Men suffer from oppression, and by way of deliverance certain expedients are suggested for the improvement of their condition, these means of relief to be administered by authority, to which they continue to submit. This will naturally tend to augment authority and to increase the consequent oppression of government.
Of all the errors of humanity there is none that so retards its progress as this. Men will do anything in the world to achieve their purpose save the one simple deed, which it is every man's duty to perform. Men will invent the most ingenious devices for changing the position which is burdensome to them, but never dream of the simple remedy of abstaining from the acts which cause it.
I was told of an incident which happened to an intrepid _stanovoy_, who, on arriving in a village where the peasants had revolted, and whither troops had been sent, undertook, like the Emperor Nicholas I., to quell the disturbance by his personal influence. He ordered several loads of rods to be brought, and having gathered all the peasants into the barn, he entered himself, shut himself in with them, and so terrified them by his shouts and threats that in compliance with his commands they began to flog each other. And so they went on flogging one another until some fool revolted, and, shouting to his comrades, bade them leave off. It was not until then that the flogging ceased, and the _stanovoy_ escaped from the barn.
It is this very advice of the fool that men who believe in the necessity of civil government seem unable to follow. They are unable to stop punishing themselves, and setting an absurd example for others to imitate. Such is the consummation of merely human wisdom.
Is it possible, indeed, to imagine a more striking imitation of those men flogging one another than the meekness with which the men of these days fulfil those social duties that lead them into bondage, especially the military conscription? It is clear that men enslave themselves; they suffer from this slavery, and yet they believe it inevitable; they also believe that it will not affect the ultimate emancipation of mankind, which they declare the final outcome, in spite of the fact that slavery is ever increasing.