The Meddling Immoralism of the Moralists – E.C. Walker, 8/28/1896
Republished from our predecessor publication Lucifer the Light Bearer
On Sunday, August 16, there came to the port of New York, in the steerage of La Gascogne, the French fencing
master, Leander Chanas. He is very distinguished in his profession, and is also a journalist and writer of verse.
With him came his assistant, Marie Cabourg. The Commissioner of Immigration refused them permission to land,
and held them prisoners in the House of Detention on Ellis Island. The charge against them is that they have eloped,
with the additional charge against Chanas that he has abandoned his wife. The unsophisticated reader must not
for a moment suppose that these people are forbidden to land on our virtuous shores because Chanas has failed
to keep a business contract with another woman in Paris. O, no! Commissioner McSweeny tells the fencer that
“moral turpitude, under the law, debars him, as an immigrant into this country,” and that he must return to France.
Would Commissioner McSweeny know “moral turpitude” if he should be brought into contact with it? How does
he determine that M. Chanas and Mlle. Cabourg are guilty of moral turpitude, granting that the Commissioner
has an abstract definition of it at command? If “moral turpitude” is a bar to admission to this country, how do so
many villains get here without trouble, both of fresh importations and of reimportations? Of the latter class, we
have several times knowingly admitted famous murderers, including at least one political ambassador. Or, which
seems to be the case, does “moral turpitude” mean simply sexual irregularity, without regard to its effects upon the
health of the two concerned or their mutual and free choice in the premises? This is no occasion for the officiousness
of the Commissioner; if M. Chanas has committed an extraditable offense the French government is at liberty to
demand his return in the regular manner to France for trial. The fencer is entitled to a fair trial; he gets nothing of
the kind at the hands of the immigration officials; the entire proceeding is a gross outrage, a disgrace to the
American government, and a cruel wrong to the innocent—for Mlle.
Cabourg and M. Chanas are innocent until proven guilty, and a dictum of the Commissioner of Immigration cannot
prove anybody guilty. It must not be forgotten that immorality, even if admitted, is without the purview of commissioners
and courts; a man cannot rightfully be deprived of life, property, or liberty unless he is first proven guilty of crime—
not vice—and crime consists in the alienation of the life, property, or liberty, or the injury of the person of another, or
the infliction of damages by means of libel or slander. As already shown, if M. Chanas is charged with a crime for
which he may be extradited, the French government, against whose laws alone he has offended, if against any,
must be left to deal with him. If his alleged crime is one not provided for in the extradition treaty, then certainly the
Commissioner of Immigration has nothing to say in the matter; if the French department of state did not see fit to
ask for the inclusion of such crimes in the list of those for the alleged commission of which it could demand the
return of its citizens or of alien residents in its territories, it would appear clear that American immigration officials
have no business to interfere and send back men and women on suspicion. But there is no question of crime involved,
as appears by the report of the case given in the New York “Journal” of August 20th. The whole case hinges on the
asserted “moral turpitude” of the two French people; it is the dominant immorality at its old trick of trying to crush by
force all possible competitors. Here are a few extracts from the report mentioned: “There is at present the distance
of one-third of a city block between them. He is in the men’s department and she is in the women’s, and they look at
each other through the gratings of their prisons longingly from morning until night.” He said to the interviewer: “I have a
wife and child in Paris. That is why I came in the steerage. I had to give all my money to them. My son is an expert as
a fencer and only eighteen years old. I am detained here on the charge that I have abandoned my wife to run away
with Marie Cabourg. She is my collaborator. In your moral country cannot a woman be a man’s literary associate?”
No, not without slander and legal or extra-legal interference if they happen to be together under circumstances that
Grundy and Dogberry choose to think suspicious; that is to say, under circumstances where they could be more to
each other if they chose. This is a moral country, M. Chanas, as you would soon discover if you could take a few
peeps into the closets where the rotten hypocrites who assume to be the keepers of their neighbors store away their
skeletons. The report of the interview proceeds: “All this he said yesterday in a very sad tone of voice, and then
continued: ‘I left Paris because the publication of my psychological fencing theory almost ruined me. I came to New
York because you have here a fencing league, a club, a splendid field for my enterprise. Mlle. Cabourg is to aid me,
as she aided me in Paris. We are here, in prison, unable to console each other, surrounded by people with whom
we cannot talk. It is an outrage Oh, if I had only known!’ “An outrage?” Yes, of course, but what difference does
that make to the priests of the social Juggernaut who ruthlessly drive their car of death over worshiper and skeptic
alike? “In tears, at her grating, Mlle Cabourg said: . . . ‘There is nothing between us other than literary association
and respectful admiration.’ [As though it was anybody’s business!] She was told that he will be permitted to land
alone, and that the objection was against her companionship, which, said the commissioner, you must admit is
unconventional.” There you have the whole dirty truth! He can leave his wife—if he has left her—and come to
America; no questions will be asked; even if he were derelict in his economic obligations to his wife, or to any one
else, Commissioner McSweeny would say nothing about it, and the French government has nothing to say about
his detention; it is, in the final analysis, merely a question of conventionality! And of course to be unconventional
is to be guilty of “moral turpitude!” “The objection was against her companionship?”
Certainly; it is not yet conceded that men and women can choose their own companions in traveling, in business,
in social life. Some impudent Commissioner of Immigration assumes that he knows better than they what they
should wish and what is good for them. Wouldn’t it be delightful to see Chanas and McSweeny placed opposite
each other as man to man, the commissioner stripped of the legal power that makes the veriest coward a truculent
bully, and in the hand of Chanas the weapon of which he is master! How such a turning of the tables would warm
the heart of every lover of fair play! To be sure, we would hope that M. Chanas would be magnanimous enough
to put a button on the point of his rapier, for we do not believe in bloodshed, but to scare McSweeny nearly out
of what little sense he has a sword of lath in the hands of a determined man would probably be amply sufficient.
But has he worn a foil on the sword of the law that he has thrust in the faces of the fencing teacher and his assistant?
There have been several somewhat similar outbreaks of our immigration officials during the last few years. And
we have a like set of Puritans and fools at the receipt of customs, where they make it their business to confiscate
works of art, literature and toilet articles that do not suit their taste—except for their own purposes!
