The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-02-19
OBLIGATION OF OBEDIENCE
SUBJECT or JUDGE BREWER'S LECTURE YESTERDAY AFTERNOON.

Lynch Law, Carrie Nation and Strikes
 Were Interesting Points lm the Ad-
 dress-There Was a Very Large Att
 yViIl he Given Tomorrow Afternoon.
 Judge David J. Brewer, of the su- preme court Of the United States, gave the fourth of the series of leat,u es ii Hendrie hall yesterday afternoon, and there was very large attendance. There will be one more lecture III the course given by the prominent judge, and that will be delivered at o'clock tomorrow afternoon, the subject belng 1.-The Duty of Every Citizen In Trying to Make the Nation the Better
 The subject of the lecture yesterday was obligation of Obedience" The speaker opened his lecture by referring to his previous lectures, telling what ground he had covered and then came to the subject of the day. The lynch law, the crusades of Mrs. Carrie Nation in Kansas and the way the prohibition laws are enforced in Kansas were the most interesting topics of the lecture, although all the subjects touched upon were very instructive and interesting. Judge Brewer spoke of the burning of negro in Leavenworth, Ky, recently, and said that the act, like others of the kind, would always leave blot on the law of the country.
 In referring to the joint" smashing of Mrs Carrie Nation he said that she no doubt aspired to be the successor of John Brown and that her work would have it's effects at first, but in five or ten years there would probably be the same condition of affairs. He said that it is the officers of the Jaw that are to suppress the saloon keepers, and unless they take the matter in their hands, which they never have done, there will be no change in the present conditions The speaker said that while he was on the supreme bench of the state num- Der of years ago the prohibition laws were passed, but they have ceased to be enforced.
 Judge Brewer spoke in part as fol- lows:
 The next form of obligation to which I wish to call your attention is that of obedience. It is necessity of every organized community that there should of individuals Without them state of anarchy would exist, each man being law unto himself, and the diverse pur- poses and wishes bringing about con- stant collisions It is true laws and rules place some restraint on human act on, but it does not follow therefrom that they at all interfere with liberty in its truest sense. For liberty does not imply license, absolute freedom of ac- ton, but simply the right to do that which one deems best subject to the limitation that it does not interfere with the equil rights of other members of the community. In a government by the people law is the expressed will of the majority. Back of it stands the power of the organized.communit That pow CT exists to compel obedience to law, and to many, therefore, Jaw stands sim ply as the representation of force something which must be yielded to, not because there Is a pleasure in so doing, but because there is necessity there for and unfortunate penalties for not yielding. So, to many, law Is something which always stands in antagonism to them. The officers of the law are their enemies, and they feel a secret pleasure whenever they see them baffled in their efforts to execute it. It is popular to sheer at and ridicule the policeman, all though without him we would be at the mercy of the worst elements.
 It often happens that the meaning of law is debatable, is disputed. Within the nation we have tribunals to deter mine such matters of dispute, but if a tribunal decides the meaning against our contention, not infrequently then that tribunal becomes Itself the object of antagonism, and we look upon it as simply anothef instrumentality by which we are coerced into that which we do not wish and have become again the victims of mere arbitrary power.
 We may here note in passing the diff ference between that law which obtains within nation, or municipal law, as 1t is called, and international law, the body of rules which regulate the inter- course of nations. In respect to the lat ter, there is neither tribunal to deter mine what is the law, nor organized force to compel obedience. The separ- ate nations construe for themselves, and when selfish interests require abide by their own interpretations or defiantly repudiate the law entirely. The con- trast between that condition and that of law within nation where there is a tribunal to determine the meaning and a power to enforce obedience is obvi- ous.
 Istlo not mean to say that there are no circumstances under which disobedience to law may become a duty. Half a century. ago there was great discussion in this country upon the question of the higher law, and that there is higher law I concede. The law of righteous ness is above the law of the nation, but nevertheless the instances in which the higher law will conflict with the law of the nation are so rare that it does not seem profitable to use much time in discussing them. It certainly i'll be- comes one as an excuse for disobedience to create a mere imaginary conflict be- tween municipal law and the higher law. Human nature is so cinstituted that when a law does not suit us we look with great complacency upon the suggestion that it conflicts with some higher law, and that, therefore, we ought to disobey it. Often one fancies that he has grave religious doubts when it is mere matter of a disordered liver. As Mrs Bateman, one of the E1o rip pvtn