d in all their nakedness. Our age, however, has gone still
further, for it has begun to discuss the rights of the State and of
Society in relation to the individual; people now ask to what point the
interference of the State is necessary in the multitudinous functions of
society.

* * * * *

Do we require a government to educate our children? Only let the worker
have leisure to instruct himself, and you will see that, through the
free initiative of parents and of persons fond of tuition, thousands of
educational societies and schools of all kinds will spring up, rivalling
one another in the excellence of their teaching. If we were not crushed
by taxation and exploited by employers, as we now are, could we not
ourselves do much better than is now done for us? The great centres
would initiate progress and set the example, and you may be sure that
the progress realised would be incomparably superior to what we now
attain through our ministeries.--Is the State even necessary for the
defence of a territory? If armed brigands attack a people, is not that
same people, armed with good weapons, the surest rampart to oppose to
the foreign aggressor? Standing armies are always beaten by invaders,
and history teaches that the latter are to be repulsed by a popular
rising alone.--While Government is an excellent machine to protect
monopoly, has it ever been able to protect us against ill-disposed
persons? Does it not, by creating misery, increase the number of crimes
instead of diminishing them? In establishing prisons into which
multitudes of men, women, and children are thrown for a time in order to
come forth infinitely worse than when they went in, does not the State
maintain nurseries of vice at the expense of the tax-payers? In obliging
us to commit to others the care of our affairs, does it not create the
most terrible vice of societies--indifference to public matters?

On the other hand, if we analyse all the great advances made in this
century--our international traffic, our industrial discoveries, our
means of communication--do we find that we owe them to the State or to
private enterprise? Look at the network of railways which cover Europe.
At Madrid, for example, you take a ticket for St. Petersburg direct. You
travel along railroads which have been constructed by millions of
workers, set in motion by dozens of companies; your carriage is attached
in turn to Spanish, French, Bavarian, and