Mob Rule and a Monarchy

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 12, 1908

Mob Rule and a Monarchy

ONE of our exchanges prints a stirring editorial upon the significance of the recent outbreak in Springfield, Ill., when a mob took possession of the city, committing arson and murder, and defying the efforts of a large company of the State militia to restore order. As reference is made in the editorial to the famous prophecy by Lord Macaulay, we first quote his words:—

Your republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by the barbarians in the twentieth century as the Roman empire was in the fifth, with this difference, that the Huns and Vandals who ravaged the Roman empire came from without, and that your Huns and Vandals will have been engendered out within your own country and by your own institutions.

From the editorial comment we take these paragraphs:—

When a nation of eighty million people are sleeping with somnolent complacency while the Huns and Vandals that will destroy them unless they wake up are being bred in their midst, what is the first thing to be done?

The lesson of the Springfield riot lies deeper than the negro question. That was a mere incident. The fact that stands boldly forth as a national warning is the fact that in every city there lurks an element of its citizenship ready to do murder, to burn, kill, and destroy, whenever the inciting cause occurs, whatever that cause may be.

Every city that houses its people in slums and tenements is maintaining a breeding-place for a citizenship as irresponsible, as heartlessly cruel, as inhumanly brutal, as the Springfield mob. In every city the danger increases in proportion to its population. The population of Springfield is 38,900, and 3,000 militia were not enough to prevent the crimes that were committed. The population of New York is 4,113,000. How many soldiers will it require to protect life and property there when the mob once gets going?

The repeated instances of the outbreak of the mob spirit throughout this country have moved another writer to make the following comment:—

The rapid growth of this spirit of lawlessness means that ere long we shall have such a change in the form of government in this country as will be able to deal with such lawlessness with a strong hand. The present form of government—“government of the people, by the people, for the people”—was suited to the class of people who founded this nation, but it is not suited to the class of people who can not govern themselves. People who can not govern themselves must be governed by monarchical power, and to that we are evidently fast coming in this land. We are in the last days of the American republic. For a historical parallel, read the history of the Roman republic in the days of Julius Cæsar.

We have long maintained that this general situation was foreshadowed in the prophecies, and have sought to proclaim the gospel of the kingdom as the only power able to deliver from the impending evils. When the message for this generation has been carried to all the world, offering to those who will accept it personal victory from the prevailing iniquity, then the end will be brought to the reign of lawlessness in the earth, and the Prince of Peace will take the throne. Then will be fulfilled the closing part of the dream of Nebuchadnezzar: “Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon its feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them in pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken in pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing-floor; and the wind carried them away, so that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth.” The spirit of destruction will bring complete destruction of all things, itself included, and peace and quiet will then prevail in the everlasting kingdom.