Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



it becomes clear that the thief (and the poacher 

 before-mentioned) is that person who is protesting 

 against the too-exclusive domination of a passing 

 ideal. Whatever should we do without him ? 

 He is keeping open for us, as Hinton I think 

 expresses it, the path to a regenerate society, and 

 is more useful to that end than many a platform 

 orator. He it is that makes Care to sit upon 

 the Crupper of Wealth, and so, in course of 

 time, causes the burden and bother of private 

 property to become so intolerable that society 

 gladly casts it down on common ground. Vast 

 as is the machinery of Law, and multifarious 

 the ways in which it seeks to crush the thief, 

 it has signally failed, and fails ever more and 

 more. The thief will win. He will get what 

 he wants, but (as usual in human life !) in a 

 way and in a form very different from what he 

 expected. 



And when we regard the thief in himself, we 

 cannot say that we find him less human than 

 other classes of society. The sentiment of large 

 bodies of thieves is highly communistic among 

 themselves ; and if they thus represent a survival 

 from an earlier age, they might also be looked 

 upon as the precursors of a better age in the future. 

 They have their pals in every town, with runs and 

 refuges always open, and are lavish and generous 

 to a degree to their own kind. And if they look 

 upon the rich as their natural enemies and fair 

 prey, a view which it might be difficult to gainsay, 

 many of them at any rate are animated by a good 



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