Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. . . .
Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye,
But considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
MATTHEW VII
Oh the virtuous indignation, the roaring tempest
raised in the tender souls of American and British philanthropists
at the rumor that Russian authorities in Siberia are not as tender
as they should be towards their political prisoners! What a hullabaloo
of loud protests of "indignation meetings," of gigantic
gatherings to denounce their neighbors, while they keep prudently
silent about the same misdeeds at home.
A monster meeting of some 250,000 men protested the other day
at Hyde Park "in the name of civilization and humanity"
against the brutal behavior of some unknown Russian officials
and jailors. Now, one can readily understand and entirely appreciate
the feelings of the masses, of the oppressed, the suffering poor
and the hoi polloi in general. These being "sat upon"
from birth to death by the high and the wealthy of their own land,
and having all, to a man, many a sore place in their hearts, must
feel them vibrating with pain and sympathy with their brothers
in sorrow of other countries. True, the energy expended at the
said meeting might have been more usefully directed, perhaps,
against local and colonial "Siberias" and "Dead
Houses"; but such as it was, the impulse being genuine, every
Theosophist regarded it with respect. But that to which every
member of the Theosophical Society ought to refuse that feeling
of sympathy is the hypocritical cant in this matter of sundry
editors who remain dumb in face of misdeeds at home, pouring all
their wrath on the abuse of power and the brutality of Russian
officers. This is enough to make an owl laugh in full daylight.
That charges of cruelty should be brought forward, and leprous
spots singled out on the body of Russia by England and America
is a sufficiently curious piece of moral audacity; but that this
attitude should be supported, and even enforced, by certain editors,
instead of being passed over in prudent silence, makes one think
of the wise adage "whom the Gods would destroy they first
make mad." To the student of human nature a world of instruction
is contained therein, and he feels thankful for this additional
experience.
Bearing in mind that LUCIFER has nought to
do with the political situation in all this affair, let the reader
remember, that it has, on the other hand everything to do with
its moral aspect. Having its mission at heart, to wit: to bring
"to light the hidden things of darkness," it has naturally
a good deal to say about drunken John and drunken Jonathan nodding
so frowningly at drunken Peter, and so gravely moralising at him
as though they were themselves sinless. Here the writer speaks
first of all as a Theosophist, and only secondly as a Russian;
neither excusing Russia, nor accusing England and America, but
simply throwing the full glare of the torch of truth on facts
which no one can deny. And once this position established,
the writer says: "How consoling and hopeful might have been
for our growing society that of the 'Universal Brotherhood of
Man' such exhibition of the noblest and most human feelings,
had it not been marred by a few antecedent facts," of which
presently. Even as the "protest" against Russian cruelty
stands now, all such show of pious regard for Christ's command
"love your enemies," is spoiled by a disregard of that
other injunction "thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are."
Indeed, Europe might be asking now as of George Dandin in the
comedy of Moliere, "Qui de nous deux trompe-t-on ici?"
Could even a child be really deceived by such protests
on the Continent? If all this display of indignation is likely
to impress anyone eventually, it will be only those "inferior
races" under the paternal sway and benevolent rule of their
respective white rulers. Hindus and Mussulmen, Burmese and Singhalese,
upon listening to the reverberating echoes of pious horror from
the West, are as likely as not to contrast the ferociousness of
Russian jailors and prison-houses with that of their own rulers,
with the Calcutta "Black Hole" of famous memory, and
the Andaman Islands; while the hapless and ever-kicked Negroes
of the United States, the Red Indians dying of exposure and starvation
in their frozen wilderness, and even some Chinamen who seek hospitality
on the Pacific coast, may yet come to envy the lot of the "political
prisoners of Siberia." . . .
