_CONCERNING SOME OLD FOES UNDER NEW FACES._


The history of the human race is one long story of attempts by certain
persons and classes to obtain control of the power of the State, so as
to win earthly gratifications at the expense of others. People
constantly assume that there is something metaphysical and sentimental
about government. At bottom there are two chief things with which
government has to deal. They are, the property of men and the honor of
women. These it has to defend against crime. The capital which, as we
have seen, is the condition of all welfare on earth, the fortification
of existence, and the means of growth, is an object of cupidity. Some
want to get it without paying the price of industry and economy. In
ancient times they made use of force. They organized bands of robbers.
They plundered laborers and merchants. Chief of all, however, they
found that means of robbery which consisted in gaining control of the
civil organization--the State--and using its poetry and romance as a
glamour under cover of which they made robbery lawful. They developed
high-spun theories of nationality, patriotism, and loyalty. They took
all the rank, glory, power, and prestige of the great civil
organization, and they took all the rights. They threw on others the
burdens and the duties. At one time, no doubt, feudalism was an
organization which drew together again the fragments of a dissolved
society; but when the lawyers had applied the Roman law to modern
kings, and feudal nobles had been converted into an aristocracy of
court nobles, the feudal nobility no longer served any purpose.

In modern times the great phenomenon has been the growth of the middle
class out of the mediaeval cities, the accumulation of wealth, and the
encroachment of wealth, as a social power, on the ground formerly