Oliver Spence or the Coming Terror

Front matter

OLIVER SPENCE,

THE

AUSTRALIAN CÆSAR,

Chapter 1

THE COMING TERROR

CHAPTER I.

THE ATTACK ON THE BANK.

Crash! Crash!! Crash!!! went the falling timbers of the Austral Bank, while a furious and ferocious mob, drunken with wine and victory, shrieked, fought, and swore in front of the burning edifice. The features of the men and women who composed this mob, rendered savage by want, suffering, and oppression, were distorted by hate, the desire for vengeance and lust for destruction, while they were lit up by the huge fierce flames which issued from the rapidly perishing but once magnificent building.

A golden shower of sovereigns fell upon the heads of the raging crowd. A safe containing sovereigns had been thrown from a window, and opening as it fell, scattered its contents in all directions. A brutal, frantic struggle then took place; women and children were trampled to death, and men were disabled by kicks and blows from their rivals, while a perfect Babel of yells and curses from the injured and injuring rent the air.

Who were these people who for the time had apparently ceased to be human, and had become as wild beasts? They were "les miserables" of Sydney; the exploited, the destitute, the unemployed. The Great Problem of how to provide with suitable occupations those who, though perfectly willing to labor, were by unjust social conditions precluded from earning bread for themselves and those dependent on them, had reached the acute phase where the proverbial worm is said to turn—and it had turned with a vengeance! The men who previously had been distinguished by their spiritless, cowed demeanor, had become desperate demons, whose fierce bloodthirstiness and ruthless destructiveness had filled the rich with terror and panic, and handed over the control of the city to King Mob. A Sydney mob were now doing in Australia what a Parisian mob had done in France in 1789. Just as the French mob had demolished the Bastille, which they considered the type and corner-stone of their oppression, so an Australian mob was now inaugurating a vast social rebellion by the demolition of the great and famous Austral Bank, which for generations reigned supreme over the financial institutions of Australia, and had gathered within its octopus-like grip half the great industries of the country.

To return to the mob. Among the men who particularly distinguished themselves in the attack on the bank, was a gigantic navvy who, brandishing a large new axe, marched in the forefront of the rioters, and—the bank having been now successfully looted—called upon his followers to hasten to destroy the "den of thieves," by which term he meant the Parliament. The crowd, with many vociferations and execrations, followed their leader along King Street, looting and wrecking the luxuriously furnished shops as they passed along that fashionable afternoon promenade. The attempts of shopkeepers to defend their wares were of course unsuccessful, the mob having armed itself by the looting of the gunshops and making short work of those who attempted any resistance. One man who attempted to defend the jewellery of which he was the nominal owner, by pointing a revolver at the crowd, was promptly disarmed, and thrown crashing through the plate glass window of the shop in which he acted as the agent of a financial syndicate. Cries of "Bread or lead" "Down with the bank swindlers" "Work or blood!" "Give us back our savings!" "To hell with the financiers!" resounded on all sides, while the flames from the houses fired by those in the rear of the mob, and the reports from firearms, gave the street the sounds and appearance of the mythical Pandemonium.

On arriving at Parliament House the mob found a small detachment of the Permanent Artillery, armed with a machine gun, guarding the entrances of that building. The men in charge of the gun were soon disposed of by some insurgent marksmen, who, firing from the crowd, or the adjoining housetops, picked them off with a skill which showed them to be no novices in the use of the deadly Giffard gun. The insurgents then by a strategic move captured the gun, and the artillerymen surrendered.

The crowd then poured into the House, while a number of pale, panic-stricken legislators tumbled over each other in their anxiety to avoid the inrush of the avengers. Several of the most unpopular members were killed on the spot, among them being the members of the Government, the other members being allowed to escape with more or less severe injuries. Spence, the gigantic navvy, then took possession of the Speaker's chair, and in a few firmly-uttered words announced that henceforth the House be used as the meeting place of the Revolutionary Committee.

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Chapter 2

CHAPTER II.

THE CAUSES OF THE INSURECTION.