But what imposing pictures! On the other side of the "pond"
the pathetic eloquence of Mr. George Kennan the Siberian traveller,
"who has just seen all this for himself, you see!" drawing
tears from the street-flags and forcing lamp-posts to use their
pocket-handkerchiefs without speaking of the colored citizens,
Red Indians and Chinamen. On this side of the Atlantic, Mr. Quilter,
the editor of the Universal Review, showing like fervor
on behalf of the "oppressed." Mr. Adolphe Smith's
"Exile
by administrative order," adorned by what Mr. Stead calls
"a fancy sketch of the flogging of Madame Sihida"(?)l
gracing one of the last numbers of the Universal Review produces
likewise its effect. Moved by a spirit of lofty chivalry, its
editor issued, as all know, a circular to M.P.'s, peers, judges,
heads of Colleges and so on, to ask them "whether (a)
the present system of Siberian exile by administrative order"
was not "a disgrace to a civilized nation"; and (b),
whether the above mentioned authorities do not "consider
that steps should be taken to call the attention of her Majesty's
Government to those outrages, in order that a diplomatic remonstrance
should be addressed to the Czar"!
As this pertains to the domain of politics, and we do not care
to trespass upon forbidden ground, those anxious to learn something
of the replies are recommended to read the excellent summary of
this curious incident on page 489 of the June Review of Reviews;
but we must quote a few lines from it, in which the reader
will learn ( I ) that some of the authorities appealed to are
of opinion that "exile in Siberia is . . . a just and beneficent
punishment . . . much better for criminals than our own (British)
convict system"; (2) that the outrage on Madame Sihida "does
not rest upon unimpeachable evidence," the sketch recalling
to the writer's memory "an equally dramatic picture of a
Polish prince chained in a convict gang to a murderer, a story
which this prince's brother subsequently declared was false."
But that which cannot be disproved by any means is that other
and far more legitimate agitation going on in England for long
years, and now at its acme in this country, that for the enfranchisement
of women, and the causes which made it arise. Most Theosophists
have read Mrs. F. Fenwick Miller's admirable address on the programme
of the Women's Franchise League2; and many of our
Theosophists
belong to this League. And there are such as have declared that
many women in England even now, when many of the women's "disabilities"
so-called, have been happily removed after centuries of penal
servitude to their husbands would gladly have consented to
exchange places with "Madame Sihida," whoever she is not
as a political prisoner perhaps, but as a flogged woman. What
is the horror of being flogged (where brutal force is used, there
is no dishonor but martyrdom), when compared with a long life
of moral and physical slavery? Which of the female "serfs
of sex"3 in free England would not
gladly
exchange her position as a wife and mother, for that of a wife
and mother in despotic Russia? Why, ladies and gentlemen,
who have fought in the "Married Women's Property" agitation,
for the "Custody of Infants' Bill," and the right of
woman as an independent individual and a citizen, instead of the
thing and her husband's chattel that she was and still
is are you aware that in despotic "half civilised"
Russia, the rights of women before the law are on a par with those
of men, and in some cases their privileges far greater? That a
rich woman marrying a man is, and has been, since the days of
Catharine II, sole mistress of her property, the husband having
no right to one penny without the wife's legal signature. That
a poor girl, marrying a rich man, having on the other hand a legal
right to his property during his life and to a certain portion
after his death whether he wills it or not, and also a right to
the maintenance of herself and children whatever she does?4 Have you not heard that a woman holding property and paying
taxes is obliged to give her vote, whether personally or
by proxy? And that so greatly is she protected by law that
even a child born between nine and ten months after the husband's
death is considered legitimate by law: simply because abnormally
prolonged gestation does casually happen, and that the law states
that it is more consonant with the law of Christ to forgive
nine guilty women, rather than wrong the tenth who may be innocent?
Compare this with the laws of free England with regard
to woman, who until about eight or nine years ago was simply a
slave, with less rights than a plantation negro. Read again Mrs.
Fenwick Miller's paper (loc. cit. supra) and judge. Everything
went against her receiving a higher education, inasmuch as she
was to remain all her life "under the tutelage of some man."
