Whenever in Ireland there has been a revolt of labor it too often finds
arrayed against it the press, the law, and the police. All the great
powers are in entente. The press, without inquiry, begins a detestable
cant about labor agitators misleading ignorant men. Every wild phrase
uttered by an exasperated worker is quoted against the cause of labor,
and its grievances are suppressed. We are told nothing about how the
worker lives: what homes, what food, his wage will provide. The
journalist holds up a moral umbrella, protecting society from the fiery
hail of conscience. The baser sort of clergyman will take up the
parable and begin advocating a servile peace, glibly misinterpreting the
divine teaching of love to prove that the lamb should lie down inside
the lion, and only so can it be saved soul and body, forgetful that the
peace which was Christ's gift to humanity was the peace of God which
passes all understanding, and that it was a spiritual quietude, and that
on earth--the underworld--the gospel in realization was to bring not
peace but a sword.

The law, assured of public opinion, then deals sternly with whatever
unfortunate life is driven into its pens. I am putting very mildly the
devilish reality, for society is so constituted that the public, kept in
ignorance of the real facts, believes that it is acting rightly, and so
the devil has conscience on his side and that divine power is turned to
infernal uses. What can labor oppose to this federation of State and
Church, of press and law, of capital and physical force to back capital,
when it sets about its own liberation and to institute a new social
order to replace autocracy in industry? Its allies are few. A rare
thinker, scientist, literary man, artist or clergyman, impelled by
hatred of what is ugly in life, will speak on its behalf, and may render
some aid and help to tear holes in that moral shield held up by the
press, and may here and there give to that blinded public a vision of