The Humanisphere

by Brian Stableford

  “Happy as that epoch was, it was bound to change its manner of being, and then, evidently, that could not be for the better. The summit had been reached, it was necessary to descend. Everyone was as happy as it was possible to be without hindering others, but they wanted to be even happier, and that was to the detriment of one another. The liberty of all was eroded to the profit of some.

  “The less rich classes wanted to ameliorate their relative situation; now, perfect liberty and equality being founded in principle—for, as I’ve said, they had already been slightly transgressed in favor of the poor—to want more was to seek privileges. They entered into that path, and did not emerge from it again. Governments were unable to stop the minds drawn into a false route, and became the instrument of deadly measures.

  “The best institutions were the first denatured.

  “In France, the councils of industrial arbitration—which, reorganized in 1853, had given such admirable results for many years that in 1865, out of 42,978 disputes, only 11 had not been settled amicably—instead of being a neutral terrain to which employers and workers could come to reach an understanding, were again, toward 1890, delivered to the latter; the pernicious decree of 1848 that had temporarily destroyed those councils, was reestablished after ninety years, and it resulted in a new abandonment by the employers of that tribunal of conciliation, which had changed into a court in which the same interests were judges and shared, and war broke out with the workers.

  “It was subsequently resolved to forbid employers to form coalitions, while that legitimate right was maintained for the workers. The excellent law on 1864 on coalitions, which had had the magnificent effect that, from the second year after its promulgation, not one of the coalitions formed in Paris gave rise to pursuits, was modified. Everywhere, equality and justice were replaced by privilege.

  “Then insensate salaries were demanded. Industry suffered therefrom; there is a sum of salaries beyond which an employer no longer has an interest in working, in that the sum leaves him little or no profit margin; many factories closed; industries were displaced. It happened one day, for instance, that all silk ribbons came from Berlin; the ribbon-manufacturers were dying of hunger for having wanted to earn more than was possible.

  “On the other hand, as salaries were rising everywhere, the worker’s expenses increased in all their elements; if the shoemaker had himself paid more for his work, the tailor had to pay more for his shoes, and was obliged to sell his clothes more dearly.

  “Remedies were only sought in strikes and monstrous associations whose purpose was to oppress the employers—which is to say that, in order to remedy the evil, it was aggravated. Strikes were formed not only between the workers of a single factory but all the workers in a city—which was opposed to the free discussion of salaries, which can only take place in a serious manner between one employer and his own workers, and which was pure oppression of the master by strangers. Then there were départemental strikes, regional strikes, national and international strikes; there were universal strikes; one day, not a single silk hat was manufactured in all of Europe.

  “In sum, a secret, powerful, irresistible and frightfully tyrannical organization brought together all the European workers in a monstrous group. On a word of order sent from who knows where, the workshops closed from Saint Petersburg to Madrid. And woe betide the artisan who refused to be part of the society; woe betide the man who, burdened with children, did not pay the weekly subscription by means of which the formidable strikes could be sustained; woe betide the man who did not find the subsidy the society paid him during the strike sufficient to allow his family to live, and resumed work without receiving the order. The first time, his tools were stolen; the second time he was mutilated by a mysterious bullet; the third time, his house blew up, along with him and his family. The members of several cooperative societies who, thanks to the small number of their associates and the constitution of a capital anterior to their functioning, had succeeded, were trapped and lost in that system of terrible oppression. It was a new form of slavery, a new reign of terror. The worker was powerful in the sense that he belonged to a powerful organization, but with regard to that organization he was nothing but a slave. Individual liberty was lost.

  “It went further. The International League of Workers resolved to dominate in politics as it did in industry. There were terrible struggles, and politics once again became one of the country’s occupations; it was soon the principal one, and Europe divided almost all of its time between the newspapers, the clubs, meetings, elections and the Chambres, where the League members ended up being the masters.

  “From that day on society went rapidly toward its ruin. An absolute centralization, a necessary instrument of the occult tyranny that oppressed it, replaced the municipal and regional liberties that people had enjoyed, and the measures most destructive of society, its vitality, its activity, its wealth and its happiness were adopted in turn and imposed on populations incoherently.

  “Those events, which occurred in all the countries in Europe, were accomplished here at the end of the reign of Napoléon V, who, born in 1877, mounted the throne in 1936 and died in 1957. Under Napoléon VI the fatal work was completed, and made France what it is today, the sovereign losing almost all his power and being reduced to a vain nominal authority.

  “Thus,” he added, an in melancholy tone, after a moment’s silence, “God, in his impenetrable designs, only raises people and kings to cast them down!”

  Chapter XVI

  Grande quidem dedimus patientiae documentum.

  Tacitus.26

  As he spoke those words, we heard a great noise in the street, the confused murmur of an agitated crowd, and soon clamors and cries; then, lending an attentive ear, we distinguished the distant roll of drums.

