CHAPTER VII

to prison. Or if, in case of a riot, the Astor property was damaged, the Law also would have stepped in and compelled the county to idemnify. This Law, this extraordinary code of print which governs us, has been and is nothing more or less, it is evident, than so many statutes to guarantee the retention of the proceeds of fraud and theft, if the piracy were committed in a sufficiently large and impressive way. The indisputable proof is that every single fortune which has been obtained by fraud, is still privately held and is greater than ever; the Law zealously and jealously guards it. So has the Law practically worked; and if the thing is to be judged by its practical results, then the Law has been an instigator of every form of crime, and a bulwark of that which it instigated. Seeing that this is so, it is not so hard to understand that puzzling problem of why so large a portion of the community has resolved itself into a committee of the whole, and while nominally and solemnly professing the accustomed and expected respect for Law, deprecates it,