The community that by concert,
open or secret, among its citizens denies to a portion of its
members their plain rights under the law has severed the only safe
bond of social order and prosperity. The evil works from a bad
center both ways. It demoralizes those who practice it and
destroys the faith of those who suffer by it in the efficiency of
the law as a safe protector. The man in whose breast that faith
has been darkened is naturally the subject of dangerous and
uncanny suggestions. Those who use unlawful methods, if moved by
no higher motive than the selfishness that prompted them, may well
stop and inquire what is to be the end of this.
An unlawful expedient can not become a permanent condition of
government. If the educated and influential classes in a community
either practice or connive at the systematic violation of laws
that seem to them to cross their convenience, what can they expect
when the lesson that convenience or a supposed class interest is a
sufficient cause for lawlessness has been well learned by the
ignorant classes? A community where law is the rule of conduct and
where courts, not mobs, execute its penalties is the only
attractive field for business investments and honest labor.
Our naturalization laws should be so amended as to make the
inquiry into the character and good disposition of persons
applying for citizenship more careful and searching.
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