ost contemptible and mercenary of men. The philosopher of
British Socialism informs us: "It is an undoubted truth that no judge
can be strictly an honest man. The judge must necessarily be a man of
inferior moral calibre. A judge, by the fact of his being a judge,
proclaims himself a creature on a lower moral level than us ordinary
mortals, and this without any assumption of moral superiority above
the average on our part. He deliberately pledges himself, that is, to
be false to himself. He may any day have to pass sentence on one whom
he believes to be innocent. He lays himself under the obligation of
administering a law which he may know to be bad on any occasion when
called upon, merely because it is a law. He makes this surrender of
humanity and honour for what? For filthy lucre and tawdry notoriety.
Now, I ask, can we conceive a more abjectly contemptible character
than that which acts thus?"[877]

The cause of the hatred with which the British Socialists contemplate
the law and the judges is obvious:

They're blocking up the highway; yes, they think to keep us back
By piling barriers of law and falsehood on the track;
We'll break the barriers down, and burn them into cinders black,
As we go marching to liberty.[878]

Come every honest lad and lass!
Too long we've been kept under
By rusty chains of fraud and fear--
We'll snap them all asunder!

That robbers' paction styled the Law
To frighten honest folk, sirs,
We'll set ablaze and fumigate
The country with the smoke, sirs.[879]

When Jack Cade, whom the Socialists praise as a social reformer,
marched at the head of the insurrectionists into London, one of his
first acts was to burn the stored-up documents of the law, an act
which Shakespeare immortalised in his "Henry VI." in the following
words:

"Cade: Is not this a lamentable thing, that of the skin of an innocent
lamb should be made parchment? that parchment, being scribbled o'er,
should undo a man?... Away, burn all the records of the realm: my
mouth shall be the parliament of England.

"John (_aside_): Then we are like to have biting statutes, unless his
teeth be pulled out.

"Cade: And henceforward all things shall be in common."[880]

Socialism will abolish the law: "The great act of confiscation will be
the seal of the new era; then, and not till then, will the knell of
Civilisation, with its rights of property and its class