ENFORCING THE LAW

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, Cal. · Dec 6, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 49.

ENFORCING THE LAW.

The men who are most prominent in the public eye and who are apparently in the line of succession for the highest places in the gift of the nation are men who are insisting that law is law, and that it should be enforced for that reason.—Exchange.

A LL the bitter persecutions of all the “dark ages” of the world’s history were simply the work of law enforcement. The rigorous treatment of the Israelites in Egypt was a process of law enforcement. The casting of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego into the fiery furnace was the enforcement of a royal law. So was the throwing of Daniel into the lion’s den. Saul’s bitter persecution of the disciples at Jerusalem was by authority of the law. Saul was a great stickler for law enforcement. All the Christian martyrs—numbering millions that have been put to death by the sanction of any government, were the victims of law enforcement.

It is a fact that there are hundreds of laws, and many very prominent ones, that the people would gladly have repealed; but in the main the people are powerless in the matter of law-making. It is only by the expensive processes of agitation and petitioning immediately preceding an election that the people can exercise any perceptible influence on the men who are supposed to represent them as law-makers. With many bad laws, the people’s will is best subserved by letting them lie dormant.

We are not assuming, however, that there is not a lack of enforcing some very wholesome laws because of favoritism toward personal or political friends. And some laws were not expected to be enforced; they were enacted for political purposes, and often legislators vote for measures they do not endorse, in order to secure return support for some pet measure in which they are personally interested. The strict enforcement of all the laws in any of the “civilized” countries of the world would produce a condition of tyranny that would stir up a revolution within a few years. Such is the imperfection of man’s work.