She had no right to her husband's property, and lost every right
to hers, even to every penny she earned by her own labor, having,
in short, no right to hold any property, whether inherited or
acquired. A man deserting his wife for another woman, and leaving
her and his children to starve, was not forced to support them,
but had a legal right to every penny earned by his abandoned wife,
as "the skill of her brain was not hers, it was her husband's."
No matter what he did, or whatever crime he committed against
her, she had no redress against him, could neither sue him, nor
had even the right of lodging a complaint against him. More: she
had no rights as a mother, English law recognizing only the father
and the child. Her children could be taken away from her, separated
from their mother for ever, and there was no redress for her.
Says Mrs. Fenwick Miller:
The wife
had in the eyes of the law simply no existence. . . .
Even "within the last two years, seven judges in conclave
have declared the law to be to-day that a married woman is in
this respect still absolutely a slave, with no rights of free
will in herself. . . . Was this not slavery? . . . The woes and
flight of the mulatto mother invented by Mrs. Stowe's genius set
all England weeping; but English and Scotch mothers too refined
women, adoring mothers. . . . have seen their children torn from
their embrace or have fled secretly and lived in desolate concealment
with their little ones, as the only way to keep . . . near their
breaking hearts the darlings of their souls. . . ."
Herbert Spencer seems to have said the same long ago, in these
words:
Wives in
England were bought from the fifth to the eleventh century,
and as late as the seventeenth century husbands of decent station
were not ashamed to beat their wives. Gentlemen(!) arranged parties
of pleasure for the purpose of seeing wretched women whipped at
Bridewell. It was not till 1817 that the public whipping of women
was abolished in England.
Between 1817 and 1890 there are but a few years. But how many
centuries old is English civilization as compared to that of Russia,
whose era of barbarism closed only with Peter the Great?
Who, then, except men capable of taking such undue if legal advantage
of their mothers, wives, and children, would not confess that
there is far less cruelty even in the casual flogging of
a woman, than in such a systematic oppression, the life-long torture
of millions of innocent women and mothers throughout past
centuries and to the present day? And for what reasons? Simply
to protect the animal passions and lust, the depravity of men the
masters and the legislators. And it is the men of England who
have refused, till forced in their last retrenchments, to abrogate
such fiendish laws, and who still refuse to make away with many
more as iniquitous, who call this solitary case of flogging "a
disgrace to civilization"! And so it would be, if once proved,
as are the heartless laws of England against her women. No doubt
that of drunken, and therefore cruel, brutes among Russian jailors
and prison officials there are plenty. But we trow no more than
there are in other countries and probably less. And we would advise
the editors who would agitate in favor of sending "remonstrances"
to Russia, to first extract the beam from the eye of their own
country and then only to turn their attention to the mote in the
eye of their neighbor. For that "neighbor" is a country
which protects at any rate her mothers and wives, while England
lets her laws treat them simply as the goods and chattels of her
men, and treats them as the dumb brutes of creation. If there
ever was a real "disgrace to a civilized nation" it
was the formation of numberless Societies for the prevention of
cruelty to animals, before any one even thought of establishing
a like Society for the protection of women and children, and the
punishment of "wife-kickers" and wife-robbing rascally
bipeds, such as are found in every class of Society. And why not
rather turn the public attention to more than one "disgrace
to a civilized nation," taking place on British soil and
in American lands, e.g., to the revolting treatment by
the Anglo-Indians of the millions of natives, from the highest
Brahman to the lowest pariah, and the no less revolting attitude
of the white Americans towards their black co-citizens, or the
hapless Red-Indians? Cannibals inflict less torture on their prisoners
of war than do the two cultured Christian nations in question
on their colored Brethren of the "inferior" races. The
former kill and devour their victims, after which these are at
rest; while the whites of England and America act worse than Cains
towards their black subjects and citizens: they torture them mentally,
when not physically, from their cradle to their tomb; refusing
them every privilege they have a right to, and then turning round
and spitting on them as if they were so many toads. Look at the
unfortunate Red Skin! Deprived of every inch of his ancestral
land, crowded off into the sea, robbed of his supply of blankets
and provisions, the Indian is left to freeze and starve by hundreds
and thousands, which he proceeds to do amidst catacombs of Bibles,
a prey unfit even for the prairie-buzzard. . . .
