Then came the question to the conquerors, What shall we do with the fruits of our victory? The problem was debated at length and anxiously in Paris and London and Berlin. At first it was proposed to imprison all the socialists, anarchists, nihilists, and dynamiters remaining in the country; but it was speedily found that this was impracticable. To say nothing of the others, the Irish who had taken active part in the revolution or contributed to its support, and who sympathized with the dynamite warfare on civilization, were not less than eight millions. All the jails and prisons in the world would not have confined them. Their organizations were proscribed and their meetings prohibited; but it was clear from a thousand indications that their spirit of hatred and cruelty remained unchanged, and that they waited only the opportunity to renew their crimes. The same was true in even greater degree of the socialists and anarchists. They regarded themselves as the friends and martyrs of liberty. The allies were to them simply minions of tyranny who had combined to crush out human freedom. It was believed that the patriots of the country, loyal to the old republican idea, still outnumbered the anarchists, and would outvote them at the polls. But they were peaceable men, devoted to trade and industry, and had already been proved powerless to enforce with arms the decrees their majorities might render at the ballot-boxes. The summer and autumn passed away, and the problem remained unsolved. It was decided at last to hold another pan-European conference, this time at Washington, in which all the Powers which had taken part in the conference of January at Berlin should meet and reach some definite decision regarding the future.

This foreign congress met on the first Monday of December,—the very day on which, in happier times, the Congress of the United States had been accustomed to convene. It met in the Senate Chamber of the Capitol, over which the Stars and Stripes floated no longer. The national flag was replaced by the flags of the various Powers represented in the conference, that of each being displayed one day at a time in regular order.

England and France were disposed to restore the republic to the people, and trust to them to defend themselves against domestic convulsions; but they stood alone in this. They were unable to reply to the objections raised by the other Powers, that this would inevitably result in another revolution, and the necessity upon Europe, as the guardian of civilization, once more to conquer the country. Was it expedient to accept the risk of such another war? Moreover, who was to bear the expense of the struggle just completed? For herself, Germany protested that she was unwilling to forego her right to demand indemnity from the United States. England also took this view. There was no possibility that such an indemnity—amounting to fully three thousand millions of dollars—could be obtained if the autonomy of the nation were restored. The following recommendations were finally drafted by the conference:—

That the signatory Powers should continue in occupation of the United States at least until another conference should agree as to the safety of establishing some sort of local government; that the supreme authority should be vested in a board of European administrators, to be appointed, one by each Power, and to choose a president from their own number; that this board should levy taxes and customs, from which they should repay to Germany, England, and France such sums as those Governments had respectively expended in the war; that the cost of maintaining the army of occupation should also be defrayed from the local taxes; and that a sufficient direct tax should be imposed to result, within three years, in the payment of three hundred and fifty millions of dollars to each of the three Governments at London, Berlin, and Paris, to be applied towards pensions required for the sufferers by the war.

The recommendations of the conference were accepted and adopted by the Governments concerned. Their armies still garrison the land; their agents sit in the Capitol at Washington. Cities and towns are allowed to elect local councils, but they administer only such local affairs as do not involve the power of taxation or of expending money. The purse-strings are held in the hands of the European administrators and their subordinates. Not even a road tax can be levied except on their warrants; not even a school-district meeting held without their permission and the presence of their guards to preserve order and repress possible sedition.

Nevertheless there are many who find the subject position of the country quite as endurable as its condition before the revolution. To be sure, taxation is heavy, but its burdens fall equitably upon all. Business men find themselves much better protected in their pecuniary dealings than ever before. Bank cashiers who steal funds committed to their care are punished with such severity that the crime has almost ceased to be known. Not a single defalcation has been reported during the two years of 1894 and 1895.

The courts are presided over by foreign judges, it is true, and they are not generally favorites with the lawyers. But the people are not wholly dissatisfied. A New York attorney who was suspected in the fall of 1893 of trying to clear a murderer by the introduction of false testimony, was actually tried, convicted, disbarred, fined to the last cent of his ill-gotten wealth, and sentenced to prison for ten years. Those who depend upon the courts for justice are not entirely displeased by such things. The newspapers are held in strict accountability. There is no longer such an issue as “politics” for them to discuss and play the demagogue over. They are confined to the publication of news and the discussion of such topics as cannot be twisted into a seditious turn. Under the influence of the prevailing tendency toward honesty and fairness, they are actually coming to aim at the truth in their news.

In brief, throughout the whole land the moral atmosphere is purer and healthier than it ever was before. Socialists and anarchists and dynamiters still lurk beneath the surface, but they have little opportunity for organization, and a single overt act on their part is the signal for an instant exercise of such severity as men use towards a nest of poisonous reptiles which show a tendency to attack innocent passers-by.

There is no longer private liberty within the land, but there is public order. Individual rights are respected, protected, and enforced; the law is justly administered; crime is punished as surely and as severely when committed by men of rank and station as when committed by less intelligent, and therefore less responsible, men. There are signs that the popular mind is beginning to feel aspirations after honesty and fairness for their own sakes, and to regard successful dishonesty and corruption with less respect than were common during the existence of the Republic. If these signs continue and increase, there is the possibility that the Great Republic of the past may at some future time arise once more from the ashes in which its memory now sleeps, and on a purer, nobler, more enduring foundation than that on which the men of 1776–1888 builded. But it will hardly come in our time. The mills of the gods grind slowly when their task is to grind into perfect flour the grist of a corrupt and ignorant humanity.