The other primary function of government is the maintenance of public order――in other words, the enforcement of the laws it has enacted. Among the Medes and Persians, whose laws were never altered, this was the main function of government. And in a non-progressive world the task of keeping everyone “in his place” and preventing him from encroaching on his neighbours might well fill the whole sphere of government. The Anarchist ideal of the abolition of all government is only possible if we can abolish the natural tendency of all living things to expand and extend their sphere of action; or if we can endow its neighbours with sufficient reserves of energy to be able to oppose any undue expansion. If a motorist knocks down a pedestrian, we discourage that undue extension of his sphere by a fine or imprisonment. If we could endow every pedestrian with the physical power of stopping a car, say, by raising his hand; or if, alternatively, we could make him invulnerable, indestructible, and untraversable, there would be no need for prosecutions, and Anarchism would, in that particular case, become a possible system. The idea of a government being something superior to ordinary humanity is somewhat ludicrous. In actual practice, government is the servant of the public, and not its master. There are countless cases of the process of law being used for private ends. The rule of conduct among some powerful individuals and corporations is to “go on until you are stopped,” in other words, to do what you like until somebody objects, or until you are stopped by the law. The law is thus used as a sort of indicator or “automatic cut-out” much as an electrical engineer would use a safety-fuse. The main difference is that the “blowing” of some particular fuses leads to explosions and permanent damage, as when a crime is committed. The business of government is hard and sometimes very exacting work. One can imagine some misdemeanant of the future being condemned to carry on the government, or some important function of it, for so many months, as the most exacting form of hard labour.