After the statesmen of Australia had succeeded in bringing about the federation of the Australian states, the natural result was the formation of a large standing army, which, as our readers are aware, the Federal Government, from its headquarters at Albury, made ample use of as a valuable auxiliary in their determined maintenance of "law and order," "freedom of contract," and the right of the syndicates to employ men at as low a wage and as long hours as the necessities of the laboring people might compel them to accept. Boycotting, or any attempts on the part of strikers to interfere, even in the most peaceful way, with "free" or non-union laborers, were treated as overt acts of rebellion, and the strikers were promptly dragooned into submission. The result was that the various unions had been gradually broken up, and were succeeded by branches of a vast secret organisation known as "The Brotherhood of the Poor." The ramifications of this association included all sections of workers, and even criminals and social outcasts were admitted to membership, it being a maxim of the Brotherhood that, the outcast being himself a victim of unjust and corrupt institutions and laws, his aid would, on occasion, be of greater value than that of those who had not been strengthened and sharpened by the Ishmael-like life of the outcast.

This formidable body, which scorned any definite reconstructive platform, and appeared to aim only at the destruction of what they considered a corrupt and festering civilisation, was very skilfully and powerfully organised, and had become so strong and far-reaching in its membership, and had been in existence for so long, that the ruling class despaired of suppressing it, and had at last decided to affect to ignore its existence. The career of the Brotherhood had been distinguished by acts of heroism, fortitude, audacity and fidelity which far surpassed anything recorded of previous secret bands of conspirators. Monopolists who had rendered themselves particularly odious to the populace by the ostentatious display of their possessions, or by open and cynical disregard of the feelings of those who were forced by necessity to minister to their desires, we frequently killed in their own houses by men or women who, prior to making their escape stamped upon the bodies of their victims the seal of the Brotherhood. It was only by the exercise of the utmost caution and the expenditure of large sums of money in the payment of faithful bodyguards, that the leading members of the syndicates and corporations which controlled the government and industries of the country saved themselves from assassination. The members of the Brotherhood were also possessed of an amount of knowledge of military tactics, and the use of explosives, which was very surprising when one considers the small amount of leisure left them by the nature of their daily avocations; and eventually this remarkable conspiracy became still more potent and terrible by the fact that Bourdin, a French chemist who was one of the members of the Brotherhood's Directing Council, had discovered a very powerful destructive agent. It was called Panmort, and was in the form of a gas, which, when liberated from the strong glass envelope in which it was inclosed, completely and terrifically destroyed everything with which it came in contact. Panmort balls, which were a little larger than ordinary revolver bullets, were used as ammunition for small ingeniously constructed air-guns, which would throw the balls to a considerable distance, where they would spread death and destruction all around.

Among the most deep-seated causes of the outbreak, although not its actual occasion, was the annihilation of the small-property-owning middle class by the operations of the Sydney financial rings. The middle class had been a decided safeguard against revolution, and a powerful conservative force. To members of that class, "everything that was, was right," so long as it did not interfere with their possession, or possible possession, of small 'properties'. They had served as a sort of buffer between the hungry proletarian poor and the surfeited, sybaritical rich. But the financiers, finding their opportunities for the greater acquisition of wealth and consequent power immensely increased by the additional facilities secured to them by their creatures, the members of the Federal parliament, hastened to extend their operations and ramifications throughout the length and breath of Australia, until so irresistible became their unfair competition, so gigantic their operations, and so immense their monopolies, that there scarcely remained a squatter, farmer, manufacturer, "small business man," or "thrifty" workman, who was not hopelessly and helplessly in the hands of the usurers.

