20
LAW AND LIBERTY.
liberty. Yet it presents to a reflecting mind the most rigid compilation of laws known to man—the most ideal blending of law and liberty. The tree, whose lifeblood flows in too sluggish currents, early falls into the "sear and yellow leaf." The grain that lags in its work, changes its green dress for the brown or gray of decay and death, long before the hour when it might have worn the golden colors of the ripened harvest. So is it with the negligence, the frailty of man. We allow them to govern us, we give way to their alluringness, their coquetry, their wantonness, but when we must pay the penalty we shout for liberty but demur to law.
Law and liberty then are compatriots. They are identical elements, in power and good the greatest, working for the installment and perpetuation of perfect civilization. Customs, habits, fashion, all these at their best, produce law. Law establishes liberty. Liberty gives us civilization.
The profession of law is isolated. Its formation, its intent, its purpose, its principles are not commonly understood. Humanity is largely composed of prejudice. The people construe a law upon its face, with no knowledge of its manifold and intricate phases. They do not know that of all the thousand upon thousand principles of law, comparatively few are of general aptness. The varied hue of civilization changes with the change of day, yet a law to stand the test must endure for decades —yes centuries. Sometimes we see a just cause overthrown, because of failure in complying with a rule of law. We never stop to think by a cold, reasoning, logical, impartial process that the violation of that one principle may open the way for a hundred fiends, if the violator go unpunished, unwarned. Individuality, or personality, has ever been the controlling element in rousing to action the envious, quarrelsome attributes of man. We have ever held our own interests of greater moment, the interests of the community of lesser. We think a law which irritates or fetters us in our likes or dislikes, unwise, arrogant, not stopping to consider that it may be the
best possible for our dozen neighbors, that it may insure to them freedom, expanse, liberty. If the sovereignty of law had been, if it were now of first importance in the hearts of all, no scandalous war would blacken the history of this Union. But until passion gives way to reason, prejudice to logic, self to genorosity, we may look for the blackness of angry hearts. When law and liberty become identical in the minds of all; when we refuse to consider them antagonistic, then may we see a brighter day, happier homes, a more contented people.
Through the darkness and gloom of ages we can trace the history of mankind. The duty they so sadly neglected, we have partially accomplished to day. The history of that day and this, the history intermediate, furnish us the growth of law and the progress of liberty as coincident elements. Law was in its crude, narrow, limited existence with these slavish, unenlightened, awestricken peoples. Strength, really, not law, ruled. Liberty, because of the weakness of the age, was unknown. As law became written, liberty became popular. As generosity enjoyed moments of triumph broader and wider laws become numerous. As laws became numerous liberty gained the ascendency. So they followed, each the other, until to-day they work side by side for the same purposes, to the same ends. This growth has ultimately given us free America. And to the law, whether made under the cowl of the monk, the cloak of the priest, or openly in the forum, we owe this present granduer of liberty. Our own legacy, this gem of civil government, will rightly give the credit where it is due before another century of time is told. Thus we have the growth of law and liberty—of liberty in law. They are the balance wheels of civilization. In both are flaws and faults, as in every thing of human structure. But as we attain a higher intellectual atmosphere the laws of its creation will more persuasively lead us into the road of right and justice than can selfishness and prejudice extort us to wrong. In this atmos-