Elizabeth Waterhouse

“ How little any thought in those happy days from what quarter the storm of invasion would come, or how the whole order of the civilized world would be once more sunk under waves of barbarism! We might now indeed despair, only that as from each such wave in ages past a better world has risen than that which went before, from the depth of our trouble now may rise the best of all-the 104new earth to which the new Heaven shall come down. ”

“ The old Scholar of whom I have spoken gave advice in regard to the building of each new dwelling; those whose crops were the largest shared with those who had least, and through the whole little colony in the western part of the Island a common exile produced a common feeling of loyalty to one another, and of desire for the good of the community, to which for a time even those who professed to believe in no moral order yielded. ”

“ The young Priests even endeavoured to recall some of the settlers of the South to thoughts of duty and heavenly wisdom, and preached the gladness of a life in which each lived for his fellows, in contrast with the misery of that state in which each strove for his own gain, wrangling like brute beasts. ”

“ To-day, full of hope and confidence, he rose among the people, and laid before them his scheme of a Christian Anarchy—a society of men set free from all outward law, set free from the bondage of self and of evil desires, because the willing servants of a holy Lord. ”

“ Thus the real misery of the honest poor in England was becoming a thing of the past, and the large class of people whose stock-in-trade was the discontent of others became at once more reckless and more dangerous when, flinging away all disguise and separated from 23those whose wrongs had lent colour to their schemes, they appeared under their true flag as the enemies of all law and duty, industry and religion. ”

“ Those who thus perished in war, believing that it was for their country’s honour that 18they fought, were among the best and bravest of the nation—men to whom discipline and order were their very breath. Those whom the new law excluded from life were scarcely worthy of the name of men, and more hostile to their country than any of the soldiers of other states. ”

“ She said that these troubles had come upon them, as they knew, through their own folly and dissensions; that they might now, if they were indeed united, resist their enemies and oblige them to live peaceably in their own part of the Island, getting their supplies from the northern reef, which was very fruitful, and not crossing the hills; that if, taking warning from the weakness 73which their disorders had brought, they would set themselves to strengthen some simple form of government, they might even yet live peaceable and happy lives on the Island. ”

“ It is possible that, though the children of the first settlers were 96passionately eager for settled order, and enthusiastically religious, their children might show a return of evil tendencies, and that those who did not remember the first fearful days of strife in the Island might wilfully have roused again a spirit of disorder; for the world and all the spheres mount only in upward spirals toward that point of the Heavens where they shall rest at last, and are turning always to the same point again, only a little higher than before. ”

“ But it would not be possible even to hint at the chosen words which ruled the lives of that happy community, every voice in which swelled 94the sweet hymn of praise which rose at morn and even among the Bread-fruit groves. They did not assemble to worship or to sing, for they sang and worshipped everywhere.
No one called anything his own; and each was eager to find opportunities of helping others with his strength or his substance.
But as to the Dacoits, concerning them even the Prince was led to doubt the fitness of Anarchy. ”

“ In England—then, as in the past, the refuge of banished men—social disorder reached a height that would soon have driven all her quiet dwellers to seek more peaceful homes on the other side of the globe, had not a new and strange thing changed the whole aspect of affairs. ”

“ He had always acknowledged that to this end certain principles of morality recognized by the whole community, were necessary. He had believed, on first coming to the Island, that the mere absence of outward law 84would develop in men that natural morality from which, under the blight of government, they had fallen away; and he had opposed the work of the Priests of the West on the ground that the artificial restraints of religion are as fatal as civil enactments to the free growth of this natural virtue. ”

“ The very women whose tender hearts cried out against the new law would send their young sons away with their blessing to face death in compassing that of other innocent and unwilling victims in a cause for which, often, none of them cared. ”

“ The number of the early settlers was much diminished by the years of strife and violence, and though some of those who came as children to the Island were now growing to man’s and woman’s estate, these were not many, and the fact that among the older settlers there were some who had families was a great source of weakness to them as against the new-comers, for even the most lawless of the old Southern men dreaded the attacks of these wild marauders upon 65their feeble women and children.
Thus the presence of the Dacoits wrought a change at once on the island. ”

“ The young Priests of whom I have spoken believed that men had lost sight of the great communistic idea of early Christianity, and they made themselves poor and homeless for the sake of their creed. True brethren of the Cross they were, not the less willing to cast in their lot with the outlawed because most of these denied the Christian faith with their lips. ”

“ It will now hardly be believed that there existed at that time in England what were called “the Criminal Classes”—thousands of men, women, and children known to be living in the continual commission of crime, as other people are engaged in commerce, husbandry, and the like, spending much of their time in prison, and never doing or desiring any honest work. ”

“ Thus their quiet ways and simple attire left little space to be bridged over as regards outward show between them and the thrifty women of a humbler class, and that space was bridged by kindly intercourse, by knowledge shared, and by the ready sympathy which is the gift of the highest intelligence. ”

“ Men who had no 66scruple at midnight murder, and delighted in the torture of little children in the sight of their mothers, could not be met by any force but that of perfectly organized and strong repression, and the leaders of the party who now represented the order of the Island began to dread whether they would not indeed all perish at the hands of these savage invaders. ”

