Cincinnati daily press. [volume] (Cincinnati [Ohio]) 1860-1862, 1861-02-11


bic The evil is at the very bottom, in the
idea that the laws of people are formed
by legislation, and can be perfected by legis
latien that this is a government Of insti-
tutions, and that the Legislature is to tinker
the institutions until they are perfect, and
then the people will be perfect.
There is nothing valuable in our laws nor
in our principles of human rights, that has
I not been the creation of centuries of accre-
tion of human reason as developed by the
administration of law. Legislation has never
done any thing but put into statutes settled
legal principles, except when it went back
ward toward barbarism. But our Legisla-
ture, gathered together mostly from those
who had not a solitary idea in seeking an
election, except political prominence, or
party victory, or some measure to be carried
! for personal or corrupt reasons, imagine
themselves the fountain of all law, and go to
work demoralizing the law by making it
subse1vient to such motives and purposes.
Law, as it has been naturally developed,
is the perfection of reason. Law, when it
gets into the power of Legislatures, is the
sum of all imperfections, ignorance, partisan
nalignity, corruption and meanness, that
such bodies gather together. The one con-
sanity approaches perfection; the other
constantly tends to Generalization and de-
| graduation. In this country we have set
| up institutions as we call our legisla-
| tomas superior to man. The people
is supposed to owe all its vitality to
| the accident of institutions formed by
/ dead men. This is the perpetual theme
! of our Chinese style of oratory, which is
always eulogizing our dead ancestors first,
| and ourselves next because we have the in
stitutions they gave us.
| If cur system of Government were the
| same as that of the Chinese, this fulsome
idiocy would Go us no more harm than it
does them. We might hold our own, as
they do, without relapsing into barbarism.
| But under our system of exalting institu-
tional law as our god, we seek to incorporate
every human right and principle of law into
institutions; and as soon as we have done
this they cease to be human rights and
principles of law, and become the mean
creatures of legislation, to be knocked about
by every change of party majorities, and
subject to party malignity and corruption.
In the first place, merely as party ruse,
after defeat, to come into power on anew is
sue, we set aside State Constitution, which
embodied the fundamental principles of hu-
man liberty which civilization has devel-
oped through ages, and make another, on
the plea that the people had outgrown the
first And the second, in order to be in pro-
portion to the size of the people, must be
made four times as long as the first, and
contain corresponding number of restric-
tions and crude party dogmas. We assure
our readers that the first Constitution of
Ohio, and the only decent one the State has
had, was set aside for just such a reason as
this.
In this, at one fatal step, we overthrow the
fundamental principle of written Constitn-
ton: that it is to be only a declaration Of
such principles of human rights as ages oi
reason have fixed, and which are eternal as
truth and that Constitution is merely to
organize a Government which, being or.
ganized, may progress with the people, and
we set up in its stead the plan that q Consti
tuition is to be collection of such partisan
dogmas and machinery as may be uppermos
at each period when it is made over, and thai
the progress Of the people is to stop at these
for fifty years, until the Constitution shall
: be again lifted to allow the people to take
another progressive step and then it is to
be fastened down for another half century.
In this way, by very brief process, our
, boasted capacity for self lfgovernment has
succeeded in placing an institutional tomb
stone on our progress. Next the rules o.
practice in our courts of law, which have
been progressing with the development o.
law and the progress of civilization, must
| have the tombstone of code placed over
it, the combination of the hastily-gathered
crudities Of three lawyers, Of such caliber as
T party fortune pleased to give at the time.
Thus, the course of law, which, through the
sitting Of judicial processes, must reach the
perfection Of reason before it can stand, is
I turned back and terminates a4 the arbitrary
dicta Of three, perhaps, poor lawyers.
: This is the boasted progress of our institu
t tlons. Fourth-of-July orators are great OF
: this institutional perfection, just as they arr
. over "the wisest fabric of human Govern
ment on which the sun ever shone and thu
f most stable because founded in the consen
4 of the people" which has now dropped t.
pieces from its own rottenness and treachery
= so that it is Kissing and by-word to the
! whole earth.
But the code does not become fixed by
: being made an institution. Nothing insti
a tutional is fixed. 1t is then only put il
J. shape to be kicked by every fool. The codt
e can be amended by legislation; and this il
/ the favorite occupation of one horse lawyer
t in the Legislature. They assume it as thei
b province, Of course; and the other legisla
), tors give them their own way. Thus thu
perfection runs out at any pettifogger in tn,
Legislature, who may have defeated hinsel
. in court by his own blunder, and who want
v the code made TO fit such a case next time.
T. Any one can see that when legal prin
IT eiple becomes subject to legislation, it
n. destroyed. As far as possible legal princi
D pies and practice should be kept out of th
y demoralizing process of legislation. The
10 have, at Columbus, Senate Judiciary Con
IN mittee which boasts Of its execution
it slaughtering bills that are referred to it.
de it would slaughter all of its own bills