Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/179

Rh arms supplied his own necessities and the priest alone received contributions from the people. The State had no needs, consequently it required nothing from those belonging to it. But this state of things soon changed everywhere, either owing to the oriental despotism that arose from the acceptation of the fiction of the divine origin of the person and power of the king, or else from the subjugation of the people by some alien conquering race. In both cases the mass of the people became a drove of slaves, the personal property of the king or of the conquerors, and they were obliged to pay taxes, not for any state purpose, but merely to fill the money chests of their masters, who did not feel called upon to do anything in return for the people, but accepted the revenue as they did their income from their lands or herds of cattle. Free races in those days looked upon taxation as a disgrace, a token of servitude, and many centuries of hard pressure were required before the Germanic races, for instance, could be prevailed upon to pay the taxes levied upon them, resembling those they had been accustomed to exact at the point of the sword from the nations they had subdued. The fiction that the citizens are bond-men, obliged to work first for their owner the king, has been the foundation for the rights of the State ever since the Middle Ages, as also for the relations between the subject and the ruler, who in his person represents the entire State. This fiction is still accepted in our times; and in the form of Fiscalism we find it prominent in our modern State, with all its constitutionalism and Parliaments, supposed to embody the sovereignty of the people.

The same fiction is also the foundation upon which rests the organization of the system of public offices and the positions of the officials in regard to the citizen. According to the enlightened conception of the State, the