But why go so far as to the colonies for our instances and proofs,
when cases of repeated flogging of women, aye of young girls not
out of their teens, necessitate "Royal Commissions"
at home? "Ruby, or How Girls Are Trained for Circus Life,"
by Amye Reade, a shocker founded on facts as the
author claims, has brought forth the following in the Saturday
Review (July 26th, I 890):
"ROYAL COMMISSION." Mr.
Gainsford Bruce, Q.C., M.P., has promised that as soon as sufficient
evidence can be obtained to justify such a step, he will call
attention to the matter in the House of Commons, with a view of
inducing the Government to advise Her Majesty to appoint a Royal
Commission to enquire into and report upon the treatment of children
whilst being trained to the business of circus riders, acrobats,
and contortio
nists.
"MANCHESTER GUARDIAN"
says: "'Ruby.' by Amye Reade. This book is notable on account
of the charges brought by the authoress against a manager or managers
in general of circuses. It is an indictment so tremendous that,
if it can be proved, the authoress should not be content with
representing a picture to harrow novel-readers. She should collect
her proofs and lay them before the Public Prosecutor. Miss
Reade asserts that in cases of contumacy girls of seventeen are
stripped naked by the circus-master and flogged by him till they
are sick and faint and bleeding."
Among the members of Parliament who have "allowed their names
to be used as indication of their desire to assist the author
in her . . . efforts to bring before the public the horrible cruelties,"
are Messrs. Gainsford Bruce, Jacob Bright, Sir Richard Temple,
etc., etc. Now, "Madame Sihida," whatever she was else,
was a murderess (political or not does not matter); but these
unfortunate girls of seventeen are perfectly innocent victims.
Ah, gentlemen editors, of the two cultured champion nations of
Christendom, you may play as much as you like at Sir Charles Grandison that
union of the perfect gentleman and good Christian but who will
believe you? Your protests are only suggestive of the Christian
ethics of today, and are an insult to the ethics of Christ. They
are no better than a glaring instance of modern cant and a gigantic
apotheosis of hypocrisy. In the words of Lermontoff, the Russian
poet, all this comedy
. . . . . would be too
grotesque, in truth,
If it were not so heartrending!
Read rather Bertillon's Les Races Sauvages and Charles
Lümholtz's Au Pays des Cannibales a French translation
from the Swedish if you would know what your friends accuse you
of, while Russia is charged with her misdeeds only by her enemies,
and those jealous of her growing power. Having just come across
some reviews of these works, it is but right that our friends
should have an idea of the charges published against England,
or rather her colonies, and thus be given the means of comparing
the Russian "mote" with the British "beam."
We were just preparing to blush for the alleged misdeeds of the
former, which misdeeds, if true, would not be excused by
any Theosophist on the ground that the Anglo-Indians and the Americans
do far worse at home as well as in their colonies when we saw
a Russian review of these works which made us long to read the
works themselves. We had known for years that which the whole
world knows in what a civilized and Christian way the English and the Americans treated
not their prisoners, political or others, but simply their most
loyal subjects and citizens, harmless Hindus and other "black
heathens," bard-working, honest negroes, and the much-wronged
Red Indians. But we were not prepared to believe that which is
published in the Races Sauvages of Bertillon and Au Pays
des Cannibales by the well-known Swedish traveller in Australia,
Charles Lümholtz.
Let us glance at the older work. Bertillon speaks of Tasmania,
and shows that in 1803 there were still about 6,ooo natives left,
while just sixty-nine years later there remained of them but a
legend, and a ghastly tale. In 1872 died the last of the Tasmanians.
