uch
as I can believe, and as I have been endeavoring to make you believe
also, of the subtlety of the Devil, I do not suppose the vine to have
been one of his inventions. Of this, however, more in another place.
By the way, was it not curious that in the 'Manchester Examiner,' in
which that letter of mine on the abuse of dancing appeared, there
chanced to be, in the next column, a paragraph giving an account of a
girl stabbing her betrayer in a ball-room; and another paragraph
describing a Parisian character, which gives exactly the extreme type
I wanted, for example of the abuse of Food?[B]

[A] Appendix 4.

[B] Appendix 5.

64. I return, however, now to the examination of possible means for
the enforcement of justice, in temper and in act, as the first of
political requirements. And as, in stating my conviction of the
necessity of certain stringent laws on this matter, I shall be in
direct opposition to Mr. Stuart Mill; and, more or less, in opposition
to other professors of modern political economy, as well as to many
honest and active promoters of the privileges of working men (as if
privilege only were wanted and never restraint!), I will give you, as
briefly as I can, the grounds on which I am prepared to justify such
opposition.

65. When the crew of a wrecked ship escape in an open boat, and the
boat is crowded, the provisions scanty, and the prospect of making
land distant, laws are instantly established and enforced which no one
thinks of disobeying. An entire equality of claim to the provisions is
acknowledged without dispute; and an equal liability to necessary
labor. No man who can row is allowed to refuse his oar; no man,
however much money he may have saved in his pocket, is allowed so much
as half a biscuit beyond his proper ration. Any riotous person who
endangered the safety of the rest would be bound, and laid in the
bottom of the boat, without the smallest compunction, for such
violation of the principles of individual liberty; and, on the other
hand, any child, or woman, or aged person, who was helpless, and
exposed to great danger and suffering by their weakness, would receive
more than ordinary care and indulgence, not unaccompanied with
unanimous self-sacrifice on the part of the laboring crew.

There is never any question under circumstances like these, of what is
right and wrong, worthy and unworthy, wise or foolish. If there _be_
any question, there is little hope for boat or cr