Law, Force, and Anarchy
By Editor
A DAILY paper says: "It is a pretty safe rule that when it takes deputy sheriffs and Winchesters to execute a law, that law must be bad." Well, hardly. We should say that it may indicate that the people who are violating the law are pretty bad. It has often been the case that the laws against burglary, highway robbery, and murder could not be enforced except by armed officers of the law; yet no one thought of reviling those laws. It was the desperadoes who were bad. Might we not say that when a cause has to be advanced by a mob armed with Winchesters, it is evidence that the cause is a bad one? Such statements as the one quoted tend to throw contempt on law and order, and put a premium on nihilism and anarchy. No wrong was ever righted by the commission of another wrong.