Perth Amboy evening news., 1922-12-29

modern perjurors. They were, he
said, inclined to regard perjury in
court as a sort of technical crime
rather than a high moral crime
Perjury, it appears, is not an index
to the ordinary. honesty of the per-
juror. Many a man who would re-
coil from telling a lie to his neigh
Dor or in business or in any of the
usual affairs of life, thinks nothing
Of making oath in court to a. state
ment of which he may not be at al
certain and sometimes knows to be
untrue. In a word, the court oath
has come in the minds of many
citizens, the members of the COM
4ittee discovered, to mean nothing
more than a matter of technical
court routine. The solemn function
OF placing the right hand on the
Bible and pronouncing the oath has
d~egenerated in many cases into the
making of a gesture and the mum
bling of a few words.
1t can readily be understood that
the men who are charged with the
| making and the enforcement of laws
are aghast at such a development.
What the President and his advisors
fear is that this attitude gradually
will creep into the opinions of the
people regarding the whole body of
law.
The favorite anecdote used by
students of this curious situation il
! Illustrates this attitude of mind forci-
bly,. A man was receiving a call
from a b~ootlegger. He asked the
bootlegger what kinds of liquor he
could furnish. The Illicit vendor
named over his wares, gin, whiskey,
wine, ct cetera. Cant you get mo
I Snr11a q fzinfhn ov thn o1tSfnv1ar a ell
ed. why. of course not" the boot
logger replied. Don't you know it
is against the law to sell absinthe 2"
This anecdote is getting to have a
serious significance in Washington
Lawmakers see in 1t an index to the
attitude of the public mind. They
see In it the revelation that Ameri-
cans subconsciously are interpreting
for themselves the laws OF the land
and are making a difference be-
tween what laws they are willing
to obey and what laws they cheer
fully violate without any feeling of
conjunction.
Line Between Legal and Moral
Wrongs
The serious point which is so
deeply concerning the lawmakers is
that the line between legal wrongs
and moral wrongs is being obliter-
ated. The equally blithe violation
of the Volstead act and of the laws
against perjury is an illustration OF
how sight is being lost of the fund
amental difference in laws.
A prohibition law is a sumptuafy
law. 1t long has been recognize ]
by the great legislators of the world
that there is a sharp difference be-
tween that which is wrong because
there is a statute forbidding it and
that which is fundamentally wrong
as a moral proposition.
Two good examples are the Gus
toms law and the law against muir
der. II is unlawful to smuggle duti'
able goods into the United State;
because the statutes say that al
persons must declare such good.
and pay a tariff on them. However
it is not, of itself, morally wrong
to bring goods across an imaginary
line or take them ashore from {
boat without payment. 1t is wrong
only because it is forbidden by law
There is a law against murder blu
it is an entirely different sort of law
Everybody, from the most unletter
ed savage to the most polished
scholar. Lnows it is wrong to com
NIT a murder. It is not wron!
merely because the law says it i
wrong; it Is morally wrong as {
fundamental fact.
The analogy drawn by officials a
Washington is that there appears t.
be a danger that people will los
sight of these differences. The Gus
toms law and the prohibition Law
are both of sumptuary nature. 1t j
wrong to smuggle and it is wrong t.
drink because the law forbids thes'
actions. Both laws are frequent,
violated but most of the violator
do not feel that they have commit
ted any moral sins. It Ia wrong Il
murder and It 10 wrong to swear t.
q falsehood. not only because Their
are forbidding statutes against thos4
actions, but because those crime
are innateiy and of themselve
wrong.
To show the case in another way
there are many people in the Unite
States who would vote to repeal tn
prohibition and the customs laws
there probably is not a single citi
zen in the whole land who woul
vote to repeal the statutes agains
murder and perjury!
To state the case in that manne
sussssts the probable safetyrvafy