The historical state, as we know it, has almost always been repressive of freedom and has been used as a means whereby to expropriate forcibly much of the fruits of labour. It is in this respect merely a continuation and extension of the economic exploitation of the mass of men by their more powerful neighbours which prevails in economic society. Economic exploitation is, at best, but a rough-and-ready method, and only crudely skims the cream from the milk. The state by means of carefully graded taxation, principally on articles of common consumption, performs a more scientific second skimming, which leaves the thinnest of milk for the sustenance of the labourer. No doubt the state did not come into existence for this expressed purpose. Indeed, it may sometimes have come into existence because of an inner necessity for the organisation of justice and defence, for communal defence that is, as the juristic theorists suppose. But its main purpose hitherto has been the systematic exploitation of the weak by the strong, the chief instrument for that purpose being the civil law and control of the church and army. Yet recognising all this, it is felt that if the idea of the state did not exist, it would be necessary in modern days to invent it, or at least to invent a functional organisation which would possess its main characteristics, although in some respects the orientation of function would differ considerably from that of the state to-day. Until this allimportant question of function is decided we must admit the right of men to ask themselves the question: why obey the law?

Those political philosophers who have devoted most attention to the theory of the state, have emphasised unduly its juristic aspect and have refrained almost completely from examining its practical structure from the illuminating side of sociology. Juristic considerations must necessarily emphasise strongly the question of necessity, particularly as the principal material available for detailed study is the rather cut-and-dried arrangements of feudalism. It is significant that the great proponents of feudalism, the Normans, paid close attention to questions of law, covering Europe with a network of legal restrictions and conceptions which still fetter thought and action. Perhaps it would be more

fruitful of results, however, to discuss the historical state as an organic growth of social development, carrying within itself the seeds both of inner necessity and of expediency, than as a juristic conception. It will be necessary, if we would understand the nature of the state aright, to trace its slow development from the most obscure social origins in savage society, including the ritual of magic, through all the forms of activity it has shown from those early times, in every form of state organisation, whether city, maritime, feudal, constitutional, democratic or absolutist. We have learned gradually to apply historical methods of criticism to many departments of activity, sociology, literature, æsthetics, etc.; but very little indeed to the philosophy of the state.

If the historical state be a predatory organisation mainly designed with a view to a crude form of exploitation of labour, it would seem as if we would require to seek its origins in the institution of slavery. We are beset with a difficulty, however, in the fact that slavery pre-supposes some conceptions concerning property, which could only have been made operative by an organisation like the state. It is probable, therefore, that the nucleus of the idea must be sought elsewhere. Property in its legal sense would obviously be defined by some body which already had a considerable amount of authority over the minds of the community. This would almost certainly point to primitive priesthood, dealers in magic and masters of ceremonial ritual. It is not unreasonable, therefore, to expect that the early kings were magicians, who had come to exercise a temporal as well as a spiritual sway over impressionable savage man. Nor is it a far cry from the propitiation of powerful malevolent spirits, by the performance of magical rites, to the institution of slavery. The more terrible the sacrifice, the more pleasing it was to the spirits who had such great influence on human affairs, and, therefore, it was the more efficacious. The early gods were not beneficent, but demoniacal. The uttermost offering that could be made was human sacrifice, at its highest the body of the priest-king himself. But what availed a brief spiritual authority if this were the end? Could immunity not be secured by the sacrifice of several

human victims, victims whose death would not strike at the man-power of the tribe? Thus, it may well have been that prisoners came to be saved from immediate slaughter and retained to be slain for sacrifice; but increasingly the prisoners would be made use of economically by the institution of slavery. The regulation of property in slaves, for obviously it would be difficult to preserve a community in the ownership of slaves, would give rise to laws of property and to an increased prestige to the judicial office, even if it did get separated later from the office of priest.

