Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1920-06-26
The Suberf1uitu Of Laws.

wv JHETHER or no it is true, as the
w fathers of the Republic held, that
the best governed is the least gov
erned people, it is, certainly untrue that the
more laws write upon the statute books
the better and safer will nation or city be.
Most men find it rather arduous to keep
up with the Ten Commandments; how, then,
shall they give heed to ten thousand
minor Dont's? Herein of course, lies the
need and nurture of the lawyers, those
happy souls and mighty helps in time of
trouble, whom Dan Cahucer described as
seeming wiser than they are. But lawyers
after ALL, were made for the country not
the country for lawyers; so that it is hard
~ fair to go on piling code upon code, like
Ossa upon Pelion, merely to give that pro-
fession more food for interesting and lucra-
tive controversy.
1t seems, indeed, from the layman' s
point of view that we well might spend a
hundred years or so trying to disentangle,
understand and even enforce few of the
statutes we now have, before making addi-
tiqnal ones. Yet we hear the lately adjourn
edS Congress Boosting that it enacted more
laws than any Of it's predecessors; apropos
of which the New World exclaims: GLOW
many bales Of good sheepskin and tons of
print paper have been put to the waste of
preserving the elaborate and dreary fulfill
ties which record the lost motion of de-
mocracy functiohing with only an eye to
the quantity of laws
Quantity regardless of quality or use or
common sense-that all too often seems the
legislative goal. The least of the unhappy
results is that to which Shakespeare's saga
cious Duke of old Vienna referred:
eve have strict statutes and most
(The needful bits and curbs to head
strong steeds)
Which for these fourteen years we have
let slip;
Even like an o'ergrown lion in cave,
That goes not out to prey: Now, as
- fond fathers
Having bound up the threat ming twig
of BIRCH
Only to stick it in their children's
sight
For terror not to use, in time the rod,
Becomes more Knocked than fear'd so
our DEGREES,
Dead to inflction, to themselves are
dead
And liberty .plucks justice by the
nose"
Dead-letter laws may be harmless. But those
which from their very number and inept-
ness are not consistently enforceable, yet
stand with ever menacing lash-these as
suredly are fraught with i'll. They breed
confusion, if nothing worse; and the like
lihood is they will breed dsrespect for that
law whose seat is indeed in justice and
wisdom.
Multiplicity of statutes besorts we'll
enough with a government like that of
| H0henzollern Germany; but in democracy
something is supposed to be left to the in
dividuaI sense of right. Democracy has been
well defined "organized selfcontrol;' -
and that it must be, inevitably it will
go bankrupt and pass into the receivership
| of absolutism But how can self-control de-
velop in jar Of goldfish. or self discipline
among hot house prisoners? How can cit
izenship grow equal to problems that call
for original thinking and to responsibilities
that call for moral stamina. if every ques-
! ton, whether of the conscience or the col
on, is to have it's ready-made, fortnight
| legislative answer?