Such was the condition of things, when a great and terrible drought, which, being unlooked for, had also been unprepared for, played huge havoc with the securities of the banks and other financial institutions. The most terrible financial crisis ever experienced in Australia immediately followed. Millions of sovereigns were rapidly withdrawn from the banks by "those in the know" and lodged for safety in the Sydney Money Stronghold, and the immediate and complete collapse of all the banks was only prevented by the action of the Federal Government in legislatively compelling the acceptance of the Banks' notes as a "legal tender." For a time the Government's action succeeded in "restoring confidence," but when it became quite apparent that the banks were unable to liquidate their liabilities in anything but their own discredited paper "promises to pay," the notes rapidly depreciated, and finally were treated as mere waste paper. A fierce cry then went up from the note holders, depositors, and shareholders who, it now became clear, had been remorselessly swindled and utterly ruined by the secret rings who formed he "inner circle" of bank directors and shareholders, while the great number of cruel and brutal evictions of those who were in the clutches of the banks, and whose homes were sold up to pay the banks debts, excited the indignation of the people to the pitch of frenzy. This indignation became greater still when it was seen that the rings (whose gold in the Money Stronghold was protected from their creditors by legal chicanery) were "rigging" the market, and were thus enabled through their agents to invariably obtain possession of the sold-up properties at phenomenally low figures. Then it was that the ruined middle class became formidable revolutionists, and in their deeds of desperate daring and even heroic revolutionary enterprise, surpassed anything that had been done by the habitually half-starved poor.

But at last the Federal Government took a step in an individualistic direction which had for its members and the class to which they belonged the most disastrous consequences. The various branches of the public service, though very corrupt, and used as a means of rewarding political and personal friends, or finding positions for the friends or relatives of women who secretly prostituted themselves to men in power, were yet regarded with hope by reformers, as stepping stones which they thought would lead to democratic State ownership of all means of production and exchange. But shortly after the financial crash which has just been referred to, the Government decided to dispose of the Australian Railways to the highest bidders. The financial "Inner Circle" at once formed a syndicate and purchased the railways. They then discharged large numbers of railway employés, and proceeded to work the railways on what they termed "commercial principle." The discharged men who previously had considered themselves a sort of "aristocracy of labor," and were noted for their comparative conservatism and contempt for those shut out of the sphere of government employment, now became furious in their denunciation of the ruling classes, and one of them one day observing the chief of the railway syndicate driving along the "block," seated between his two mistresses (seduced workmen's wives) shot him dead. The assassin was publicly executed but received an ovation from the assembled populace, and only the presence of a very strong military guard and the restraining influence of the Brotherhood chiefs, prevented his rescue. The whole of the ex-railway employés became energetic members of the Brotherhood.

The people, were now thoroughly ripe for insurrection, but awaited a leader. Such a person was found in Oliver Spence, a powerfully built and determined man who had been of what was termed "good family," was well read and a keen observer of men and things. The ruthless competition of the great syndicates had ruined his father, a small capitalist, and forced Oliver to turn his abnormal physical strength to account by earning his living as a navvy. This man's self-acquired military knowledge and inborn military genius at once marked him out to his comrades; and he speedily became the Commander-in-Chief of the Revolutionary Brotherhood of the Poor.

On a certain day of the year in which our story opens, a mass meeting of the unemployed was announced to be held in the Sydney Domain. In this meeting the Brotherhood determined to take part. The Government, suspecting nothing, had taken no precautions against a possible outbreak, and the revolutionists consequently had everything their own way. Violent speeches were made, and ultimately the crowd, forming themselves with the aid of the drilled members of the Brotherhood into marching order, marched to the sack of the wealthy portion of the city. It was this crowd whose operations have been described in the first chapter.

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Chapter 3

CHAPTER III.

THE GENERAL STRIKE.

At the conclusion of the first Chapter Oliver Spence was left master of the situation in Parliament house, declaring that that house would henceforth be used as a revolutionary headquarters. This declaration seemed to be taken as a matter of course by his followers, and, calling for the keys, Oliver, having obtained them, locked up the House, and—first, placing a strong guard at the various entrances proceeded, accompanied by a number of his adherents, to the old headquarters of the Council of the Brotherhood, the rest of the insurgent multitude having in the meantime, under the skilful direction of members of the Brotherhood, taken possession of the principle Government buildings and other places of importance in the city.

To the great joy and exultation of those members of the Council who were not absent superintending the operations of the mob, Spence related what had occurred; and, after some slight discussion, the following manifesto was drawn up and ordered to be printed:—

TO THE AUSTRALIAN PEOPLE.

