The evening Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1918-1920, 1919-09-12
Address on Imagination
I'm the Law
Continued from page one)

day. 1t has had to forge ahead as
well as it could keeping pace with
the changes in public sentiment, clos
ing the gap which Maine says always
exists in progressive societies be-
teen the law and the advancing
thought of the people. All that was
said of the need of imagination in
legal construction is doubly true of
the work of legislating, for the law
maker must have before his eyes a
vivid and accurate picture not only Of
the conditions to be remedied but of
the changes that will be wrought by
the law he in about to make"
"The law is not for the lawyer
alone, but for the people. The peo-
pie were not made for the law, but
the law for the people. The most
important inquiry of all is, how is
the law looked upon by the masses
of men for whom it exists? And here
again we shall find it difficult to deny
that imagination has played an i'm
portant part. The original concep-
ton of the law was that the decision
OF the patriarch-king was divine in
spiratlon, and the attitude of the peo-
pie was correspondingly reverent. A
wise Judgment was what we call a
stroke of genius"
After referring to the legal pro-
cedure where the Indictment invok-
es q personality by closing with the
words against the peace and digni-
ty of the United States" Judge Stat
ford said, "For myself | cannot help
thinking that we are bound in every
way possible to throw around the law
and its public administration all such
reasonable form and ceremony as
may serve to impress the magma
ton, and tend to associate in the
minds of men the execution of the
law with sense of dignity and pow
Erin short with suggestion that
the will of a great people is here
seeking and declaring justice For,
after all, we must secure respect for
law if law is to be triumphant and
obeyed. No nation can live long with
out it. 1t will lack cohesion and even
tually go to pieces"
In closing an address full of peril
nent illustrations and several poctical
quotations given in the speakers
mastery style, Judge Stafford re-
fcrred to the part imagination played
IN the great question now before the
world and said:
"At the present time what is it
hat gives such power to the propos-
ition for League of Nations? Is it
not largely the grand, or grandiose
conception of worldwide fedora
ton, that has taken hold upon the
imagination of men? Has not the
world had great vision? Perhaps
it will have to say, as the French
skeptic said when he rose from a
study of Christianity: But it was
fine dream. Perhaps the horses are
running away with the charioteor
Perhaps the plan is premature, or
faulty, or even impossible for US, in
the form of a treaty and without n
submission of the plan to the people
themselves. All that has nothing 20
do with the truth upon which l I'm
now insisting, that the scheme is a
mighty attempt of the creative inn
agination, dealing with n situation
in human history. On
the other hand, what is it that is set
against it? That, too, is a sublime
conception-the indie
pcndence, the sovereignty of the ma
ton, the treasure our fathers found
hidden in the field of this new world,
and straightway sold all they had and
went and bought the field, at so great
cost, that they might keep the treas
ure. Shakespeare wrote:
There is mystery in the soul of
state
Which hath an operation more divine
Than breath or pen can give express
sion co.
reckoned with before International
ism can supplant nationalism. But
also wrote:
THE prophetic soul