With the high dignity and impeccability of a State religion, the State's agents become a separate and superior caste, with authority to bind and loose, and their thumbs in every pot

You can read Albert Jay Nock's 1935 book, Our Enemy, The State, for free at the FEE website.

One of the introductory quotes reads thusly: 

“It [the State] has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they penetrate to every act of the citizen, however secret; it has begun to throw around its operations the high dignity and impeccability of a State religion; its agents become a separate and superior caste, with authority to bind and loose, and their thumbs in every pot. But it still remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men. 

~ Henry L. Mencken, 1926.