Notes on Colonialism – Freedom (1887)

An excerpt from the section simply titled ‘Notes’ in ‘Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Socialism’, January 1887, London, UK

The greatest service to mankind rendered by the Irish leaders is not the positive part they play in the deliverance of their fellow-country-men. What little freedom the Irish people have attained has been won by their own brave spirit of revolt. But the civilised world owes a debt of gratitude to men like Dillon, O’Brien, Healy, and the rest, for the perpetual contempt they pour on government. During this winter they have publicly thrust slice after slice of humble-pie down the throats of our rulers and theirs, and overturned in the eyes of all men the sacred majesty of the law. Our English workers look on quietly, but they are learning the lesson.

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The success of the present Government in checking the agrarian movement by persecuting its successive methods of action is likely to parallel that of their precursors in warring with the Catholic Association. If the Plan of Campaign is abandoned, it will only be to give place to more revolutionary tactics, and the new scheme of local Tenants’ Defence Societies will probably give the defenders of property more trouble. All revolutionary movements prosper best if hydra-headed. It is sheer tempting of providence to offer to the enemy one head which may be sliced off at a blow and the body left sprawling.

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We Anarchist Socialists are determined to put an end to the appropriation of wealth, which makes every human being who has no property the slave of those who have. Therefore we hate governments; for the object of every government hitherto known amongst men has been to protect property. If any one doubts this let him study any government in the making he likes to choose.

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We are publishing the story of the establishment of law and order in Ireland as an illustration; but there is no need to seek illustrations in the past. Take, for example, the history of a young colony told by Julian Thomas in his ‘Cannibals and Convicts.’ First, he describes how the natives of New Calefornia [New Caledonia / Kanaky] have been robbed of their land by French settlers. Then comes the French Government to protect the stolen goods, enclose the lands, and drive the tribes into the stony and barren uplands.

The tribes “rebel,” and are murdered wholesale by the amiable and brilliant Commander Riviere, of Tonquin celebrity. Next comes a company, an offshoot of the Rothchild interest, trading in slaves (politely termed “labour traffic”) for Australasian capitalists, who, since the Chinese have begun to organise a little, find their labour too expensive. This company buys the settlers’ stolen land cheap, and then persuades the incorruptible French Republic to transport thither its convicts, when of course, according to the “economic law of supply and demand,” the land becomes very valuable and the government pays what the monopolist company asks.

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What wonder if the French budget is somewhat excessive! But France is not the only country where the government is an agent for extorting the people’s money to feed the cruelty and avarice of a few monopolists.