ake the statement do not follow the precept, and
the long list of penal laws that die from lack of enforcement instead of
by repeal is too well known to warrant the belief that anyone pays
serious attention to such a purely academic statement. No one believes
in the enforcement of all laws or the duty to obey all laws, and no one,
in fact, does obey them all. Those who proclaim the loudest the duty of
obedience to all laws never obey, for example, the revenue laws. These
are clear and explicit, and yet men take every means possible to have
their property exempted from taxation--in other words, to defraud the
State. This is done on the excuse that everyone else does it, and the
man who makes a strict return according to law would pay the taxes of
the shirkers. While this is true, it simply shows that all men violate
the law when the justification seems sufficient to them. The laws
against blasphemy, against Sunday work and Sunday play, against buying
and transporting intoxicating liquors and smuggling goods are freely
violated. Many laws are so recent that they have not grown to be
folk-ways or fixed new habits, and their violation brings no moral
shock. In spite of the professions often made, most men have a poor
opinion of congressmen and legislators, and feel that their own
conscience is a much higher guide for them than the law.

Religions have always taught obedience to God or to what takes His
place. Religious commands and feelings, are higher and more binding on
man than human law. The captains of industry are forever belittling and
criticising all those laws made by legislatures and courts which
interfere with the unrestricted use of property. None of this sort of
legislation has their approval and the courts are regarded as meddlesome
when they enforce it. The anti-trust laws, the anti-pooling laws,
factory legislation of all kinds, anything in short that interferes with
the unrestricted use of property by its owner are roundly condemned and
violated by evasion. On the other hand, so much has been written and
said in reference to the creation of the fundamental rights to own
property, and these rights depend so absolutely upon social arrangements
and work out such manifest injustice and inequality, that there is
always a deep-seated feeling of protest against many of our so-called
property laws. From those who advocate a new distribution of wealth and
condemn the injustice of present property rights, the step is