“ Those who would not obey the laws of one country must seek a home in another. Banishment seemed at once the mildest and the most reasonable punishment (if indeed it can be so called) ,—not transportation to some special spot, but simply exile from England and from all British dominions and colonies—the Great Federation being absolutely united in this important matter—under 24penalty of death if the banished returned. ”

“ At the same time a great number of German and Belgian Socialists of the most violent kind were also landed on the Island, and they found no difficulty in making friends at once with the Irish company, the German system of education having made them as perfect in the use of foreign tongues as it left them ignorant of the first principles of moral law and of all sound theories of government and political economy. ”

“ With a people in this temper the structure of the new Polity seemed rather the building up of a Church than the ordering of a Commonwealth.
Yet it truly resembled neither of these things. They determined that no written laws, no written book of religion, no formal creed should have a place among them. They had seen how law-making means law-breaking, and they determined that their rule of life should be simply this 91one thing—a principle, a passion, not a command ”

“ From all points of the compass ships with various flags entered the circle of reefs that surrounded Meliora, and set down their strange passengers on that beautiful shore.
A land large enough for all, fertile as a garden of romance, perfect in climate, and abounding in all they could need for food, clothing and shelter, what more could the outlaws desire?
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Chapter II. “Exile is when a man is for a crime condemned to depart out of the dominion of the commonwealth, or out of a certain part thereof, and during a prefixed time, or for ever, not to return to it ”

“ They saw a crowd of Dacoits rush to the shore making signs to those on board, but it was too late. The ship struck, and sank at once in the fathomless depth of water outside the reef. The Dacoits on shore swam across the Lagoon, and running over the reef again, swam towards the sunken ship, and dived in 77the hope of saving their friends. But during this little space of time, the tide, which turns there very suddenly, brought great waves again to break over the sunken rocks and on the outer edge of the reef, and many of those who swam out to the wreck were drowned. ”

“ There were not wanting intelligent persons to whom the punishment of death for a misused life seemed a terrible and even a wicked thing. Yet, not only had such punishment been in 17use for just such offences in the time of Queen Elizabeth and of other sovereigns, but at so late a time as the commencement of the present century, war among civilized nations was considered justifiable, and the profession of a soldier was even held to be a noble and Christian calling. ”

“ Anarchy, Socialism, free-land leagues, communistic democracy more or less indigenous, and every shade of Nihilism and Dynamitism introduced from the East and the West, had so long had free course that 19a large mass of the population had come to believe practically that might was right, and the problems of the earliest stages of barbarism were staring men in the face as the products of an over-ripe civilization. ”

“ The thought of the drowned Dacoits, of the unsettled state of the Island, of the wickedness that abounded, and of her own helplessness for good, weighed on her sensitive spirit. She was in Elijah’s mood when he said, “Oh, that I now might die!”
To those who feel weary and wanting all things, the call is often to work and to give; and so it was that evening with the Sister. They spoke together by the door of her house till the full moon dropped from the height of the northern 87sky towards the western sea ”

“ Beautiful histories were told of some who in the quiet of their cells, aided by the gentle ministrations of the Brothers and Sisters, came to see with an anguish of repentance the sinfulness 15of their past, and to rejoice in the thought of passing, sprinkled with fresh dews of penitence and forgiveness, away from a world whose temptations had been too strong for them. ”

“ Not only all who compassed, or even attempted the lives of others, but all who after repeated smaller punishments still lived the 12lives of evildoers, were counted unworthy longer to live,—and this without any attempted distinction of sane or insane,—the existence of the latter being considered even more hopelessly injurious to the State than that of the former, and, on the other hand, less valuable to themselves. ”

“ Children who had committed crimes, after fitting punishment were placed in settlements where they were kept under strict discipline and carefully instructed, the rudiments of some useful art being added to a simple education in general subjects. ”

“ Violence was the only law, and those who escaped in that terrible day yielded themselves in hopeless misery to the disorders they 62could not avert or control. Some few there always were who longed for order and peace, and mourned in silence for their lost leaders ”

“ On conviction the Anarchist was marked, by an indelible brand in a painless manner, with a red O in sign of outlawry, and received his sentence of banishment—and in this way some thousands of the disaffected and idle were at once removed from our shores. ”

“ It began to be perceived, and was soon widely acknowledged, that the cause of the great weakness and futility of our government lay in the advanced age of 7those by whom the most important offices were held. Age is wont to trifle, to take things lightly, and to study life, of which it can at best hope to possess so little, from a frivolous and temporary point of view. ”

“ The other was 21the fact that so many owners of land had devoted large portions of it to sites for Industrial Villages, and even those who had no sympathy for the poor or enthusiasm for the good of their country, partly for fashion’s sake, and partly because these schemes proved not only useful to the poor but beneficial to the landowner, joined to aid the great work of withdrawing the population from the towns into the country. ”

“ In those days the States of Europe were already bound in a sort of confederation, with an International Court in which matters of common interest were discussed, and 27it was agreed that a place must be found for the growing nation of outlaws, who else might justly plead for a home in a law-obeying state as a mere necessity of humanity. ”