purposes; I mean the army, navy, and police.

(I) Reasonable men must needs think you are right.

(H.) Now as to those Law-Courts. Were they places of fair dealing
according to the ideas of the day? Had a poor man a good chance of
defending his property and person in them?

(I) It is a commonplace that even rich men looked upon a law-suit as
a dire misfortune, even if they gained the case; and as for a poor
one--why, it was considered a miracle of justice and beneficence if a
poor man who had once got into the clutches of the law escaped prison
or utter ruin.

(H.) It seems, then, my son, that the government by law-courts and
police, which was the real government of the nineteenth century, was
not a great success even to the people of that day, living under a
class system which proclaimed inequality and poverty as the law of
God and the bond which held the world together.

(I) So it seems, indeed.

(H.) And now that all this is changed, and the "rights of property,"
which mean the clenching the fist on a piece of goods and crying out
to the neighbours, You shan't have this!--now that all this has
disappeared so utterly that it is no longer possible even to jest
upon its absurdity, is such a Government possible?

(I) It is impossible.