The Newtown bee., 1904-05-27
TOWN TOPICS
SOCIAL TOPICS.

LAWS AND MORALS.-BY o. o. WRIGHT.
 There are many good people in this country who to all appearances seem to think that all that is necessary in order to regulate the conduct of socie- ty is to get up a controlling party in politics and make laws. Whatever the great question on which the peo- ple are naturally divided in their views, social, moral, or simply economic, the impulse is to form new party and get the power of legislation.
 And so we have prohibition party which proposes to legi4ate intoxica- ting liquors out of the world; labor party which aims to legis1ate away all drudgery and make every man rich and happy, and so on through the list. Laws are vainly supposed to cure the moral evils which afflict the world. As though majority of voters could by any means seriously affect the condi- the evils that are to be cured. And as though nothing could be done in this country without party or purpose to do it!
 We would not make light of legisla- tiOn, which is good and needful in it's place, but laws can do but little at best to change the moral conditions of life. If we would make men temperate we must touch their hearts with motives to better life, as we'll as to restrain them by enforcing the law. If the la. boring man is to be lifted up it will not be by simply shortening his hours of work, nor by dividing his neighbors property with him; but by new hopes and higher purposes in living. The man must be changed as well as the ,,r,1ar vuo al ho 1o Tn. deed, change the man and the most essential factor of the labor problem | will be changed.
 Confused notions of laws and morals are the causes of much mischief in this good land of liberty. We depend tol much upon legislation and not enough on moral incentives and intelligent self-intereSt. Our children need to bt taught by 'precept and example thai the moral quality of all our actions must be found in our motives and in tentions. In one way or another peo pie come to judge their moral conduct by the civil law-the public statutes rather than by the ten commandment or the Golden Rule. As 1t has beer said: '"They seem to think that thes, right guidance of the subjects of thu state in their dealings with one an other. They accept them as stand ards of sound morality, and feel, n doubt, that they are entirely righteou if they live up to the requirements o the law which their legislatures ant courts have set forth. No idea could be more destructive of true under standing of right and wrong. Thes laws which our courts enforce not onl, are not meant to be moral rules, bu ] they could not, by any possibility, ,hav' that character or quality given t. them. Nobody can frame direction that will tell us, in every case of ou dealing with another, what conduct i called for by the Golden Rule. As
 little thought will show us, each cas raises question which the person COT cerned must settle for himself. A ma must learn from his own consciousness the line of right conduct which h claims from his neighbor, in order t give true moral aim to his own COT duct toward the one of whom h
 makes the claim. In no other way ca
 his action be rightly fitted to it's Gil
 cumstanceS; in no other way can it b
 a moral act of his own. If his line (
 conduct is simply that which the la,
 lays down, and which it's courts ca compel him to follow, it is not his owl
 and therefore, there can be little
 no morality in his obedience to it, |
 matter how right it may be.
 "Since it is plainly true that nc
 many of these laws of human makin
 would be needed if every man did others as be would have them do
 him, it follows that most of them al
 made solely for the coercion of peopl
 who will not learn for themselve
 what is right and do it of their OW
 accord. It is not the object of the la
 to instruct or guide those who wish , act rightly, that being impossibl
 The best that legislatures and cour1
 can do is to roughly mark lines ths
 shall be somewhat nearly lines of rigf
 for various classes of dealings betwee
 people, one or both of whom need to I
 forced to do what is right. Therefor = one who takes guidance from the la g is not morally guided at all he is on F kept from going wrong beyond ce tain line."