import trade continued none the less, under the form of smuggling. The
risk of seizure was merely added to the risk of fire and flood. Just as
one could insure against the latter risks, so the practice arose of
insuring against seizure. At one time, at any rate, in the French ports
were to be found brokers who would insure the evasion of a cargo of goods
for a premium of fifteen per cent. At the safe distance of a century and a
half, the absurd prohibition and its incompetent administration are
equally comic. At the time, however, there was nothing comic in the
contempt for law and order thus engendered, in the feeling of outrage on
the part of those ruined by seizures, and in the alliance of respectable
merchants with the thieves and footpads enlisted for the smuggling trade.


VIII

It is a common observation of present day social reformers that an
excessive regard is displayed by our governmental organs for security of
property, while security of non-property rights is neglected. And this
would indeed be a serious indictment of the existing order if there were
in fact a natural antithesis between the security of property and security
of the person. There is, however, no such antithesis. In the course of
history the establishment of security of property has, as a rule, preceded
the establishment of personal security, and has provided the conditions in
which personal security becomes possible. Adequate policing is essential
to any form of security. Property can pay for policing; the person can
not. This is a crude and materialistic interpretation of the facts, but it
is essentially sound.

How much personal security existed in England, five centuries and a half
ago, when it was possible for Richard to carve his way through human flesh