The country was swept out of its last nigger. How did it
come to pass? This is Bertillon's tale:
To achieve
such a brilliant result, the English did not stop before
any kind of cruelty. They premised by offering £5 for the
head of every adult, and £2 for that of every baby Tasmanian.
To succeed in this chase after the miserable native the better,
the English brought with them aborigines of Australia, the great
enemies of the Tasmanians, and used them as blood hounds. But
this method was found to work too slowly. Then a cordon was
organised, or rather a band, selected from Colonists, and among
the scum of the garrison . . . and Arthur, the then governor of
the island, was appointed as its chief. After this commenced a
regular chase after the Tasmanian, as one finds in hunts after
wild boars. . . . The natives were driven into deep water, shot,
as if by accident, and those who escaped were poisoned with arsenic
. . . some Colonists going so far as to make a fine collection
of their victims' skulls, and boasting of it. . . .
Now this may, or may not, be true; it may, or may not, be exaggerated,
just as in the case of "Siberian flogging" and cruelty
to political prisoners. As the latter charge comes to us from
Russia's enemies and sensation-loving travellers, so the tale
of Tasmania is told by the same kind of traveller, and, moreover,
one of a nation not generally friendly to England. But here comes
something more modern and trustworthy, a charge from a decided
friend of England and the Australians, and one who says what he
has seen with his own eyes, heard with his own ears namely, Charles
Lümholtz, in his work called in the French translation, Au
Pays des Cannibales. We quote from an ample Russian review
of the work, in the Novoye' Vremya, May 2 (I4), 1890 No.
5,080. According to the latter, the "enlightenment"
of the inferior races and the savage-islanders by the civilization-spreading
Englishmen did not stop at the Tasmanians. This is from Lümholtz's
revelation, and it is ghastly!
There is
a chapter in this work treating specially of the relations
of the English colonists with the natives, and what deadly terrible
relations! The life of a black man is worth nothing, it seems,
and his rights to existence are on a par with those of a wild
beast. "To kill a native of Australia is the same as killing
a dog in the eyes of a British colonist," says Lümholtz.
More than this: no dog will be so cruelly treated in Europe. Its
life, unless dangerous to men, will not be taken away without
any cause. Not so for the native of Australia, according to the
evidence of the Swedish author, who shows that there are young
men who make a point of hunting the blacks every Sunday in the
neighborhood of their cities, systematically passing the whole
day in that sport, simply for pleasure's sake. . . . A
party of four or five horsemen prepares traps, or, driving the
savages into a narrow pass, forces them to seek refuge on precipitous
cliffs, and while the unfortunate wretches are climbing at their
life's peril on almost perpendicular bare rocks, one ball after
another is fired at them, making even those slightly wounded to
lose their hold, and falling down, break and tear themselves into
shreds on the sharp rocky projections below. . . . A squatter
in Long Lagoon has become famous for the immense number of blacks
he has poisoned with strychnine. And this is no single instance.
A farmer from Lower Herbert confessed to the Swedish traveller
that he was in the habit of burning the dead bodies of the natives to
get rid of them, in order to destroy a too palpable piece of evidence.
But this was only an extra precaution. For, although local law
(on paper) punishes murder, it is in reality only the killing
of white men which is called murder. English colonists have
repeatedly offered to Lümholtz to shoot a few blacks, to
get for him the native skulls he was in need of. . . . Before law
a black savage is entirely helpless. "Were I a native, I
would kill every English colonist I met," said an exasperated
Englishman, an eye-witness like himself, to our author. Another
traveller, in his letter to Lümholtz, speaks of these British
colonists as of "the most disgusting caricatures of Christians,"
and adds: "The English constantly throw stones at other nations
for their behavior to conquered races, while no words can express
the horror and the indignity of their own acts towards the natives
of Australia."
