were.
(H.) If the government habitually destroyed wealth, the country must have been poor?
(I) Yes, certainly.
(H.) Yet amidst this poverty the persons for the sake of whom the government existed insisted on being rich whatever might happen?
(I) So it was.
(H.) What must happen if in a poor country some people insist on being rich at the expense of the others?
(I) Unutterable poverty for the others. All this misery, then, was caused by the destructive government of which we have been speaking?
(H.) Nay, it would be incorrect to say so. The government itself was but the necessary result of the careless, aimless tyranny of the times; it was but the machinery of tyranny. Now tyranny has come to an end, and we no longer need such machinery; we could not possibly use it since we are free. Therefore in your sense of the word we have no government. Do you understand this now?
(I) Yes, I do. But I will ask you some more questions as to how you as free men manage your affairs.
(H.) With all my heart. Ask away.
CHAPTER XII: CONCERNING THE ARRANGEMENT OF LIFE
“Well,” I said, “about those ‘arrangements’ which you spoke of as taking the place of government, could you give me any account of them?”
“Neighbour,” he said, “although we have simplified our lives a great deal from what they were, and have got rid of many conventionalities and many sham wants, which used to give our forefathers much trouble, yet our life is too complex for me to tell you in detail by means of words how it is arranged; you must find that out by living amongst us. It is true that I can better tell you what we don’t do, than what we do do.”
“Well?” said I.
“This is the way to put it,” said he: “We have been living for a hundred and fifty years, at least, more or less in our present manner, and a tradition or habit of life has been growing on us; and that habit has become a habit of acting on the whole for the best. It is easy for us to live without robbing each other. It would be possible for us to contend with and rob each other, but it would be harder for us than refraining from strife and robbery. That is in short the foundation of our life and our happiness.”
“Whereas in the old days,” said I, “it was very hard to live without strife and robbery. That’s what you mean, isn’t it, by giving me the negative side of your good conditions?”
“Yes,” he said, “it was so hard, that those who habitually acted fairly to their neighbours were celebrated as saints and heroes, and were looked up to with the greatest reverence.”
“While they were alive?” said I.
“No,” said he, “after they were dead.”
“But as to these days,” I said; “you don’t mean to tell me that no one ever transgresses this habit of good fellowship?”
“Certainly not,” said Hammond, “but when the transgressions occur, everybody, transgressors and all, know them for what they are; the errors of friends, not the habitual actions of persons driven into enmity against society.”
“I see,” said I; “you mean that you have no ‘criminal’ classes.”
“How could we have them,” said he, “since there is no rich class to breed enemies against the state by means of the injustice of the state?”
Said I: “I thought that I understood from something that fell from you a little while ago that you had abolished civil law. Is that so, literally?”
“It abolished itself, my friend,” said he. “As I said before, the civil law-courts were upheld for the defence of private property; for nobody ever pretended that it was possible to make people act fairly to each other by means of brute force. Well, private property being abolished, all the laws and all the legal ‘crimes’ which it had manufactured of course came to an end. Thou shalt not steal, had to be translated into, Thou shalt work in order to live happily. Is there any need to enforce that commandment by violence?”
