The State is the rule of the bad.[995] "'If the State power were to be annihilated, the wicked would rule over the less wicked,' say the defenders of State rule."[996] But has the power, when it has passed from some men to some others in the State, really always come to the better men? "When Louis the Sixteenth, Robespierre, Napoleon, came to power, who ruled then, the better or the worse? When did the better rule, when the power was vested in the Versaillese or in the Communards, when Charles the First or Cromwell stood at the head of the government? When Peter the Third was czar, and then when after his murder the authority of czar was exercised in one part of Russia by Catharine and in another by Pugatcheff, who was wicked then and who was good? All men who find themselves in power assert that their power is necessary in order that the wicked may not do violence to the good, and regard it as self-evident that they are the good and are giving the rest of the good protection against the bad."[997] But in reality those who grasp and hold the power cannot possibly be the better.[998] "In order to obtain and retain power, one must love it. But the effort after power is not apt to be coupled with goodness, but with the opposite qualities, pride, craft, and cruelty. Without exalting self and abasing others, without hypocrisy, lying, prisons, fortresses, penalties, killing, no power can arise or hold its own."[999] "It is downright ridiculous to speak of Christians in power."[1000] To this it is to be added "that the possession of power depraves men."[1001] "The men who have the power cannot but misuse it; they must infallibly be unsettled by such frightful authority."[1002] "However many means men have invented to hinder the possessors of power from subordinating the welfare of the whole to their own advantage, hitherto not one of these means has worked. Everybody knows that those in whose hands is the power--be they emperors, ministers, chiefs of police, or common policemen--are, just because the power is in their hands, more inclined to immorality, to the subordinating of the general welfare to their advantage, than those who have no power; nor can it be otherwise."[1003]