“For both Johnson and Burke, the key to sustaining social order was what they called “subordination.” Today that word probably suggests servility or even oppression. For them it meant a traditional structure of deference that kept society cooperative and peaceful rather than anarchic. “I am a friend to subordination,” Johnson said, “as most conducive to the happiness of society. There is a reciprocal pleasure in governing and being governed.”31 England was what would nowadays be called a minimalist state. There was no effective police, commodities were taxed but incomes were not, and there was little direct control from above. Much that we take for granted today as the responsibility of government—fire protection, highway maintenance,water supply, managing jails—was the domain of private enterprise when it existed at all. Local needs, therefore, had to be addressed locally, by town aldermen and by country squires, who exerted great influence over their neighborhoods. Serious crimes were tried at circuit courts during the occasional visits of judges, but the rest of the time the squires acted as justices of the peace, adjudicating minor offenses in a sort of home-based legal system. “It was because of the underlying unity of the elites, and of the largely unquestioning habits of deference by those below, reemphasized daily in action and in prayer, reinforced by the solemn ritual of the death sentence and execution of lower-class criminals against property, that the state apparatus could remain so relatively weak in eighteenth-century England without a total collapse of social order.”32 Damrosch, Leo. The Club (Kindle Locations 2963-2966). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition. Damrosch, Leo. The Club (Kindle Locations 2955-2959). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition. Damrosch, Leo. The Club (Kindle Locations 2950-2955). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition. ”

— Harsh justice as way of maintaining small state in England