that the action of the state with its cruel methods of punishment, behind the general moral standard of the age, such as prisons, galleys, gibbets, and guillotines, tends rather to brutalize the people than to civilize them, and consequently rather to increase than diminish the number of malefactors.

“Except for the state,” they tell us, “we should not have any religion, education, culture, means of communication, and so on.

Without the state men would not have been able to form the social institutions needed for doing anything.” This argument too was well founded only some centuries ago.

If there was a time when people were so disunited, when they had so little means of communication and interchange of ideas, that they could not