A True National Reform Government.
By Ellet Joseph Waggoner
In the Century of April, 1888, Mr. George Kennan had an article on “Russian Penal Code,” from which in the August SENTINEL we copied what it had to say on the subject of religion. In that it was shown clearly that the Russian Government, with all its tyranny and intolerance, is the very kind of government that the National Reformers are working for. In the April Century, this present year, Mr. Kennan gives us a view of the workings of the Russian police department, in which is shown very clearly the working of National Reform principles. The following extract from the article will enable the reader to judge for himself:— “The police, with the Minister of the Interior at their head, control, by means of passports, the movements of all the inhabitants of the empire; they keep thousands of suspects constantly under surveillance; they ascertain and certify to the courts the liabilities of bankrupts; they conduct pawnbrokers’ sales of unredeemed pledges; they give certificates of identity to pensioners and all other persons who need them; they superintend repairs of roads and bridges; they exercise supervision over all theatrical performances, concerts, tableaux, theater programs, posters, and street advertisements; they collect statistics, enforce sanitary regulations, make searches and seizures in private houses, read the correspondence of suspects, take charge of the bodies of persons found dead, ‘admonish’ church-members who neglect too long to partake of the Holy Communion, and enforce obedience to thousands of multifarious orders and regulations intended to promote the welfare of the people or to insure the safety of the State. The legislation relating to the police fills more than five thousand sections in the Svod Zakónof, or collection of Russian laws, and it is hardly an exaggeration to say that in the peasant villages, away from the centers of education and enlightenment, the police are the omnipresent and omnipotent regulators of all human conduct—a sort of incompetent bureaucratic substitute for divine Providence.” “In order to give the readers of the Century an idea of the nature and infinite variety of the transactions regulated in Russia by the Government through the police, I will quote, almost at random, the titles or subjects of a few of the circular letters of instructions sent by the Minister of the Interior to the governors of various Russian provinces between 1880 and 1884. They are as follows:—
“1. To regulate religious instruction in secular schools.
“2. Concerning measures to be taken to prevent horse stealing.
“3. Concerning a list of dramas that are unconditionally permitted to be put on the stage.
“4. To prohibit the sale of Shimanski’s Pills.
“5. To prohibit peasants from cutting young birch trees with which to decorate churches and houses on holidays.
“6. Prescribing the manner in which the censor shall supervise the reports and accounts of private societies.
“7. Concerning a removal of the restrictions upon the transportation of rendered tallow.
“8. Concerning personal identification marks in the passports of Jews.
“9. To regulate the use of mineral waters by sick or wounded officers of the army.
“10. Concerning an order for the sale of all grain by weight instead of by measure.
“11. Setting forth the circumstances under which, and the times at which, the police and other employes of the Ministry of the Interior can wear white linen covers on their caps.
“12. Concerning the question who has the right to collect subscriptions in the empire for the holy places in Palestine.
“13. To abolish the long chains used for the purpose of chaining together marching criminals in gangs of six.
“14. To regulate printing on the paper of cigarettes.
“15. Concerning the prohibition, at meetings of provincial assemblies and town councils, of the expressions of such opinions or judgments as may, from their nature, lie outside the limits of the jurisdiction of such bodies.
“16. Concerning an order prohibiting the emigration of dissenters to the Trans-Caucasus.
“17. Concerning regulations for the proper construction of houses in peasant villages.
“18. To control and regulate the transportation of animal bones.
“19. To regulate advertisements of medicines.
“20. Forbidding the use of all school-books and appliances of instruction not approved by the Minister of the Interior and the ecclesiastical authorities.
“21. Concerning the proper method of measuring the legs of recruits for the army.
“22. Concerning meetings of school-teachers.
“23. Prescribing the manner in which permission shall be obtained for concerts, readings, theatrical performances, and other public entertainments.
“24. To require printers to send to the Department of Police copies of all newspapers, magazines, and almanacs printed by them.
“25. To prevent the sale of quinine that is not of good quality.
“26. To regulate the censorship of price-lists, printed notes of invitation, and visiting cards.
“27. Concerning the construction of water-closets according to the removal or barrel system.
“28. Providing for the censorship of the seals, rubber stamps, and cards of private individuals and business corporations.
“29. To regulate begging for ecclesiastical institutions and for the holy places in Palestine.
“30. To regulate the sale by apothecaries of certain ‘cosmetics’—namely, soap, starch, brilliantine, tooth-brushes, and insect powder.” “These are only a few of the countless thousands of orders, directions, and regulations that come within the jurisdiction of the imperial police. Of course they are not all carried into effect. The enforcement of such a multitude of prohibitions and restrictions, affecting every province of human life, is beyond the power of any one man or any set of men; but whether they are enforced or not, they operate constantly as a bar to individual enterprise, a network to restrain every free impulse, and a clog upon all human activity.