Thus, having swept off the face of the earth the unfortunate Tasmanians,
the British colonists
. . ."with a cruelty a tiger might envy, destroy to this
day the Australian savages. When the first colony of the province
of Victoria was founded, there were about 10,000 natives in that
district. In 1871, their number fell to 3,000; and in 1880 there
were only about 800 left, in all. How many remain alive now we
do not know: at any rate, the above cited figures show very eloquently
that the civilizing influence of the enlightened mariners has
born fruit and their handiwork is nearing its end." "A
few more years," says Lümholtz, "and the Australian
aboriginal race will have disappeared from the face of the earth.
The English province of Victoria, raised on the black man's lands,
soaked through and through with his savage blood and fertilized
with his bones, will blossom the more luxuriously for that. . . ."
The Russian Reviewer ends with a paragraph which may be taken
as a tit-for-tat to the English editor of the Universal Review
and his colleagues. We give a verbatim translation
of it:
Such is
the soil on which that colonizing activity the English
seem so proud of finds its vent. And it is this soil, furrowed
in length and breadth by the brutal cruelty of the soulless English
colonist, which proclaims loudly to the whole world that, to have
right of throwing stones at other nations, it is not sufficient
yet to be covered with an English skin. It is also necessary that
the British soul should not be as black as are the bodies of,
and the soil wrenched from, the poor natives; and that the hapless
savages should not be viewed by their conquerors as no better
than the Egyptian mummies of cats; to wit: good only to serve
as land-fertilizers for their masters' flourishing colonies.
And now we have done, leaving the detractors and self-constituted
judges of Russia to their own reflections. We have lived in India
and throughout Asiatic countries; and, as a Theosophist, we feel
bound to say that nowhere have we found such a potentiality of
cruelty and cant under the brown and black skins as under the
white epiderm of the refined European, save perhaps, in the class
of the gariwalas, the bullock cart drivers. If the reader would
learn the characteristics of this class he will be told for his
edification what is that personage. The gariwala belongs to that
specimen of humanity to which speech was given to conceal its
thought, and which professes its religion only because it serves
its ends. While offering divine honors and worship to the cow
and the bull, and never letting any opportunity of denouncing
his brother gariwala to the village Brahman for disrespect to
the (sacred) animals, he himself twists the tails of his team
of oxen until these appendages of his Gods hang only by a few
hairs and clotted blood. The gariwala, it is, then, who ought
to feel a legitimate pride in finding himself acting on the same
lines of whining cant as his masters the barasaabs. And
coming so near, in his own humble way, to the policy of the two
most civilized and cultured nations of Christendom, the gariwala
ought perhaps to be promoted from the ranks of the inferior
to those of the superior race.
We have but one word more to say. When Russia has as much said
of her by her friends, as Lümholtz says of Australia, and
others of India and America, then will every honest man and woman
of Europe join in the indignation meetings and righteous protests
against Russian atrocities. Until then the best advice one can
give to the English and the Americans is very, very old: "JUDGE
NOT THAT YE BE NOT JUDGED. For how wilt thou
say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye,
and behold, a beam is in thine own?"
Lucifer, August, 1890
H. P. Blavatsky
1 Were this "flogging" even proven which
it is not still brutal and sickening as the fact would undeniably
be, is it really any worse than the kicking by the police of women
already knocked down by them: than the clubbing until mangled
to death of men and crippled boys? And if one is reminded that
the alleged "flogging" took place (if it ever did) in
the wilds of Siberia, probably hundreds of miles away from any
civilized centre, to speak of, and the well-proven "kicking
and clubbing" right in the midst of the most civilized city
in the world, namely, in Trafalgar Square, it does seem as if
it were a case of merely "six of one and half-a-dozen of
the other." back to text
2 The National Liberal Club, February 25th, 1890 back to text
3 "Woman's Rights as preached by Women,"
by a "Looker on." back to text
4 If separated (not divorced), and the husband is a
public official, a certain portion is deducted from his salary
and paid over to the wife. back to text
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