Caleb Williams opens the Book in The Trunk

But what was in the trunk, I asked. I can now tell you that it was the Technicolor version of Political Justice . The pallid philosophical musing of that text has a Lockean flavour which, given subsequent serious emendations, has only the appearance of deeply considered obiter dicta.

Consider this citation in the light of Caleb Williams’ association with a band of thieves during a period of his escape from false imprisonment:

The most desirable condition of the human species is a state of society.
The injustice and violence of men in a state of society produced the demand for government.
Government, as it was forced upon mankind by their vices, so has it commonly been the creature of their ignorance and mistake.
Government was intended to suppress injustice, but it offers new occasions and temptations for the commission of it.
By concentrating the force of the community, it gives occasion to wild projects of calamity, to oppression, despotism, war and conquest.
By perpetuating and aggravating the inequality of property, it fosters many injurious passions, and excites men to the practice of robbery and fraud.
Government was intended to suppress injustice, but its effect has been to embody and perpetuate it.

(from the summary of principles in Godwin’s introduction to Political Justice
Find it in a clean copy from Adelaide:
political justice

The captain of the brigands is angered that one of them has wounded Williams without any good reason:

"I have nothing to say to you; I have no hopes of you! Comrades, it is for you to decide upon the conduct of this man as you think proper. You know how repeated his offences have been; you know what pains I have taken to mend him. Our profession is the profession of justice." [It is thus that the prejudices of men universally teach them to colour the most desperate cause to which they have determined to adhere.] "We, who are thieves without a licence, are at open war with another set of men who are thieves according to law. With such a cause then to bear us out, shall we stain it with cruelty, malice, and revenge? A thief is, of course, a man living among his equals; I do not pretend therefore to assume any authority among you; act as you think proper; but, so far as relates to myself, I vote that Gines be expelled from among us as a disgrace to our society."

Throughout all his sufferings Caleb does a great deal of reasoning in an attempt to moderate his resentment at the cruel fate that a rotten system and its myrmidons have visited upon him.

The voluntary actions of men are under the direction of their feelings.
Reason is not an independent principle, and has no tendency to excite us to action; in a practical view, it is merely a comparison and balancing of different feelings.
Reason, though it cannot excite us to action, is calculated to regulate our conduct, according to the comparative worth it ascribes to different excitements.
It is to the improvement of reason therefore that we are to look for the improvement of our social condition.

(from Political Justice)
Yes what we need are more and better sermons and exhortations. Let them be as readable and exciting as Caleb Williams. It is a fine work of demented hyperventilation which gathers you into its paranoia and leaves you longing for some kind of resolution. Is there to be no justice, will he die as a scoundrel in the eyes of decent society, driven out, lonely, followed and harried by his relentless enemy whose conscience he has become. That conscience must be stifled but left to live, for if killed it would kill Falkland himself. They are bonded together and to the last the tension is maintained. Read it as a manic classic.

Political Justice is composed of mostly short chapters. One a day can be managed. Wonder at the original source, or one of them,of libertarian anarchism and in its way a response, inadequate of course, to Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France.