The Barre daily times. (Barre, Vt.) 1897-1959, 1917-01-03

much is done in the secrecy of the COM
mittee room that belongs to the open
| forum. Our committee system has one
merit at least. While it is a breeder of
bills and acts it is enough Of eannibal
to consume large part of its own
spawn. Our facilities for proposing and
enacting laws has led the legislatures OF
our little state to consider more bills in
one year than have sufficed for parlia-
ment whose jurisdiction extends to is
lands in every sea and to large areas on
every continent. Our laws are often
hasty and crude.
"Disrespect for them has naturally
followed We have retained and passed
laws unsuited to our conditions and OBJ
servance has been honored in their
breach. 1t is no excuse for not enacting
law to say that it will be broken.
Some ideals should, perhaps, be embod-
led in statutes before people is ready
to live up to them provided they are ones
that are accepted in principle if not in
practice. Temperance laws may belong
to this class, for everybody admits the
evils of intemperance and that society
would be better off if no intoxicants
were used as beverage, although there
is large proportion of every community
that INDUCES in their use. But the wise
law maker will not lightly disregard the
past of a people, their customs, their
morality, and their experiences. To look
to the future alone is a mistake. To
borrow a figure from Lowell, every law
should be woven ION the roaring loom of
time"
Herbert Spencer has well said: No
philosophers stone of constitution can
produce golden conduct from leaden in
stincts. No apparatus of senators,
judges, and police, can compensate for
the want of an internal governing sen.
timent. No legislative manipulation can
exc out an insufficient morality into
sufficient one. No administrative sleight
of hand can save us from ourselves
''But criticism is, perhaps, useless
task, for on the whole it cannot be said
that we have failed because we have
misused or misdirected some of our en-
ergies. As a people we had as fair
start as it is possible to conceive for
making a success of democratic institu
tions. 1T cost Europe says Macauley,
"a thousand years of barbarism to escape
the fate of China We had no such cost
to bear. We had fresh materials for the
structure we have raised. We laid its
in new soil. No ruins en-
numbered its site. We had an abun-
lance of workers who often displayed
more willingness than skill. The work
men who had toiled for ages in building
thrones could give us few lessons except
# a negative character. The details Of
,ur plan had not all been worked out in
ADVANCE. We have built. undone and re-
,uilt many parts. We frequently found
hat stone had not been chiseled true
n rightly set. There is some patch
york in our walls and untitled spots
lpon our roof. but our structure has
TODD the stress of wind and storm for
early century and a half. 1t has fall
flied prophecy II has been copied bv
theirs. sometimes with i'll success or fail
re. To ourselves its proportions have
OF always seemed fair nor its arrange.
lents commodious. but still we have
OF and would not abandon the original
urpose of building an edifiee in which
istice may dwell while the centuries
ass"