posed to make, or allow others to make) laws for the
protection of society, or property, or religion, or what you will; and
we pay thousands of men like ourselves to protect those laws and see
them carried out; and we build and maintain expensive offices, police
stations, court-houses and jails for the protecting and carrying out of
those laws, and the punishing of men--like ourselves--who break them.
Yet, in our heart of hearts we are antagonistic to most of the laws,
and to the Law as a whole (which we regard as an ass), and to the police
magistrates and the judges. And we hate lawyers and loathe spies, pimps,
and informers of all descriptions and the hangman with all our soul. For
the Soul of Man says: Thou shalt not refuse refuge to the outcast, and
thou shalt not betray the wanderer.

And those who do it we make outcast.

So we form Prisoners' Aid Societies, and Prisoners' Defence Societies,
and subscribe to them and praise them and love them and encourage them
to protect or defend men from the very laws that we pay so dearly
to maintain. And how many of us, in the case of a crime against
property--and though the property be public and ours--would refuse
tucker to the hunted man, and a night's shelter from the pouring rain
and the scowling, haunting, threatening, and terrifying darkness? Or
show the police in the morning the track the poor wretch had taken? I
know I couldn't.

The Heart of Man says: Thou shalt not.

At country railway stations, where the trains stop for refreshments,
when a prisoner goes up or down in charge of a policeman, a native
delicacy prevents the local loafers from seeming to notice him; but at
the last moment there is always some hand to thrust in a clay pipe and
cake of tobacco, and maybe a bag of sandwiches to the policeman.

And, when a prisoner escapes, in the country at least--unless he be a
criminal maniac in for a serious offence, and therefore a real danger
to society--we all honestly hope that they won't catch him, and we don't
hide it. And, if put in a corner, most of us would help them not to
catch him.

The thing came down through the ages and survived through the dark
Middle Ages, as all good things come down through the ages and survive
through the blackest ages. The hunted man in the tree, or cave, or hole,
and strangers creeping to him with food in the darkness, and in fear and
trembling; though he was, as often happened, an enemy to their creed,
country, or party. F