THE KEARNEY AGITATION IN CALIFORNIA. 441 



leader, a man of wealth, ability, and influence, who has held high posi- 

 tion, and was this year a prominent member of the National Republi- 

 can Convention, who first proposed that the Pacific Mail steamers 

 should be burned at their docks if they did not cease to bring Chinese; 

 it was a bitter opponent of Kearneyism who, amid thunders of ap- 

 plause, in the largest hall of the city, first suggested that the Chinese 

 quarter should be purified with fire and planted with grass ; while as 

 to bitter denunciations of parties, classes, and individuals, and prog- 

 nostications of violence and calamity if this, that, or the other was 

 or was not done, there is probably nothing that Kearney or his fellows 

 have said that could not be matched from previous political speeches 

 or newspaper articles. That dangers may sometimes arise from an 

 abuse of the liberty of speech may be true, but it is so exceedingly 

 delicate a thing tc attempt to draw any line short of the direct incite- 

 ment to specific illegal action, that the only course consistent with the 

 genius of our institutions is to leave such abuses to their own natural 

 remedy. It is only where restrictions are imposed that mere words 

 become dangerous to social order, just as it is only when gunpowder 

 is confined that it becomes explosive. Had the energy of the authori- 

 ties been reserved for any lawless act, and these agitators been left to 

 agitate to their full content, except so far as they might interfere with 

 the free use of the thoroughfares, any momentary interest or excite- 

 ment would have soon died out, and the contempt which follows swell- 

 ing words without action would soon have left them powerless. But 

 the timidity which attaches to great wealth gained by questionable 

 means, and at once arrogant in its power and keenly sensitive of the 

 jealousy with which it is regarded, renders its possessors, surrounded 

 as they must be by sycophantic advisers, insensible to reason in mo- 

 ments of excitement. " The thief doth fear each bush an officer." And 

 the man who from the windows of a two-million-dollar mansion looks 

 down upon his fellow citizens begging for the chance to work for a 

 dollar a day can not fail to have at times some idea of the essential 

 injustice of this state of things break through his complacency, while 

 murmurings of discontent assume vague shapes of menace against 

 which fear urges him to strike, though reason and prudence would hold 

 back a blow which can only irritate. The dangers to social order that 

 arise from the glaring inequalities of wealth come as much from this 

 direction as from the discontent of the less fortunate classes. It was 

 this feeling that, organizing the "pick-handle brigade," prepared the 

 way and gave the hint for agitation ; it was this feeling that, now 

 striking blindly through the authorities, gave to that agitation dignity 

 and power. 



More efficient means to provoke a public sentiment in favor of the 

 agitators could not have been taken. Not only were the speakers ar- 

 rested on charges which would not bear legal scrutiny, but new war- 

 rants were sworn out as quickly as bail was offered. A pledge made 



