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 A PRESENT PERIL. 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 BY 
 
 joh:n^ k^icpiaeds, 
 
 Solicitor-General of the United States, 
 
 AT THE 
 
 FOUNDERS' DAY BANQUET 
 
 OP THE 
 
 UNION LEAGUE OF PHILADELPHIA, 
 
 NOVEMBER 23, IDOl. 
 
.9 
 
 iN BXCHANQK. 
 
 IVIAR 1 3 1916 
 
T A prese:n^t peril. 
 
 Address by JOHN. K. RICHARDS, Solicitor-General of the United 
 States, at the Founders' Day Banquet of the Union League of 
 Philadelphia, November 23, 1901. 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Union 
 
 League: 
 
 Before turning to the subject of my address, I can 
 not refrain from expressing my grateful appreciation 
 of the honor of being invited to be one of the speak- 
 ers at this dinner in honor of the Founders of the 
 Union League. From the days when the regiments 
 raised by this patriotic orga>iT(i'a<aUto!$ marched forth at 
 the call of Abraham Linc?^fn.' in defence of the Union 
 of the States, the potent force of the Union League 
 of Philadelphia has been steadily and effectually ex- 
 erted on the side of liberty, of justice, and of good 
 government. It is because of this, and because there 
 are yet things to be done, that I shall take advan- 
 tage of the occasion to discuss seriously a matter 
 which, touching as it does the security of the Gov- 
 ernment, concerns vitally each and every citizen of 
 the Republic. . : 
 
 On the 6th of September, in a time of unexampled, 
 prosperity and at a national celebration of peace and 
 progress, the President of the United States, while 
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receiving the people, was shot down in cokl blood, 
 even as he reached out his hand in kindly welcome to 
 the wretched assassin. The dastardly deed shocked 
 the world, and, when understood, appalled civilization. 
 The annals of history do not record a more causeless 
 crime. 
 
 Personally, the victim was of all men the last to 
 excite envy or malice. He was a man of the people, 
 chosen by the people, whose noble and unselfish life 
 had been devoted wholly to their welfare and advance- 
 ment. Coming- from the people, he never lost his 
 sympathy with them, or his belief in the ultimate 
 justice of their judgments. In bearing the burden of 
 his high office he constantly leaned on them, and they 
 as steadfastly stood by him. He was as good and 
 kind as he was great and wise. His gracious and 
 considerate course drew to him the hearts of his 
 countrymen of all parties and every section. He had 
 not an enemy in the world. Oh, irony of Fate, that 
 such a man should be singled out for slaughter. 
 
 Oflicially, he was the twice-chosen Chief Magistrate 
 of a free people, whose government was dedicated to 
 liberty and justice under law, and has yet to fail in 
 devotion to the high ideals of its framers; a nation 
 founded as a defense against tyranny and for years the 
 refuge of the oppressed of every land. In his own 
 career was embodied the glorious possibilities of life in 
 this land of freedom, where every man in the long run 
 is what he makes himself, and where every man, thank 
 God, has a chance to make the most of himself 
 
3 
 
 Nothing in the character or career of the President, 
 
 nothing in the nature of the Government of which he 
 
 was the chosen head, offered any rational explanation 
 
 of the dreadful crime; but its cause found early avowal: 
 
 "I am an anarchist; I did ni}^ duty." 
 
 This declaration threw over the tragedy a lurid 
 light. Investigation confirmed its accuracy. An ex- 
 amination of the criminal failed to disclose any evi- 
 dences of insanity. He was a young man, born in 
 this country, educated in the common schools, in good 
 health, and with unimpaired mind. He was a believer 
 in the religion of his fathers and in the Government of 
 his country until he fell under the fatal influence of the 
 anarchists. He attended their meetings, he listened to 
 their harangues, he drank in their doctrines. The 
 poison saturated his soul. He abjured his religion, 
 he renounced his country, he devoted himself to the 
 destruction of society. He became, what every 
 anarchist is at heart, an apostate, a traitor, an outlaw. 
 He shot the President, not for anything he had done as 
 President, but because he was the President. He shot 
 him, not because he was the head of a bad govern- 
 ment, but because he was the head of a government. 
 "The better the government, the worse the crime of 
 being its head." The blow was aimed at the Govern- 
 ment and the moral, social, religious, and political 
 institutions it stands for. It was civilized society 
 which the assassin sought to destroy. He would have 
 killed us all but he could not, so he killed the chief 
 among us, our chosen representative and highest 
 servant. 
 