  I descended in haste and arrived on the threshold of the house at the moment when a considerable troop of citizens, formed in dense columns, was going past in god order. They seemed to be prey to a keen animation, and an energetic resolution was painted on their faces. From time to time a formidable shout went up, of which I only grasped the meaning imperfectly:

  “Long live Napoléon VII, governing emperor!”

  I could see that something extraordinary was happening. So, slipping into the ranks, I started marching with the troop, which paid no attention to me, and seemed to take me for one of their own.

  After some time, I dared to ask my neighbor: “Where are we going?”

  “To the Tuileries, to beg the Emperor to reorganize the country and the government, to render us the civilization, religion, laws and liberty of our forefathers. Long live Napoléon VII, governing emperor!”

  And the crowd repeated that cry, enthusiastically.

  I understood. I was witnessing a revolution! Except that the struggle seemed to me to be far from being engaged, since I could hear neither the sound of cannon nor that of musketry, and I could not see any weapons anywhere, nor any dispositions announcing any resistance, not any tumult, nor any trace of discontent, or even surprise, in the physiognomy of the spectators.

  Meanwhile, we advanced, and as my curiosity was growing with every step, I gained ground, and ended up in the first rank of the column, marching at its head.

  I had before me a group of two hundred people at the most, whose external dignity, intelligent faces and respectable age enabled me to recognize them as considerable individuals. They were, in fact, the delegates of the various territorial divisions and principal cities of France. They represented them with a simple and sympathetic majesty.

  As I drew level with them I perceived that we had entered into the courtyard of the Tuileries, leaving the mass of the cortege outside the gates. I thus found myself in the ranks of the delegates. I made no protest, and prepared to do as they did.

  They negotiated briefly at the door of the Pavillon de l’Horloge, the service inquiring as to what they wanted, after which we were shown into a waiting room when the Emperor was informed.

 
We soon went up, and, the Emperor being seated, the doyen of the delegates addressed him in these terms:

  “Sire, the delegates of the cities and rural areas of France, all duly and unanimously elected by all the citizens, voting in conformity with the principle of equality—which is to say, each having a single vote—have come to you in order to fulfill the mission in view of which their election has taken place.

  “Sire, the genius of France is indestructible: France is egalitarian, liberal, Catholic, tolerant, and loves letters and the arts. For fifty years, all the goods that are the most dear have been denatured and destroyed. There are citizens who enjoy unique privileges. Equality has been suppressed to their profit; they vote twice while others have no vote at all, and it is their elected representatives who make the laws. They are exempt from taxation. They are the tyrants of industry and commerce.

  “Catholics or protestants, it is not permitted to us to practice the religion of our forefathers. Our letters and arts, Sire, you know them! We have come to beg the Emperor to render us the happiness that France enjoyed under his illustrious great-grandfather.

  “Take back the Empire, Sire. At least reign, if you do not want to govern. Render us the constitution of 1852, which, after the modifications of 1860, 1867 and 1876 is the only practical formula of perfect equality and liberty. Render us the civil laws of the same epoch, which are the consecration and the guarantee of general prosperity. Above all, replace woman in her rank in society; reconstitute the family. And as a sign of our return to existence, render us also the names of France and Paris, which your dynasty was able to make so great.

  “Sire, it is the entire nation that invites you and implores you; there is no resistance anywhere. Here are the delegates even of the privileged who have just given up the advantages with which bad laws had invested them.”

  At these words, a man emerged from the group and placed himself to the right of the orator. He was tall; he seemed to be about forty-five years old; courage, firmness, honesty and good will were painted in his physiognomy. He said:

  “Sire, privilege is more deadly to those who have it than those it despoils. The workers have had that dolorous experience for a long time. That is why, by my voice, in the name of justice, in the name of equality and in the name of democracy, they have come to deposit the harmful advantages they have usurped on the altar of the fatherland.

  “In the future, let all the citizens, rich or poor, be equal, civilly and politically. Let employers enjoy the same liberty as the workers. Let the workers play taxes like all other citizens, and be subject to the same community charges, according to their means. Let the workers be electors with the same entitlement and the same force as their fellow citizens, but not more. Those are the wishes, Sire, that the dignity, the honor and the courage of the so-called working classes desires to formulate, and request the Emperor to realize.”

  The Emperor replied:

  “Messieurs the delegates of the cities and rural areas, Messieurs the delegates of the workers, by the fact of your election, your presence here and the words that you have just addressed to me, a pacific but immense revolution has just been accomplished: a revolution that will count among the most memorable and the most fecund in god effects that our history will record. By virtue of it, and thanks to you, thanks to the good sense and generosity of the country, the equilibrium of our social institutions, which had taken so many centuries to found, momentarily troubled, is finally reestablished.

  “You can indeed consider your wishes as realized, for you are the sovereign people, and I, charged with executing your decisions, will not hesitate to undertake to do so in these grave circumstances.

  “There is, therefore, on the present question, a unanimous concert of reflective determination that will guarantee immediate and absolute success.

