fools who know no better than to pay them. We can fancy him replying with pardonable indignation: "Cunning knaves, you know very well that it is your Church that saturates the people with superstition, and that to justify its existence on the ground of their superstition is to put the cart before the horse and assume the very point in dispute."
Now, we Anarchists are political abolitionists. We earnestly desire the abolition of the State. Our position on this question is parallel in most respects to those of the Church abolitionists and the slavery abolitionists. But in this case Mr. Ball—to his disgrace be it said—takes the side of the tyrants against the abolitionists, and raises the cry so frequently raised against him: The State is necessary to keep thieves and murderers in subjection, and, were it not for the State, we should all be garroted in the streets and have our throats cut in our beds. As Mr. Ball saw through the sophistry of his opponents, so we see through his, precisely similar to theirs, though we know that not he, but the capitalists use it to blind the people to the real object of the institution by which they are able to extort from labor the bulk of its products. We answer him as he did them, and in no very patient mood: Can you not see that it is the State that creates the conditions which give birth to thieves and murderers, and that to justify its existence on the ground of the prevalence of theft and murder is a logical process every whit as absurd as those used to defeat your efforts to abolish slavery and the Church?
Once for all, then, we are not opposed to the punishment of thieves and murderers; we are opposed to their manufacture. Right here Mr. Ball must attack us, or not at all. When next he writes on Anarchism, let him answer these questions:
Are not the laboring classes deprived of their earnings by usury in its three forms,—interest, rent, and profit?
Is not such deprivation the principal cause of poverty?
Is not poverty, directly or indirectly, the principal cause of illegal crime?
Is not usury dependent upon monopoly, and especially upon the land and money monopolies?
Could these monopolies exist without the State at their back?
Does not by far the larger part of the work of the State consist in establishing and sustaining these monopolies and other results of special legislation?
Would not the abolition of these invasive functions of the State lead gradually to the disappearance of crime?
If so, would not the disappearance of crime render the protective functions of the State superfluous?
