among the different railway systems of the Continent for the running of through expresses and for co-operation generally. He points out that in such cases the different companies or authorities concerned each appoint a delegate, and that the delegates suggest a basis of agreement, which has to be subsequently ratified by each of the bodies appointing them. The assembly of delegates has no coercive power whatever, and a majority can do nothing against a recalcitrant minority. Yet this has not prevented the conclusion of very elaborate systems of agreements. By such methods, so Anarchists contend, the useful functions of government can be carried out without any coercion. They maintain that the usefulness of agreement is so patent as to make co-operation certain if once the predatory motives associated with the present system of private property were removed.
Attractive as this view is, I cannot resist the conclusion that it results from impatience and represents the attempt to find a short-cut towards the ideal which all humane people desire.
Let us begin with the question of private crime.[1] Anarchists maintain that the criminal is manufactured by bad social conditions and would disappear in such a world as they aim at creating.[2] No doubt there
- ↑ On this subject there is an excellent discussion in the before-mentioned work of Monsieur Naquet.
- ↑ "As to the third—the chief—objection, which maintains the necessity of a government for punishing those who break the law of society, there is so much to say about it that it hardly can be touched incidentally. The more we study the question, the more we are brought to the conclusion that society itself