  “I shall form a Council of State similar, to the extent that it can be, to the one that, under my ancestors, played such an important and useful role in the elaboration of laws. I shall submit a Constitution similar to that of 1852, completed by the developments that it attained successively until 1876, appropriating what was good from the mores of the day. You shall have a conservative Senate, a Chambre de Députés elected by the suffrage of all the French, invested with equal rights. You shall have the freedom of the press, the freedom of the right of association, religious liberty, the liberty of education—in sum, all the liberties that have been abused. Of which experience has taught us the perils, and of which, thanks to the political education so dearly acquired by the country, public spirit will prevent from being abused in future. A solemn plebiscite will approve or reject these measures.

  “Messieurs the delegates, I thank you for the confidence that you have in me, for the expression that you have brought me of the memory that the people have retained of the efforts that my dynasty has made for the prosperity of France. I shall continue to devote my life to following in the footsteps of my ancestors.

  “Now, Messieurs the delegates, let us go to Notre-Dame to thank God for having granted France this day.”

  To cries of “Long live the Emperor!” repeated twenty-one times, Napoléon VII, followed by his commissioners, went out.27

  Paul Adam: Letters from Malaisie

  (1898)

  A Spanish diplomat with whom I had the honor of making friends once, in the vicinity of Biarritz, has written a series of letters to me from the Philippines. They reveal a curious historical and social accident. Perhaps I shall not recall uselessly, for the explanation of the phenomenon related below, the success achieved in 1842 by the publication of Cabet’s Voyage en Icarie. People entirely gripped by reading that communist utopia followed the author to Texas, and then to Illinois, where the realization of the economic theory was attempted under his auspices. No one is unaware of the painful result. Thus, it is hardly surprising that a dissident rival of Cabet attempted a similar realization in Malaisie.

  The epoch comprised between 1830 and 2 December 1851 will remain conspicuous for the effervescence of socialism. Born in 1772, Fourier, having seen the French Revolution, judged it as it deserved, harshly. Henri de Saint-Simon, his contemporary, similarly deemed the Jacobin project of scant worth, if its program were not combined with the suppression of inheritance and the civil equality of the sexes. He instructed Auguste Comte and Blanqui, one of whom magnified his thought and the other his action. In 1840 those ferments of socialism agitated minds greatly, no less than in the present day.

  In 1832 Fourier founded his periodical Le Phalanstère; in 1840 Proudhon cried: “Property is theft.” Napoléon’s ashes were transferred to the Invalides; the column of the Grande Armée was erected at Boulogne. The Attila of the Revolution was officially recognized as a hero. In 1841 Proudhon launched his Avertissement aux propriétaires; at almost the same time, the law of expropriations was promulgated. Interned since 1839 for the skirmish in Boulogne, at the fort of Ham, the future Napoléon III wrote his Extinction du paupérisme. 1842 saw the appearance of the law relating to the employment of children in factories. For the first time, the Authority attempted to inhibit capitalist exploitation and protect laborious lives. A royal decree authorized the construction of great railways lines. Economic evolution took a considerable step forward.

  People read Cabet’s Voyage en Icarie and were impassioned for that trial, amid the reformist fervor that prepared the revolution of February 1848, the Ateliers Nationaux, the ideal of the “Right to Work,” drowned by General Cavaignac in the blood of twelve thousand proletarians. The bourgeoisie thus trained the suffrage of the people to prefer, as President of the Republic, Louis Bonaparte to the mass-murderer of June.

  The Spanish diplomat’s narrative cannot, therefore, astonish us overmuch. A competitor of Cabet led to the islands of the Indian Ocean a few simple individuals enthused by the fashionable utopia. A rival and personal enemy of the Icarian, he directed his expedition to the Far East while the other led his to the West.

  That is all that it seems indispensable
to remember, before reading what follows.

  P.A.

  N.B. The naïve mind of my friend, a worthy man of limited intelligence, judges rather maladroitly and his style lacks ornamentation. It is necessary to excuse the administrative habits of a diplomat.

  Furthermore, it will very easily be seen that THIS IS NOT AN IDEAL.

  LETTER I

  Celebes Sea, aboard the Novio,

  in dock at the city of Amphitrite,

  20 September 1896.

  My dear friend,

  You will doubtless pardon me for having left you abruptly in Saint-Sébastien, when I tell you that an order came from the Ministry obliging me to leave immediately for the Philippines, where the insurrection had suddenly taken on a deplorable importance because of the new calamities that had fallen on unfortunate Spain. Woken up in the middle of the night by an agent, now without anxiety for the basquina—whose sister must have satisfied you, I imagine—I embarked two hours later on the Novio, the sleek white cruiser that was stirring up the water in the harbor. You cursed the bellowing of her siren often enough. My telegram ought not to bewilder you less than her voice when you awake.

  Abominable crossing. I hardly quit the cabin. The sea was crashing down on the deck. I rendered my stomach’s accounts to the indispensable utensils. The joys of the Career!

  First of all it’s necessary to tell you that the agent handed me an envelope containing orders. They gave me the mission of discovering what strange and powerful ideas were disturbing, in the colony, the loyalty of our planters and traders, and the placidity of the indigenes.