To this type of mind (which is valuable when set to its special and
narrow work) there is no such thing as an exception that proves the rule.
If I vote for confiscating some usurer's millions I am doing, they say,
precisely what I should be doing if I took pennies out of a blind man's
hat. They are both denials of the principle of private property, and are
equally right and equally wrong, according to our view of that principle.
I should find a great many distinctions to draw in such a matter. First,
I should say that taking a usurer's money by proper authority is not
robbery, but recovery of stolen goods. Second, I should say that even if
there were no such thing as personal property, there would still be such a
thing as personal dignity, and different modes of robbery would diminish
it in very different ways. Similarly, there is a truth, but only a
half-truth, in the saying that all modern Powers alike rely on the
Capitalist and make war on the lines of Capitalism. It is true, and it is
disgraceful. But it is _not_ equally true and equally disgraceful. It is
not true that Montenegro is as much ruled by financiers as Prussia, just
as it is not true that as many men in the Kaiserstrasse, in Berlin, wear
long knives in their belts as wear them in the neighbourhood of the Black
Mountain.
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