The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo. FRIDAY, MAY 2, 1890.

Auckland Star, Volume XXI, Issue 103, 2 May 1890, Page 2

The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo.

FRIDAY, MAY 2, 1890.

Por the cause that lacks assistants, For, ths wrong that seeds rßsifltance, For the future in the distance, Aid tha etlod that we can do.

*f he May Day labour demonstrations in Europe appear to have passed off without disturbance. Otir cable ad" vices giving iiews up to three d'clock yesterday afternoon, report that all wa s quiet on the continent, In London the authorities adopted effectual measures to prevent tumultuous processions through the streets, and popular assemblages at Hyde Park are too common an incident of London life to give rise to much uneasiness. The British Workman, as a rule, is too well accustomed to liberty* to be easily led away by Socialist and anarchist demagogues. On the Continent, however, and especially in Paris, there was good reason td fear the outpoiinhg of the slums in a demonstration which ranged the proletariat against the well-to-do classed

We have very little doubt that the tfrentih Goverhinent fully justified in the severe measures Which they adopted to prevent another of those Communistic outbursts that have, in past times, given the fair capital over to carifiagd and pillage. The lockingup of that hysterical female advocate of dynarriitej Louise Michel, would have been a perfectly defensible act in a lesser crisis. Her feverish harangues to the excitable mobs of Paris, only tod feady to act upon suggestions of rapinej are a source of danger at any time. In the cool atmosphere of a French dungeon she may expend her fiiry without danger to the public peace.

The threat that any outrage would result in the immediate surrender of five thousand Anarchist refugees

to the Governments of the countries from which they have fled, would also have a moderating effect. These men know enough of the system of police espionage in Paris to be fully aware that the warning was not an idle menace. Believing themselves liable to summary arrest and transportation to scenes which they have no desire for the present to revisit, the army of political refugees of the more ruffianly type would doubtless experience some salutary qualms regarding their personal safety. Until we , know how the night passed, we cannot be confident that some blazing torch cast among the mass of combustibles did not, after all, set up a destructive conflagration ; but at present it would seem that the earnest hope we expressed the other day that no outbreak would occur that might have the effect of making the cause of liberty and progress appear in the light of strife and anarchy, has been realised in the peaceful character of yesterday's demonstrations.