Page:Petr Kropotkin - Organised Vengeance Called 'Justice', Henry Glasse - The Superstition of Government (1902).djvu/12

12 to answer this question in the affirmative, but for another fact which is co-universal with Government and which entirely upsets its claim to be in harmony with man's moral and social nature. That fact is In no historic time has Government failed to encounter Revolt, either overt or covert; individuals or classes have at all times contended to subvert the dominion of other classes or individuals in order to win that dominion for themselves. This traditional spirit of revolt is also presented to us in those legends and myths which are the echoes of prehistoric times: Jehovah has to struggle for pre-eminence with the archangel Satan, who leads to rebellion a portion of the angelic host, and who continues, even after his expulsion from heaven we are told, to keep up a fairly successful warfare against heaven's monarch. So, also, in the ancient classic story, Jupiter dethrones his father Saturn, and in his turn becomes "Father of the gods and King of men." I have spoken of the hostility of individuals and classes who happen for the time to be out of power, as directed against those who for the moment are in power; but of course this hostility would be powerless without the co-operation of the people or a considerable section thereof, and therefore it is that whoever raises the standard of revolt or of opposition (which is only revolt minus military warfare) professes to do so in the interest of the people, who are led to hope for a betterment of their condition as a result of a successful change. Insurrectionary and opposition leaders have always posed as deliverers of the people in order to gain its support, and have taught it to regard the exercise of power and the spoils of office as the just reward of their condescension in taking up the cudgels on behalf of its interests. Obviously, therefore, during the many ages that personal ambitions and rival castes hare warred for supremacy, it has never suited them to so much as even hint to the vile populace whose help they were soliciting that the evils it suffered were inherent in Government itself; on the