nder is, so long as you can get
up a charge, either for the imprisoning of a dangerous enemy or for
terrifying the public mind. You yourself, Mr. Brand--I can see that your
only notion of the innumerable secret societies now in Europe is that
they will probably assassinate people. That's what they said about the
Carbonari too. The objects of the Carbonari were plain as plain could
be; but no sooner had General Pepe kicked out Ferdinand and put in a
constitutional monarch, than Austria must needs attribute every murder
that was committed, to those detestable Carbonari, so that she should
call upon Prussia and Russia to join her in strangling the infant
liberties of Europe. You see, we can't get at those Royal slanderers. We
can get at a man like Sir James Graham, when we force him to apologize
in the House of Commons for having said that Mazzini instigated the
assassination of the spies Emiliani and Lazzareschi."'

"But, good heavens!" exclaimed Brand, "does anybody doubt that that was
a political double murder?"

O'Halloran shrugged his shoulders, and smiled.

"You may call it murder if you like; others might call it a fitting
punishment. But all I was asking you to do was to remove from your mind
that bugbear that the autocratic governments of Europe have created for
their own uses. No secret society--if you except those Nihilists, who
appear to have gone mad altogether--I say, no secret society of the
present day recognizes political assassination as a normal or desirable
weapon; though it may have to be resorted to in extreme cases. You, as
an individual, might, in certain circumstances, lawfully kill a man; but
that is neither the custom, nor the object, nor the chief thought of
your life."

"And are there many of these societies?" Brand asked.

O'Halloran had carelessly lit himself another pipe.

"Europe is honey-combed with them. They are growing in secret as rapidly
as some kindred societies are growing in the open. Look at the German
socialists--in 1871 they polled only 120,000 votes; in 1874 they polled
340,000: I imagine that Herr Furst von Bismarck will find some
difficulty in suppressing that Frankenstein monster he coquetted so long
with. Then the Knights of Labor in America: you will hear something of
them by-and-by, or I am mistaken. In secret and in the open alike there
is a vast power growing and growing, increasing in volume and bulk from
hour to hour, from year to year, God only knows in what fa