What can Congress do, under the Constitution, to 
 protect our President, punish his assailant, and prevent 
 the spread of the detestable doctrine which inspired 
 this atrocious crime f A demand for Federal legisla- 
 tion exists — legislation which will prevent as well as 
 punish. Obviously this demand can not be met sat- 
 isfactorily b}^ the observation that anarchistic crimes 
 are the result of social discontent, and the plea that 
 before we apply di'astic measures we should, in justice, 
 remove the cause of the discontent. All crime, in a 
 sense, is the result of social discontent. That neither 
 excuses the crime nor justifies its toleration by Govern- 
 ment. Society is not perfect, nor can we make it so. 
 There will always be cause for discontent — cause for 
 complaint; but there is less cause liei'e than anywhere 
 on the face of the globe. Again, it is not discontent, 
 or resulting complaint, that we should seek to repress, 
 but crime. Complaint calling for reform through law- 
 ful channels is wholesome, but complaint which coun- 
 sels crime is not only pernicious but in itself criminal. 
 
 In the first place, plainly the President of the United 
 States ought to be protected by the law of the United 
 States. Not only his safety but the dignity of the 
 Republic demands this. The President takes an oath 
 that he will "faithfully execute the office of President 
 of the United States" and will ''preserve, protect, and 
 defend the Constitution of the United States." This 
 Constitution enjoins him "to take care that the laws be 
 faithfully executed." The solemn obligation thus im- 
 posed is not intermittent, but continuous. From the 
 
time he takes the oath until he dies or retires, wherever 
 he may be, without interval or cessation, he is Presi- 
 dent of the United States, and engaged in executing 
 that office. And for this reason the power of the 
 nation should safeguard and protect him always and 
 everywhere. Authority to do this is clear. Every 
 right secured l^y the Constitution may be protected by 
 Congress, and there is no higher right under the Con- 
 stitution, no right whose free exercise is more vital to 
 the Constitution, than the right of '' faithfully execut- 
 ing the office of President of the United States." A 
 murderous assault upon the President, aimed as it is at 
 the life of the Government, imperils the security of the 
 whole country, and whether successful or unsuccessful, 
 should be punishable by death. 
 
 But suppose Congress supplies the obvious omission 
 in the Federal law and adequately punishes the crime, 
 must it leave untouched the mahgnant agitators who 
 inspire it? And here I am reminded of what Abraham 
 Lincoln said to those who protested against the depor- 
 tation of Mr. Vallandigham : 
 
 Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who 
 deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wih' agi- 
 tator who induces him to desert ? 
 
 Can nothing be done to exclude anarchists and sup- 
 press anarchism! Do political or constitutional rights 
 stand in the way ? Does the inalienable right of revo- 
 lution or the Anglo-Saxon heritage of freedom of 
 speech safeguard anarchism? Let us briefly consider 
 this matter. 
 
In the first place, I have not been impressed by the 
 assertion that anarchism — by which I mean the doc- 
 trine that all existing- g'overnments should be destroyed 
 by the assassination of their rulers and the terrorism 
 of their people — is political in nature, in the sense that 
 crimes committed in its name should be deemed 
 political and their perpetrators afforded international 
 protection. 
 
 A crime committed in an attempt to revolutionize a 
 g-overnment, that is, to change its form, may be 
 rightly regarded as political, and its perj^etrators pro- 
 tected against extradition. But anarchism is not revo- 
 lutionary in this sense ; it does not seek to destroy one 
 government and substitute another, but to destroy all 
 government and leave none. The nations are not so 
 much concerned about a government's form as about 
 its existence. All- they demand is an authority which 
 will protect persons and property, preserve peace and 
 order, and fulfill international obligations. For this 
 reason the right of revolution is recognized; but a 
 crime committed in an attempt to destroy all govern- 
 ment strikes at the root of all social institutions, and is 
 therefore directed not against a particular government, 
 but against civilized society itself. The crime of the 
 anarchist, proceeding from a revolt against society and 
 being directed at the law which holds society together, 
 is essentially the act of the common criminal, and 
 should be treated as such. For this reason I submit 
 that not only should the anarchist who assassinates a 
 ruler be extraditable, but anarchistic conspiracies here 
 
should be suppressed and punished regardless of the 
 locality of the contemplated assassination. 
 
 In the next place, I submit that the constitutional 
 guarantee of "the freedom of speech" does not stand 
 in the way of sujipressing the pernicious propaganda 
 of anarchism. Anarch3^ is the absence of govern- 
 ment — a condition where there is neither law nor 
 authority; and the modern doctrine of anarchism 
 seeks to bring about anarchy by acts of terrorism — 
 the assassinarioii of rulers and the slaughter of the 
 people. It uses the dirk and pistol for tlie ruler and 
 the bomb for the people and police. This is not a case 
 of theorizing about social or political conditions or 
 questions. Visionaries who prefer to shut their ejes to 
 things as they are may theorize about a time to come 
 when, by the elcAation of humanit}^, no law will be 
 needed to control man in his relations with his fellows, 
 and everyone of his own accord, without compulsion 
 of law, will respect the rights of all others. But the 
 atrocious doctrine of anarchism is not visionary, but 
 practical. While it uiay look to the future, it acts in 
 the present. It does not preach progress, it demands 
 destruction. It does not seek to lift man above the 
 need of law, it aims to trample law under the foot of 
 man. It wars against all government, because govern- 
 ment means law, and law means enforced respect for 
 the personal and property rights of others. It is not 
 liberty that anarchism demands, but license — license 
 to disregard and defile every right sacred to civilized 
 man. It has respect for neither home, church, nor 
 