We may be certain, whether or not slavery arose in this fashion, that its institution was of cardinal importance in the development of human society. Even if the sense of property was developed to any degree at a prior period, as, indeed, it is in monkeys and other animals, in the shape of a personal sense of possession, it would only be with the coming of a slave economy that property in instruments of production and land would come forward, as subject matter for the early jurist. In the most primitive societies, in which the means of subsistence were procured by direct labour or by simple exchange, the absence of a state of authority would not be felt as a serious handicap to communal life. But with the growth of more complex relationships, the spoilers of life and land felt the need of a greater protection and of more authoritative sanction than they had hitherto possessed, and this they found either in the original creation of the state, or by covering themselves behind such magical or judicial bodies as existed, and transforming them. The labour of the many, as the state economy proceeded in its development, was appropriated by the few, either by open robbery and violence, or by methods which sound more euphonious to modern ears. The stronger will was imposed, and that stronger will contains the seeds of the present-day political state, with the peculiar social organisation, laws, and maxims of government with which we have become familiar.

The state theorists to-day assure us that the great and powerful corporations known as the governments of France, of England, of the United States, etc., are designed to serve the communities which reside in those

countries. Taxation is for defence, we are told, against the predatory instincts of other states. But the predatory instincts are directed not only outwards, but inwards; and to-day, as in the past, it will be admitted by the candid student that European and American history supports the contention that the state is an organ of economic exploitation. If the state were the servant of the community, why should it always show a jealous fear of democracy? The contentions of those who preach obedience to the state because it is an organ of public service, are more and more seen to involve serious contradictions regarding its origin. They must posit some more or less idyllic origin or divine sanction, whilst professing to believe in a necessary progression from lower to higher, a welding together of the chain of brotherhood by the hammer of force and compulsion under the ægis of a few world states. The fact is that the juristic conceptions of the state hide from us the fact that political and economic exploitation are identical in aim.

Human motives are extremely complex, and social events unpredictable, and because that is so there is a tendency to stress now one interpretation of events and now another, resulting in the one case in utopianism, and in the other in a pessimistic and sinister outlook. We must divest our minds of the sentimental fiction that primitive man was a peaceful and unarmed herdsman, roaming the steppes and prairies seeking fresh pasturage for his flocks, if we would understand how the organisation of the state arose. The herdsman was armed and predatory. The combative instinct was in him, although certainly he did not fight for the joy of the exercise, still less with any idea of chivalry or in pursuit of some code of honour. The warrior fought for loot in the shape of additions to his herds and slaves, in order that his fields might be tilled and his power over his neighbours increased, until, on some fortunate day, even they came under his dominion and he ruled as King of kings. His immediate neighbours, however, knew his resources more accurately than remote strangers. Two or three weaker men might combine to defeat his bid for domination, and in doing so cause anarchy in the community. There was room for compromise, as, compared to the

world outside, more prosperous and powerful men had a common interest in combination, as it would leave them free to exploit and rob more systematically and with greater impunity than ever, and this, moreover, in an ever increasing territory, or in the case of migrating pastoral peoples over a larger number of families. Thus, there came definitely into view the great organisation of the state, with its corollaries of law-makers, priests and a warrior caste.

It is fatally easy to be dogmatic concerning the origins of institutions, and some have stressed particular origins for the state, and dogmatised confidently where knowledge is scant. When we say the state arose in such and such a way, we mean that that was possibly the course in the majority of instances, knowing well that it may have arisen in different places and at different times in a variety of ways; at the best we are dealing only within the bounds of reasonable supposition. It is quite impossible, for instance, to say with certainty whether the main line of development of the modern capitalist state lay through the early maritime stateno doubt the early scene of the development of movable wealth and exploitation by slavery-or through the gradual fixing of location by wandering tribes into the pastoral state, developing into a feudalism of one form or another with a great regard for landed property rather than commerce.

For the present purpose, this part of the controversy may be left on one side. The prime fact is that early states practised exploitation in the political field, as an extension of economic exploitation, and in this respect' the modern state is true to type. The exploitation is expressed in many ways, by the preserving of feudal rights and ancient privileges by the inheritors, to the exclusion of the rest of the community, no less than in the economic imperialism of Frenchmen, Englishmen, Americans, Dutchmen and Japanese. The policies of modern states are devoted to the use of political instruments for the economic exploitation of less favoured lands. Thus we have cause for quarrel between all the great nations in every corner of the world, whether the material struggled for be oil or tropical raw products and markets. The certainty that those potential quarrels