KING BOMBA'S PHILOSOPHICAL CATECHISM. 623 



to be all equal. Equality before the law, with which liberal phi- 

 losophers seek to flatter the vanity and excite the passions of the 

 populace, is also a chimera. To punish all persons equally for 

 the same overt acts would be manifestly unjust. Throwing a 

 handful of mud at a common laborer should not be visited with 

 as severe a penalty as throwing a handful of mud at a nobleman, 

 because in the case of the laborer the act only occasions a slight 

 inconvenience, while in the case of the nobleman it involves a 

 grievous insult. By such plausible but wholly impertinent illus- 

 trations the shrewd archbishop seeks to shirk the main principle, 

 and to impose upon the simple-minded, who may not have wit 

 enough to detect the fallacies of his reasoning, and to perceive 

 that equality before the law does not imply the necessity of ignor- 

 ing all circumstances, motives, and effects attending a culpable 

 action. He admits, in conclusion, that all men should be equal in 

 the eye of justice, but asserts that " such an equality is already 

 enjoyed by the inhabitants of the whole civilized world, so that 

 there is no need of the liberal philosophers wasting their breath 

 in proclaiming it." If some persons now and then suffer wrong, 

 " this is due to the wickedness of the human heart, and not to any 

 defects of institutions and laws." That it is, however, the object 

 of laws and institutions to restrain the wickedness of the human 

 heart, and that so far as they fail to do this they are defective, is 

 a point wholly ignored. 



After the close of the Franco-German War, the cities of the 

 fatherland began to grow with unwonted rapidity, and many per- 

 sons of the baser sort became owners of urban habitations, and in 

 their pride of acquisition waxed exceedingly arrogant. A citizen 

 of Munich, who had suddenly risen from the low estate of a handi- 

 craftsman to the dignity of a householder, posted up in the lower 

 halls of his tenements a long list of printed rules and regulations 

 to be observed by his tenants, who were not only informed when 

 they must clean and light the stairs, and when they might or 

 might not play on musical instruments, but also received definite 

 and minute instructions touching their personal relations to him- 

 self, how they must greet him in passing, and must treat him with 

 proper respect on all occasions. Having specified all the cases 

 which he could think of, and fearing lest any loophole should be 

 left by which obligations might be evaded, he laid down, in a con- 

 cluding paragraph, the following general principle : " In short, 

 the tenant has no rights, but only duties." 



According to Monsignore Apuzzo, God has regulated the uni- 

 verse on the same principle, and man has no rights in opposition 

 to the sovereigns who rule over him, but only duties toward them. 

 " The law of God commands kings and rulers not to be tyrannical 

 and not to oppress their subjects unnecessarily, and thereby guar- 



