|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 3
In the same way and by virtue of the same sovereignty, the people of the
United States may lay aside the common method of indicating their
pleasure to the Executive, and substitute one more in consonance with
the requirements of the times. They may make known that they _do_ lay
aside an established mode, either by a formal notice or by a general
tacit understanding, as the exigencies of the case require. They may
recognize the right, aye, the _duty_ of the Executive to act in
accordance with other methods than those prescribed for ordinary
seasons, in cases where the national security demands this.
But this is not an abandonment of the methods and forms of law! This is
not the establishment of an _arbitrary_ government! This is not passing
from freedom to despotism! The _people_ of this country are sovereign,
let it be repeated. So long as its Government is conducted as its people
or as the majority of them wish, it is conducted in accordance with its
established principle. There were no freedom if the vital spirit of
liberty were to be held in bondage to the dead forms of powerless or
obsolete prescriptions in the very crisis of the nation's death
struggle! Freedom means freedom to act, in all cases and under all
circumstances, so as to secure the highest individual and national
well-being. It does _not_ mean freedom to establish certain codes of
procedure under certain regulations, and to be forever bound under these
when the preservation of liberty itself demands their temporary
abeyance. So long as the Government fulfils the wishes of the people, it
is not arbitrary, it is not despotic, no matter what methods an
emergency may require it to adopt for this purpose, or in what manner it
ascertains these wishes; provided always that the methods adopted and
the modes of ascertainment are also in accordance with the people's
desires.
But how is the Executive to discover the will of the people if he does
not wait for its formal expression? How is he to be sure that he does
not outrun their desires? How is he to be checked and punished, should
he do so? Precisely the same law must apply here as has been indicated
to be the true one in reference to the fulfilment of the people's
behest. Fixed, definite, precise, formal expressions of popular will,
when time is wanting for these, must be replaced by those which are more
quickly ascertained and less systematically expressed. The Executive
must forecast the general desire and forestall its commands, regarding
the tacit acceptance of the people or their _informal_ laws, such as
resolutions, conventions, and various modes of expressing popular accord
or dissent, as indications of the course which they approve. Nor is this
an anomaly in our legal system. The citizen ordinarily is not at liberty
to take the law into his own hands; he must appeal to the constituted
authorities, and through the machinery of a law court obtain his redress
or protection. But there are times when contingencies arise in which
more wrong would be done by such delay than by a summary process
transcending the customary law. The man who sees a child, a woman, or
even an animal treated with cruelty, does not wait to secure protection
for the injured party by the common methods of legal procedure, but, on
the instant, prevents, with blows if need be, the outrage. He oversteps
the forms of law to secure the ends of law, and rests in the
consciousness that the law itself will accept his action. When the case
is more desperate, his usurpation of power generally prohibited to him
is still greater, up to that last extremity in which he deliberately
takes the whole law into his own hands, and, acting as accuser, witness,
judge, executioner, slays the individual who assaults him with deadly
weapons or with hostile intent.
In this case now stands the nation. Along her borders flashes the steel
of hostile armies, their cannon thunder almost in hearing of our
capitol, their horses but recently trampled the soil of neighboring
States. A deadly enemy is trying to get its gripe upon the republic's
throat and its knife into her heart. The nation must act as an
individual would under similar circumstances; and the nation must act
through its Executive. If one person, attacked by another, should snatch
from the hands of a passer his cane, in order to defend his life; if, in
his struggles with his assailant, he should strike a second through
misconception, how immeasurably ridiculous would be the action of these
individuals, should they, while the death struggle were still raging,
berate the man, one for breaking the law by taking away his cane, and
the other for breaking the law by the commission of a battery! Every man
feels instinctively that in such a crisis all weapons of defence are at
his disposal, and that he takes them, _not_ in violation of law, but in
obedience to the law of extraordinary contingencies, which every
community adopts, but which no community can inscribe upon its statute
book, _because it is_ the law of contingencies.
The Executive of this, as of every country, resorts to this law when, in
the nature of things, the statute law is inadequate. In doing this, he
does not violate law; he only adopts another kind of law. A subtle,
delicate law, indeed, which can neither be inscribed among the
enactments, nor exactly defined, circumscribed, or expressed. When it is
to be substituted for the ordinary modes of legal procedure, how far it
is to be used, when its use must cease--these are questions which the
people, as the sole final arbiters, must decide. As the individual in
society must judge wisely when the community will sanction his use of
the contingent law, the law of private military power, so to speak, in
his own behalf; so must the Executive judge when the urgency of the
national defence demands the exercise of the summary power in the place
of more technical methods. If the public sentiment of the community
sustain the individual, it is an indorsement that he acted justifiably
in accordance with this exceptional law; if it do not, he is liable for
an unwarranted usurpation of power. The Executive stands in the same
relation to the nation. The Mohammedans relate that the road to heaven
is two miles long, stretching over a fathomless abyss, the only pathway
across which is narrower than a razor's edge. Delicately balanced must
be the body which goes over in safety! The intangible path which the
Executive must walk to meet the people's wishes on the one side, and to
avoid their fears upon the other, in the national peril, is narrower
than the Mahommedan's road to heaven, and cautiously bold must be the
feet that safely tread it! Blessed shall that man be who succeeds in
crossing. The nations shall rise up and call him blessed, and succeeding
generations shall praise him.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|