usefulness. Gambling and other less mentionable vices carry their own
penalties with them.

Now, we never can annihilate a penalty. We can only divert it from the
head of the man who has incurred it to the heads of others who have not
incurred it. A vast amount of "social reform" consists in just this
operation. The consequence is that those who have gone astray, being
relieved from Nature's fierce discipline, go on to worse, and that
there is a constantly heavier burden for the others to bear. Who are
the others? When we see a drunkard in the gutter we pity him. If a
policeman picks him up, we say that society has interfered to save him
from perishing. "Society" is a fine word, and it saves us the trouble
of thinking. The industrious and sober workman, who is mulcted of a
percentage of his day's wages to pay the policeman, is the one who
bears the penalty. But he is the Forgotten Man. He passes by and is
never noticed, because he has behaved himself, fulfilled his
contracts, and asked for nothing.

The fallacy of all prohibitory, sumptuary, and moral legislation is the
same. A and B determine to be teetotalers, which is often a wise
determination, and sometimes a necessary one. If A and B are moved by
considerations which seem to them good, that is enough. But A and B put
their heads together to get a law passed which shall force C to be a
teetotaler for the sake of D, who is in danger of drinking too much.
There is no pressure on A and B. They are having their own way, and
they like it. There is rarely any pressure on D. He does not like it,
and evades it. The pressure all comes on C. The question then arises,
Who is C? He is the man who wants alcoholic liquors for any honest
purpose whatsoever, who would use his liberty without abusing it, who
would occasion no public question, and trouble nobody at all. He is the