ply properly, is
exercised by bands of men springing out of nowhere. It is a matter of
supplies, of their possessions, price and distribution. It is a matter
of taxes, its proportion, apportionment and collection; of private
property, its varieties, rights, and limitations It is a problem of
public authority, its allocation and its limits; of all those delicate
cogwheels which, working into each other, constitute the great economic,
social, and political machine. Each band in its own canton lays its
rude hands on the wheels within its reach. They wrench or break them
haphazardly, under the impulse of the moment, heedless and indifferent
to consequences, even when the reaction of to-morrow crushes them in the
ruin that they cause to day. Thus do unchained Negroes, each pulling and
hauling his own way, undertake to manage a ship of which they have just
obtained mastery.--In such a state of things white men are hardly worth
more than black ones. For, not only is the band, whose aim is violence,
composed of those who are most destitute, most wildly enthusiastic, and
most inclined to destructiveness and to license. But also, as this band
tumultuously carries out its violent action, each individual the most
brutal, the most irrational, and most corrupt, descends lower than
himself, even to the darkness, the madness, and the savagery of the
dregs of society. In fact, a man who in the interchange of blows, would
resist the excitement of murder, and not use his strength like a
savage, must be familiar with arms. He must be accustomed to danger, be
cool-blooded, alive to the sentiment of honor, and above all, sensitive
to that stern military code which, to the imagination of the soldier,
ever holds out to him the provost's gibbet to which he is sure to rise,
should he strike one blow too many. Should all these restraints, inward
as well as outward, be wanting, the man plunges into insurrection. He is
a novice in the acts of violence, which he carries out. He has no
fear of the law, because he abolishes it. The action begun carries him
further than he intended to go. Peril and resistance exasperate his
anger. He catches the fever from contact with those who are fevered,
and follows robbers who have become his comrades.[1301] Add to this
the clamors, the drunkenness, the spectacle of destruction, the nervous
tremor of the body strained beyond its powers of endurance, and we
can comprehend how, from the peasant, the laborer, and the b