have a glow of poetic fire in them. Kindly and gentle by nature, there was a strain of weakness in him mentally. He steeped his mind in clandestine literature, especially that dealing with the homicidal details of Government oppression and popular revolt, and became obsessed with the notion of arousing an insurrectionary working-class struggle in this country.
It was mainly into the hands of these three men, together with Charles Mowbray, whose whole Socialist career fell afterwards into disrepute as one who was at least the tool of police agents, that the control of the Commonweal and the League passed, when Morris and the Hammersmith branch broke off from the League. The result was inevitable.
There were still, it is true, a few members of the Anarchist-Communist type who gave no countenance to these eccentricities, but their example and reproof were alike disregarded. Morris showed all along, as we have seen, astonishing forbearance to his erring comrades. Even when they succeeded in capturing, as they did at the Annual Conference in 1889, the Council of the League, and he resigned from it and from the editorship of the Commonweal, he continued for many months to meet the deficit in the treasury to the tune of several hundred pounds. Eventually, however, the position became unendurable, and he cut off all supplies. Before doing so he discharged the debt of the paper and the League, leaving his comrades with not a penny of past debt to burden them. The League and the Commonweal between them exacted a tribute from him in donations and debt payments of at least ₤500 a year.
The after-history of the League is briefly told. The majority of the provincial branches, disagreeing with the Anarchist policy, ceased to send affiliation fees. The Commonweal became a monthly instead of a weekly pucatbliion, and an avowed organ of Anarchism. Police spies and agents provocateurs played their accustomed part.