Fellow Sufferers!

The organised toiling and poverty-cursed inhabitants of Australia have at last achieved a great and glorious victory over the wealthy oligarchy which has so long compelled the men and women of the poor to prostitute their intellect, their beauty, or their strength for the purpose of keeping in luxurious power a class which is without conscience, compassion, or sense of justice. A class which has considered and treated the laboring poor as of far less importance than were the chattel slaves of ancient times.

The Revolutionary Committee of the People's Will

has now by force and right of conquest taken possession of the Sydney Parliament House and many other buildings of strategical political importance, and henceforth the Committee will sit at Parliament House for the purposes of a Revolutionary Administration, which are:—

1st. To safeguard the interests of the suffering and the poor against possible reactionary monopolistic conspirators.

2nd. To freely and impartially administer justice to all.

In order to effectually paralyse the resources of our enemies, the Committee deem it necessary that the workers in every industry or occupation shall at once cease work. The Brotherhood of the Poor is charged with the duty of seeing that this order is promptly and effectively obeyed.

The Revolutionary Committee is certain that in all its present onerous work it will have the active support of all those who have suffered from plutocratic tyranny, for the poor have nothing to lose by revolution but sordid misery and odious slavery.

They have a world to gain!

To Arms! To Arms!!

Signed on behalf of the

Revolutionary Committee,

OLIVER SPENCE,

Commander-in-Chief of the Revolutionary Forces.

This manifesto having been posted up in all places of public resort, was at once acted upon. The newspapers, telegraphs, and railways, which hitherto had been always at the disposal of the plutocracy, were, if used at all, used only by the strikers to facilitate their own operation.

The Revolutionary Committee also strengthened its hands tremendously at this period by the institution of National Workshops and Stores, which supplied the strikers and other revolutionists with the necessaries of life and the sinews of war.

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Chapter 4

CHAPTER IV.

OLIVER SPENCE, DICTATOR.

On the first Monday after the issue of the General Strike Manifesto, a National Convention of delegates from all parts of Australia was held in the Parliament House, Macquarie Street, Sydney. The delegates had been elected by meetings convened by local sections of the Brotherhood of the Poor, which had now ceased to be a secret organisation. Each delegate having solemnly declared his fidelity to the cause of the People, the Convention was declared open by Oliver Spence, who then addressed it as follows:—

"Fellow Men!"

"We are assembled here to-day as the delegates to a Convention which is probably the most important gathering which has ever taken place on Australian soil. We are the bearers of the mandates of an indignant and wrathful people who have chosen us to consider and devise for them a Constitution which shall be, for the first time in our history, a just one. Let us devote ourselves to that task with zeal yet discretion.

"We are, it is true, the appointed of a minority, and with that fact our enemies already taunt us, but, I would ask you, has it not always been minorities who have achieved anything worth achieving? who have brought about any unmistakably radical political or economic changes? And more, was it not a minority which plundered and oppressed us?

"If, then, we, being determined men who would not be obedient slaves, have preferred to risk death rather than endure enslavement, who DARES to question our right to rebel?

"We have disregarded the apathy of the majority, have attacked the ruling MINORITY, and overthrown it.

"I again say, who DARES to question our right?

"An old English aristocratic writer has said,

'Treason never conquers— What's the reason? If it conquers, None dare call it Treason!'

And although we do not wish to ill-treat those whom it might please to call us traitors, yet the quotation substantially expresses our position.

"If we had waited for the majority to rebel, then we might have waited an eternity, for they were so brutalised by excessive toil, and dispirited by the evidences of the enormous power of wealth, that they had become ox-like in their lives, and suffered to continue that oppression which it had become well-nigh impossible to-remove by pacific methods.

If the majority has been apathetic, however, it cannot long remain so, but must soon range itself on our side, for, without speaking of the justice of our cause, we are the victorious party, and 'nothing succeeds like success.'

"Having therefore successfully rebelled against a most ignoble, degrading, and brutal tyranny, we now find ourselves in the position of men who will have to contend against the desperate energy of those who were formerly our rulers. If they again get the upper hand, they will be merciless and inexorably cruel in their revenge; the history of the past teaches us that.

