can only be the result of never having read the reports of an electioneering meeting.In such a gathering affirmations, invectives, and sometimes blows are exchanged, but never arguments.Should silence be established for a moment it is because some one present, having the reputation of a "tough customer," has announced that he is about to heckle the candidate by putting him one of those embarrassing questions which are always the joy of the audience.The satisfaction, however, of the opposition party is shortlived, for the voice of the questioner is soon drowned in the uproar made by his adversaries.

The following reports of public meetings, chosen from hundreds of similar examples, and taken from the daily papers, may be considered as typical:--"One of the organisers of the meeting having asked the assembly to elect a president, the storm bursts.The anarchists leap on to the platform to take the committee table by storm.The socialists make an energetic defence; blows are exchanged, and each party accuses the other of being spies in the pay of the Government, &c....A citizen leaves the hall with a black eye.

"The committee is at length installed as best it may be in the midst of the tumult, and the right to speak devolves upon `Comrade' X.

"The orator starts a vigorous attack on the socialists, who interrupt him with shouts of `Idiot, scoundrel, blackguard!' &c., epithets to which Comrade X.replies by setting forth a theory according to which the socialists are `idiots' or `jokers.'""The Allemanist party had organised yesterday evening, in the Hall of Commerce, in the Rue du Faubourg-du-Temple, a great meeting, preliminary to the workers' fete of the 1st of May.The watchword of the meeting was `Calm and Tranquillity!'

"Comrade G---- alludes to the socialists as `idiots' and `humbugs.'

"At these words there is an exchange of invectives and orators and audience come to blows.Chairs, tables, and benches are converted into weapons," &c., &c.

It is not to be imagined for a moment that this description of discussion is peculiar to a determined class of electors and dependent on their social position.In every anonymous assembly whatever, though it be composed exclusively of highly educated persons, discussion always assumes the same shape.I have shown that when men are collected in a crowd there is a tendency towards their mental levelling at work, and proof of this is to be found at every turn.Take, for example, the following extract from a report of a meeting composed exclusively of students, which I borrow from the Temps of 13th of February, 1895:--"The tumult only increased as the evening went on; I do not believe that a single orator succeeded in uttering two sentences without being interrupted.At every instant there came shouts from this or that direction or from every direction at once.

Applause was intermingled with hissing, violent discussions were in progress between individual members of the audience, sticks were brandished threateningly, others beat a tattoo on the floor, and the interrupters were greeted with yells of `Put him out!' or `Let him speak!'

"M.C---- lavished such epithets as odious and cowardly, monstrous, vile, venal and vindictive, on the Association, which he declared he wanted to destroy," &c., &c.

How, it may be asked, can an elector form an opinion under such conditions? To put such a question is to harbour a strange delusion as to the measure of liberty that may be enjoyed by a collectivity.Crowds have opinions that have been imposed upon them, but they never boast reasoned opinions.In the case under consideration the opinions and votes of the electors are in the hands of the election committees, whose leading spirits are, as a rule, publicans, their influence over the working men, to whom they allow credit, being great."Do you know what an election committee is?" writes M.Scherer, one of the most valiant champions of present-day democracy."It is neither more nor less than the corner-stone of our institutions, the masterpiece of the political machine.France is governed to-day by the election committees."[26]