Real Revolution — Page 68
08 capital punishment has been abolished in some. European countries; but if the people who have done so were present before me at this moment, I would ask them why on the same basis they do not take away from their governments the right to levy taxes. . Ideas of this kind are, in fact, an indication that a decline has set in in the mental capacities of the people of Europe, in some respects any way; and it is people of this kind who become the cause of weakness in the authority of established governments. The only difference between those who indulge in such confused thinking at this day and the primitive savages who tended to defy the law when first it came into human affairs is this that the idea of ordered society having become firmly rooted in the human mind; no longer occurs to anyone that the system of government by law should be done away with altogether. The idea, nevertheless, keeps cropping up in various forms that another government, differently constituted, would perhaps be more mindful of their rights, this being the reason why attempts are from time to time being made to effect changes in systems of government. . Among the primitive people, of whom there still are a fairly large number, the tendency even now is that they disapprove of all systems of control in an ordered society. Submission to any