"We must therefore be wary, yet swift and bold.

"We must hesitate at nothing which will render our triumph unquestionably complete and lasting.

"Let all our sympathisers carry arms, and as many as possible enrol themselves in companies of military volunteers.

"I recommend further that the resources of the new Government be used for the purpose of giving employment to all who are in need of it, and further, that it be made a criminal offence to employ men more than eight hours daily, except in case of special unforeseen emergency.

"It should be decreed by law that a minimum wage of not less than two pounds sterling weekly should be paid to adult workers in all industries.

"A Board should be selected to fix a minimum price for all the necessaries of life.

"All civil law must be abrogated, and the criminal law entirely remodelled.

"Only by the measures I have proposed, can we maintain the revolutionary enthusiasm, and guard against the possibility of reaction or counter revolution.

"When we have taken these steps, we can then proceed to gradually, but as speedily as possible, bring into existence the peaceful, harmonious social state, that Co-operative Commonwealth, which has been for generations the dream of poets, the ideal of philosophers, and the demand of revolutionists.

"I conclude with the words of the French 'man of action,' Danton—'We must have boldness, boldness, and always boldness!'"

Oliver Spence resumed, his seat amid a perfect hurricane of applause and exclamations of undying fidelity to the revolutionary cause. The old building fairly shook with the vociferations of the delegates, and so great was the excitement that the air seemed as though charged with electricity.

Spence had been listened to amidst a silence which seemed almost death-like in its stillness, but when he pointed out to the delegates the necessary steps to be taken in order to give practical effect to the aims of the revolutionists and to prevent the possibility of a return to the old order of things, all gave him their enthusiastic support, and a resolution to the effect that he should be appointed, for the period of one year, Dictator with plenary powers, was carried unanimously.

The speaker who proposed the resolution said that for centuries the people had been swindled, plundered, and oppressed by corrupt ruling gangs called parliaments. They would now see what could be done by the rule of one good wise, and capable man.

After the Convention had appointed committees for the purpose of re-modelling the criminal code and fixing a maximum price for foods and other necessaries of life, the delegates adjourned.

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Chapter 5

CHAPTER V.

SAVED BY LOVE.

It was moonlight. In the garret; of a house apparently inhabited by poor people, there might have been discovered a young woman, poorly dressed, but with a sweetness of face and beauty of form which it was impossible for the poverty of her dress to entirely hide. She was weeping silently, and her finely moulded bosom heaved convulsively as she thought of the possible dreadful fate of her lover. For she loved an insurgent, and with an intense and passionate devotion of which she had hitherto considered herself incapable. The hour was late, and though her lover had promised to, if alive, send her a message assuring her of his safety, the appointed hour had passed, but no word had been received from him whom she loved.

What should she do? She would go to him.

So thinking, the young woman, hastily fastening a cloak around her superb form, and placing upon her head a tasteful but inexpensive bonnet, went forth into the streets. They were deserted.

The sombre beauty of the charred and desolated ruins of the portion of Sydney through which she passed was heightened by the wondrous pale splendor of the full moon, whose beams bathed in liquid silver, the courts and alleys of Sydney's poor. But the locality which once thronged with cringing, toil-distorted, haggard men, women, and children, was now-deserted save by the one solitary wanderer whom the reader has just been introduced to. The insurgents had literally carried out their demand—"The people, to the mansions, and the torches to the slums!' and the unhealthy disease-breeding hovels of the poor had been burnt to the ground, while their former inhabitants were now housed in the huge magnificent mansions at one time owned by the rich though frequently not occupied by them. Walking hurriedly along, our heroine at last found herself in King St. and was within a hundred yards of Macquarie St. when suddenly her naturally elegant carriage and remarkable beauty, attracted the attention of a band of nocturnal revellers who emboldened by her apparent timidity insisted on detaining her while she was made the recipient of a string of extravagant compliments. Not satisfied with this, one of the rowdies, disregarding her remonstrances and entreaties, would have snatched a kiss from her ripe ruby lips, when suddenly at tall stoutly-built young man, evidently not one of the revellers, rushed forward and pushed her would-be assailant violently side, addressing at the same time words of stern rebuke to the half drunken rioters who, recognising him, slunk, silently away.

