Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/173

Rh those of extensive decentralization and self government, are the results of the taxation of the people free from unjustifiable waste. Such communities resemble in their constitution and conditions of existence, the cooperative societies in which each member can easily superintend the application of his contributions, prevent unnecessary expenditure, oppose unpromising undertakings and cause them to be abandoned in time. Every benefit and every loss is felt directly by each member, the former compensates him for his sacrifices and he is warned by the latter to take precautionary measures against their reoccurrence. In such communities it is certainly difficult to procure funds to carry on any ideal or distant enterprises which do not promise appreciable benefits or pleasures to each individual member, but it is still more difficult to use the power of the whole to satisfy the caprices of one, or to inveigle money from the members to buy the rods with which they are to be beaten.

To condense the foregoing details: the life and property of the individual are no more protected by the modern complicated machinery of State, by the everlasting writing, recording, office holding, permits and injunctions than entirely without the whole intricate apparatus. For all the sacrifices of blood, money and liberty offered to the State by the individual citizen, he receives in return hardly any other actual benefits than the administration of justice, which is costly and tedious out of all proportion to what it should be, and public instruction, which can not be said to lie accessible to all in the same degree. In order to have these advantages, hardly any one of the restrictions of individual liberty and independence are strictly necessary. The pretext that the liberty of the one is only restricted out of regard for the rights of others, is a bad joke; this pretended regard does not