to pay money for purposes of murder, or to become soldiers themselves and go to war; laws establishing monopolies in the sale of stupefying intoxicants, or forbidding the free exchange of produce across a certain line called a frontier; and laws regarding the execution of men for actions which are not so much immoral, as simply disadvantageous to those in power.
All these laws, and the exaction of their fulfilment by threats of violence, the public executions inflicted for the non-fulfilment of these laws, and above all the forcing of men to take part in wars, the habitual exaltation of military murders, and the preparation for them—all this inevitably lowers the moral social conciousnesss and its expression, public opinion.
So that Governmental activity not only does not support morality, but, on the contrary, it would be hard to devise a more depraving action than that which Governments have had, and still have, on the nations.
It could never enter the head of any ordinary scoundrel to commit all those horrors: the stake, the Inquisition, torture, raids, quarterings, hangings, solitary confinements, murders in war, the plundering of nations, etc, which have been and still are being committed, and committed ostentatiously, by all Governments. All the horrors of Sténka Rázin, Pougatchéf[1] and other rebels, were but results, and feeble imitations, of the horrors perpetrated by the Johns, Peters, and Birons,[2] and that have been and are being perperated by all Governments. If (which is very doubtful) the action of, Government does deter some dozens of men from crime, hundreds of thousands of other crimes are committed only because men are educated in crime by Governmental injustice and cruelty.
If men taking part in legislation, in commerce, in industries, living in towns, and in one way or other sharing the advantages of power, can still believe in the beneficence of that power, people living on the land cannot help knowing that Government only