The new comer was no other than Oliver Spence and on the young woman perceiving that it was indeed he, she fell, in a half-fainting condition, into his arms—for he was her lover. Our hero looked every inch the hero, the fire of genius flashed from his eyes, while his broad massive brow stamped him as a thinker, and his well-defined nose indicated that, he possessed sufficient force of character to enable him to carry his thoughts into execution.

With the aid of a little water from a neighbouring fountain, our heroine was quickly restored to consciousness, and on seeing that the roysterers had actually taken their departure, she looked languishingly at her lover and said:

"Are you then safe, my own dear Oliver?"

"Yes, safe, and what is more, victorious, my darling Mary: Take heart, dear love, for to-day our oppressors have received a terrible blow, and I have been placed in the position whereby I am entrusted with power, great power, power to carve out for Australia a great place among the nations of the world, and to render my name illustrious as a wise lawgiver and beneficent ruler"

On hearing these words from her loved one, Mary's bright hazel eyes looked the pride which she felt. As the lovers stood there in the moonlight, they looked a well-matched pair, he with his determined eagle-eyes and noble bearing, she with her fine form's graceful poise, which, with the sweetness of her face with its finely chiselled nose and dazzling white teeth, and her well-shaped head with its glorious crown of luxuriant brown hair, seemed to obtain added beauty and regal dignity from the pleasure with which she was filled by Oliver's words.

Mary pressed the hand of her lover, and walked slowly by his side, conversing with him in the language of lovers; and so absorbed in each other did Oliver and Mary become, that they failed to observe the actions of two ruffianly-looking men, who, keeping in the shadow of the houses, crept silently nearer and nearer to the amorous couple. They were armed with long sharp knives, and they carried them unsheathed in their hands.

Suddenly, with an oath, the bravos sprang upon the couple, and, felling Mary to the ground with a crushing blow, they turned their attention to Oliver, who, having been taken entirely by surprise, might have been there and then deprived of his life, had it not been or his great natural agility and enormous physical strength. Seizing the dagger of one of his would-be assassins, he wrenched it from his hand, and stabbed him to the heart. The bravo fell weltering in his gore and expired without a groan. Oliver then turned his attention to his other assailant, who, though somewhat unnerved by the fate of his companion, showed himself no mean antagonist, and proved himself a master of the art of wrestling, and a match for the man whose life he had determined to take. Oliver gripped the wrist of the hand which held his opponent's dagger, but found his own hand also held in a vice-like grip. The two powerful men swayed to and fro in each other's grasp, each thirsting for the blood of the other. Their veins stood out like whip-cord, and their breaths came hot, short and quick. Every trick known to the professional wrestler was in vain tried by Oliver, and he had almost begun to despair of success and to resign himself to his fate when Mary, who had recovered from the blow she had received, picked up from the ground where it had fallen, the loaded stick habitually carried by Spence, and struck his antagonist a violent blow at the back of the head.

He dropped like a log.

It was evident that the blood of the Amazons flowed in Mary's veins. Of such material were made those heroic women who, during the French Revolution, led the revolutionists against the palace of King Louis XVI at Versailles, of such material were made Joan of Arc, Sophie Perovskaya, and Louise Michel. As she stood over the prostrate form of the man she had struck down, her face flushed and her eyes flashing with unwonted excitement, Oliver could not repress his feelings of admiration.

"You are indeed fit to be the mother of the Gracchi," said he?

"Do not speak of me dear Oliver, tell me if you are injured."

"Not at all Mary, thanks chiefly to your courage and presence of mind. It would seem that the enemies of the people are adopting the same tactics now, as the same class did in the days of the ancient Roman civilization. Just as they then, hired assassins who murdered the Gracchi, the great reformers of that period, so our monopolists, hire creatures who for pay, would murder me, but they shall not find me as easily frightened as Cromwell was. I defy their vile machinations."