state. All those ties which hold society together — the 
 ties of marriage, of morality, of religion, of patriotism — 
 it seeks to tear asunder. The tender home affections, 
 the sacred consolations of religion, the inspiring love 
 of country and of flag, must all go, because all are 
 grounded in reverence for authority. Anarchism 
 preaches progress by a leap backward into the degra- 
 dation of primeval savagery, where brutish appetites 
 alone held sway. 
 
 Solus populi suprema lex. — The right of self-preserva- 
 tion is as vital to the state as to the individual. The 
 Constitution forbids Congress to "make any law 
 abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or of 
 the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to 
 petition the Government for a redress of grievances;" 
 but all these rights are to be reasonably construed 
 and lawfully exercised. The freedom of speech for 
 which our fathers fought was not the right to ad vo- 
 cate the destruction by force and violence of the Gov- 
 ernment they founded. The right to criticise a 
 condition, whether political or social, does not include 
 the pri\alege of counseling crime as a protest against 
 its continuance. Let who will "forerun his time" in 
 advocating a condition wlien all things shall be held 
 and enjoyed in common, for no law can touch him; but 
 a pernicious fellow who preaches theft as a protest 
 against property may be punished without any serious 
 fracture of "the freedom of speech." 
 
 It is unnecessary to amend the Constitution in order 
 to obtain the power to suppress anarchism. It is true 
 
9 
 
 that the assemblage of anarchists and the preaching- of 
 their doctrines can not be punished as treason, for to 
 constitute treason there nnist be an actual levying of 
 war. But acts directed at the life of the Government 
 are ]mnishable at the discretion of Congress, although 
 they do not amount to treason under the Constitution. 
 The great Chief Justice Marshall said upon this point 
 (4 Cranch, 126): 
 
 Crimes so atrocious as those which have for their 
 object the subversion by violence of those rights and 
 those institutions which have been ordained in order to 
 secure the peace and happiness of soeiet}-, are not to 
 escape punishment because they ha^e not ripened into 
 treason. The wisdom of the legislature is competent 
 to provide for the case. 
 
 The right of the United States to exclude alien 
 
 anarchists and to deport such as have not yet become 
 
 citizens must be conceded. The Supreme Court lias 
 
 held that as a sovereign nation the United States is 
 
 endowed with the ^^ower, essential to self-preservation, 
 
 of excluding all aliens whom it may deem dangerous to 
 
 the peace of the State, and of expelling or deporting^ 
 
 all such not yet naturalized. This power ma}'-, at the 
 
 discretion of Congress, be intrusted for enforcement to 
 
 the Executive. Evidently it was to this inherent and 
 
 essential right of sovereignty that Abraham Lincoln 
 
 referred when, in his last message, he said respecting 
 
 slave traders: 
 
 For myself, 1 have no doubt of the power of the 
 Executive, under the law of nations, to exchide ene- 
 mies of the human race from an asjdum in the United 
 States. 
 
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 If Congress intrusts to the President the power to 
 exclude ahen anarchists and to deport all unnaturalized 
 ones, 1 fancy it will not l)e difficult to put in operation 
 an effective plan of ridding the country of these 
 bloody-minded pests. 
 
 Some question is made as to the wisdom of a 
 repressive policy. It is said that repression will be 
 ineffectual or will provoke retaliation. A trial of the 
 policy will disclose whether either prediction is war- 
 ranted. Surely the time for action has come. No 
 more atrocious crime can be committed than the one 
 for which we know anarchism is directly responsible. 
 I take the view that it is -safe to repress crime, no 
 matter in wliat guise presented or how widespread and 
 reckless its adherents. No State can safely counte- 
 nance crime, and especially crime against itself. 
 Moreover, the Government owes a duty to young, 
 impressionable minds. It has no right to expose them 
 to contamination and corruption. A doctrine under 
 the l)an of law is less likely to attract adherents than 
 if permitted to be openly advocated. Anarchists are 
 insurg-ents ao-ainst civilization, would-be assassins of 
 society, enemies of the human race. By the concur- 
 rent action of civilized nations they ought to be placed 
 under the ban of universal law. The red flag of 
 anarchy should be driven from the land as the black 
 flag of piracy has been driven from the sea. 
 
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LIBRARY OF CONliRtbii 
 
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