CHAPTER V.
THE REPLY OF CORRUPTION
In order to explain the first imprisonment and trial of Ferrer I must take the reader back ten years in the story of Barcelona. The moment one mentions in England that Barcelona has thousands of Anarchists there is a perceptible shudder in one's audience. This is due to sheer insular ignorance. The presence among us of Prince Kropotkin, the European prestige of Count Tolstoy, should have long ago corrected it. An Anarchist is not a man who throws bombs, but a man who believes that centralised government will always lead to corruption; and therefore decentralised administration, with greater liberty of personal development, is the ideal of social form. A very intelligible ideal in Spain. Occasionally, one in a thousand Anarchists may reach so uncontrollable a pitch of indignation at the existing corruption that he vents his feeling in an isolated outrage.
Anarchism is the most popular social theory among the workers of Barcelona, as Socialism is in North Italy. So long as it does not seek to remove the Government by violent means, it has, in any civilisation, as much right as any other social ideal to existence. It is in the position of the Liberal who plots humanely to overthrow a Conservative Government. The sole question which concerns any civilised Government is, whether the rebels against it, of whatever school, plainly meditate or use violence. Then they take their lives in their hands, and are the first to admit it.
Now, there have been violent outrages done by Anarchists in Barcelona, but two things must be borne in mind by those who would have a correct judgment on these matters. The first is that most, if not all, the bomb outrages that have occurred in Barcelona for the last ten years or more are due to clerical and political agents. This, we shall see, is now fully established. The second point is to understand the special circumstances which embitter Anarchists in Spain.
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