“It is difficult for Americans to realize that such relations can exist between the people of a country and the Government as those shown by these circulars to exist in Russia. Imagine a governor of New York State issuing an order requiring all the citizens of that State to send in their seals, rubber stamps, and visiting cards for censorial supervision. Or imagine a Postmaster-General writing a circular letter to the governors of all the States prescribing rules for the regulation of the sale of soap, starch, brilliantine, tooth-brushes,148and insect powder! Such an extension of the powers of government is to us almost inconceivable, both on account of its tyranny and on account of its preposterous absurdity; and yet such regulations are not regarded in Russia as anything extraordinary, and one sometimes finds the police engaged in work that is even more remarkable than the regulation of the sale of tooth-brushes and insect powder. I have in my possession the original report of a Russian police pristav, written upon a printed form, in which the officer notifies his superior that, in compliance with instructions of such and such a date, he has called upon such and such persons, who are named, and has ‘admonished’ them that they must partake of the Holy Communion, ‘upon penalty of an administrative calling to account [pod opaseniem v’ protivnom sluchae kazennago vziskania].’ This document bears in capital letters at the top of the first page the words, ‘Ukase [oo-kāz] of his Imperial Majesty the Autocrat of all the Russias.’ In the newspaper Sibir (See-bèer) for July 10, 1883, it is stated, as a matter of news, that the police authorities of the city of Irkutsk have just received orders to admonish all persons who have been neglectful of religious duty, and to oblige them to partake of the sacrament. The use of the police power as a means of compelling indifferent or backsliding Christians to partake of the Holy Communion—the sending of an armed man in a blue uniform to drag another man to the table of the Prince of Peace, and to compel him to eat and drink the symbols of the broken body and shed blood of Christ—is something that has not often been seen, I think, outside of Russia, since the Dark Ages.” A few words only are necessary to show that this very state of things must exist in this country, if the National Reform Association, the American Sabbath Union, and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, succeed in carrying out their (ir)religious designs. All of these associations heartily indorse Mr. Blair’s proposed amendment to the Constitution, which requires that the principles of the Christian religion be taught in the public schools. It has already been shown in these columns that the adoption of that amendment would require that text-books on religion be issued, and that both text-books and teachers should be in harmony with the standard of religion that would be recommended by the ecclesiastical authorities. But when that is done it will be necessary that a strict watch should be kept to see that no other text-book is brought in; and to see that no teacher presumes to inculcate any ideas of his own, that may be different from the established religion. The individuals who will have this matter in charge may not be called police, but their duties will be exactly such as are defined in the articles above numbered one, twenty, and twenty-two. They will have to regulate religious instruction in secular schools. They will have to note if any books and plans of instruction are used that are not approved by the ecclesiastical authorities, and they will have to oversee the meetings of school-teachers to guard against the introduction of anything in their discussions that shall differ in any way from the standard of religion set by those ecclesiastical authorities. In short, they will have to see that religion is not discussed at all; for it must be obvious to any thinking person that when the State, having taken counsel of the elders, prescribes the religion for its citizens, religious discussion is at an end. School-teachers will have no business to question the text-books, and they will not dare presume to make any alteration. If anything different is to be taught, it will have to be decided upon by the ecclesiastical authorities of the Nation, just as in the days of old in Europe, no new thing can be even mentioned in the school unless a new council has passed upon it. When the council shall have decided upon what shall be taught the people, the school-teachers and ministers of low degree will have simply the duty of handing to the people that which has been given to them by their superiors. Again, the enactment of a strict national Sunday law will require that the powers of the police be very greatly magnified. Indeed, the Sunday law is often called “a police regulation,” showing that the enforcement of the law will rest largely in the hands of the police. Of course the number of police will have to be greatly increased in order that they may keep an oversight over all the people, to see that no one violates the law. It will be their duty, also, as in Russia, to “admonish” people who do not attend divine service at stated intervals. The leaders in the Sunday-law movement openly avow that their desire for a Sunday law is that people may go to church. But as we have before shown, if the mere enactment of a Sunday law does not accomplish their designs, they will necessarily have to amend it so as to require attendance at church. Moreover, Mrs. Bateham has said that what they want is the “ideal sabbath of the Puritans;” the guarantee to rest and to worship. Now we have before us some of the laws by which that ideal sabbath was secured, and we will quote them. In Robert Wodrow’s “Selections from the Records of the Kirk Session, Presbytery, and Synod of Aberdeen,” we find the following:— “It is thocht expedient that ane baillie with tua of the session passed throw the towne everie Sabbath-day, and not sic as they find absent fra the sermones ather afoir or efter none, and for that effect that they pass and searche sic houss as they think maist meit.” In his collections he says that the session allows the searchers to go into the houses and apprehend absentees from the Kirk. In the records of the governor and company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England we find that in 1629 the first Sunday law in the colony read thus:— “And to the end the Saboth may bee celebrated in a religious manner we appoint, that all that inhabite the plantazon, both for the gen’all and particuler imploymts, may surcease their labor every Satterday throughout the yeare at 3 of the clock in the afternoone, and that they spend the rest of that day in catichising and pharacon for the Saboth, as the ministers shall direct.” This is very similar to the law now required by the American Sabbath Union. But that law was found insufficient to meet the desires of the ecclesiastics, and so in 1634 they supplemented it by the following:— “Whereas complaints hath bene made to this Court that dyvers peons within this jurisdiccon doe vsually absent themselves from church meetings vpon the Lord’s day, power is therefore given to any two Assistants to heare and censure, either by fyne or imprisonmt (att their discreecon), all misdemeanors of that kind committed by any inhabitant within this jurisdiccon, provided they exceed not the fyne of vs for one offense.” It worked then just as we have said it will work now. First was the strict Sunday law. Then was the law requiring everybody to go to church, and allowing officers to search the town to discover absentees. In 1782 an act was passed enjoining the worship of almighty God, as an essential part of the due observance of the Lord’s day, and imposing a fine of ten shillings upon any able person who shall absent himself for a month from the public worship of God on the Lord’s day. This statute provided for wardens to enforce the law, and gave them power to enforce it by stopping travelers, and by entering all places where they may find or think they may find Sabbath-breakers. That is the “ideal sabbath of the Puritans.” That is the condition of things that Mrs. Bateham wishes to see in this country. When it shall be brought about we shall have a despotism fully as bad as that of Russia. Mr. Kennan says that Russian police are “a sort of incompetent, bureaucratic substitute for divine Providence.” If the American Sabbath Union and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union shall secure their desired ends, we shall have a police who will not only be a substitute for divine Providence, but a substitute for men’s consciences. Is there an American who has any love for freedom? If there is let him protest vigorously against any such usurpation. E. J. W.