the predicament, a system of moral philosophy professes to be a code of correct rules for the control of human beings ? fitted for the regulation of the best as well as the worst members of the race ? applicable, if true, to the guidance of humanity in its highest conceivable perfection. Government, however, is an institution originating in man's imperfection; an institution confessedly begotten by necessity out of evil; one which might be dispensed with were the world peopled with the unselfish, the conscientious, the philanthropic; one, in short, inconsistent with this same "highest conceivable perfection." How, then, can that be a true system of morality which adopts government as one of its premises? Author's Endnotes 1 Sir William Blackstone (1723-1780) was the most renowned of English jurists. 2 Hence may be drawn an argument for direct taxation; seeing that only when taxation is direct does repudiation of state burdens become possible.