The Anarchist Handbook

by Michael Malice

The “commonwealth of right,” as the Vossische Zeitung among others stands for it, asks that office-holders be removable only by the judge, not by the administration. Vain illusion! If it were settled by law that an office-holder who is once seen drunken shall lose his office, then the judges would have to condemn him on the word of the witnesses. In short, the law-giver would only have to state precisely all the possible grounds which entail the loss of office, however laughable they might be (that is, he who laughs in his superiors’ faces, who does not go to church every Sunday, who does not take the communion every four weeks, who runs in debt, who has disreputable associates, who shows no determination, etc., shall be removed. These things the law-giver might take it into his head to prescribe for a court of honour); then the judge would solely have to investigate whether the accused had “become guilty” of those “offences,” and, on presentation of the proof, pronounce sentence of removal against him “in the name of the law.”