At The Same Time The Lawlessness
Ingrained By Governors Among The Governed During The Last Thirty, Forty,
Or It May
Be fifty years; the brutal levity of the public conscience in
regard to public duty; the toughening and suppling of
Public morals, and
the reckless disregard for human life, bred by impotent laws and
fostered by familiarity with needless accidents and criminal neglect,
will miraculously disappear. If the laws of cause and effect that
control even the freest people in the world say otherwise, so much the
worse for the laws. America makes her own. Behind her stands the ghost
of the most bloody war of the century caused in a peaceful land by long
temporising with lawlessness, by letting things slide, by shiftlessness
and blind disregard for all save the material need of the hour, till the
hour long conceived and let alone stood up full-armed, and men said,
'Here is an unforeseen crisis,' and killed each other in the name of God
for four years.
In a heathen land the three things that are supposed to be the pillars
of moderately decent government are regard for human life, justice,
criminal and civil, as far as it lies in man to do justice, and good
roads. In this Christian city they think lightly of the first - their own
papers, their own speech, and their own actions prove it; buy and sell
the second at a price openly and without shame; and are, apparently,
content to do without the third.
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