The complicity of silence: when indifference becomes guilt in the face of injustice

“ Could they conceive that an accessory to murder was worthy of credit?—and yet the law made him an admissible witness. The man who was the chief evidence in a trial for the crime of murder,—who had told that he sat on a chair within a yard of the murdered and murderer, and raised not an arm, nor uttered a cry to save the unhappy victim calling for help and struggling with the assassin in the last agonies of life;—which was the most guilty,—the cool, cold-blooded spectator of the foul murder—or the actor, whose physical exertions would, in such an awful moment, impart phrenzy to his mind? ”

“ But, if we content ourselves with tamely looking on, while our best rights are trampled upon, we become partakers of the guilt by the encouragement which we give the offenders. For these violations, what remedy has the most innocent individual against the officer who arrested and transported him? As the laws of the United States have provided none, his remedy is at common law. He must sue for false imprisonment, and it depends entirely on the jury to say whether they will give him any thing or nothing. ”

“ If the conviction of a judge on impeachment is not to depend on his guilt or innocence of some crime alleged against him, but on some reason of State policy or expediency, which may be thought by the House of Representatives, and two-thirds of the Senate, to require his removal, I ask why the solemn mockery of articles alleging high crimes and misdemeanors, of a court regularly formed, of a judicial oath administered to the members, of the public examination of witnesses, and of a trial conducted in all the usual forms? ”

“ The practical result was important, as Hare would not suffer death. He reprobated the plea that this case should be decided on principles of humanity, justice, and policy. It was not what judges held to be such principles—but what the law lays down that is to regulate them. The true question is, Whether the Court has power to prevent the trial; and he was satisfied that neither the law nor the constitution authorised it. He went into a view of the history of the law upon the subject of admitting socii criminis, and referred to the Act 21, Geo. ”

“ If there is inertia as to changes in the law it is probably because, while feeling that there is something wrong, the people either can not define it or the conservatism of centuries in this field is unconsciously affecting their better intentions. Who will deny (and I address this question to lawyers and judges) that, under our system, guilty men escape and innocent men suffer in larger numbers than it should be, even allowing for the defects inherent in all human systems?—that technicalities and not facts often save scoundrels ”

“ Yet this unfortunate man, thus deluded from his interest and his happiness,—thus seduced from the paths of innocents and peace,—thus confounded in the toils which were deliberately spread for him, and overwhelmed by the mastering spirit and genius of another,—this man, thus ruined and undone, and made to play a subordinate part in this grand drama of guilt and treason,—this man is to be called the principal offender; while he, by whom he was thus plunged in misery, is comparatively innocent, a mere accessory! Is this reason? Is it law? Is it humanity? ”

“ Secondly, when there is danger of involving the innocent with the guilty, from inability to define the crime in precise language. Hence it is that rude behaviour, treachery, and ingratitude are not punished by law; and that in countries where the voice of the people controls the hand of the legislature, there is a great dread of making defamation, especially of the government, an offence at law. ”

“ But the law is made, generally, by one man, or by one class of men. And as law cannot exist without the sanction and the support of a preponderant force, it must finally place this force in the hands of those who legislate.
This inevitable phenomenon, combined with the fatal tendency that, we have said, exists in the heart of man, explains the almost universal perversion of law. It is easy to conceive that, instead of being a check upon injustice, it becomes its most invincible instrument. ”

“ In vain he pleads the purity of his intention, the legality of his conduct; in vain he avers that he has violated no law and been guilty of no crime. He will be told, as Judge Chase now is, that the common sense of the House is the standard of guilt, and their opinion of the error of the act conclusive evidence of corruption. We have read, sir, in our younger days, and read with horror, of the Roman Emperor who placed his edicts so high in the air that the keenest eye could not decipher them, and yet severely punished any breach of them. ”

“ The internal effects of a mutable policy are still more calamitous. It poisons the blessing of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the People, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed? ”

“ This attribute may be exercised without restraint by an individual, where his own interests alone are concerned, because in him it involves only a sacrifice of self-love. But forgiveness in a moral governor either implies an actual change of purpose, or supposes a former decision to have been made without sufficient knowledge of, or due attention to, all the facts by which he ought to have been influenced;—it denotes either undue rigour in the law, or ignorance or inattention in him who administers it, and it may very often interfere with the essential requisites of justice. ”

“ Daily the Negro is coming more and more to look upon law and justice, not as protecting safeguards, but as sources of humiliation and oppression. The laws are made by men who have little interest in him; they are executed by men who have absolutely no motive for treating the black people with courtesy or consideration; and, finally, the accused law-breaker is tried, not by his peers, but too often by men who would rather punish ten innocent Negroes than let one guilty one escape. ”

“ The real offender who knew her to be a tuberculous animal, and sold her in consequence at the price of a sound cow is shrewd enough to keep himself out of the clutches of the law, while the honest purchaser who has been already swindled, has his income and property cut off without compensation. Such a law is self-evidently unjust; it plays into the hands of the swindler at the expense of the just man; with the object of protecting the community against infection, it refuses to call on the public for any contribution toward its own protection. ”

“ The law which ordains confiscations, sets a price on the head of the subject, with the guilty punishes the innocent, and by reducing them to indigence and despair, tempts them to become criminal. Can there be a more melancholy spectacle, than a whole family, overwhelmed with infamy and misery, from the crime of their chief? ”

“ It should be further considered that any law is at once bad and vicious in its tendency which places before the citizen the alternatives of disobedience with profit, and obedience with loss or ruin. Such a law is the worst possible economy because in preserving the infection, it not only perpetuates the disease and its attendant losses for all time, but perpetuates forever the official expenses of keeping it in check, when a prompt extinction of the infection would once for all time abolish all loss and all outlay for surveillance. ”

“ If, again, the law, by a misplaced indulgence, protects idleness or prodigality against their natural consequences, or dismisses crime with inadequate penalties, the effect, both on the prudential and on the social virtues, is unfavourable. When the law, by its own dispensations and injunctions, establishes injustice between individual and individual ”

“ Law, and justice according to law—this is the only secure principle upon which the controversies of men can be decided. It is better on the whole that a few particular cases of hardship and injustice, arising from defect of evidence or the unbending character of some strict rule of law, should be endured, than that general insecurity should pervade the community from the arbitrary discretion of the judge. ”

“ Human laws, however carefully devised, may sometimes, if rigidly enforced, act unjustly and cruelly. We should guide ourselves at all times by the broad principles of equity in the sight of God. We should not urge our own rights to the uttermost, but be wiling to waive a part, and thus rectify the injustice of justice. “The archetype of this grace is God, who presses not the strictness of His law against us as we deserve, though having exacted the fullest payment for us from our Divine Surety” (Fausset) . It is not gentleness as an innate feeling, but as the result of self-restraint. ”

“ When then the law has spoken in general terms, and there arises a case of exception to the general rule, it is proper, in so far as the lawgiver omits the case and by reason of his universality of statement is wrong, to set right the omission by ruling it as the lawgiver himself would rule were he there present, and would have provided by law had he foreseen the case would arise. ”

“ The more we come to look upon law as the standard and gauge of upright human action, the more do we grow to expect it in consonance with the highest dictates of human knowledge and reason, for what is above us must represent what is best in us, else it will be neither respected467 nor obeyed. Whenever this consonance is not found, human belief in the dignity of the law and in the efficacy of justice ceases. For, theoretically at least, law is so near ideal perfection that the least defect destroys it entirely ”