The Spirit of the Laws

“ Laws are established, manners are inspired; these proceed from a general spirit, those, from a particular institution: now it is as dangerous, nay, more to overturn the general spirit, as to change a particular institution. ”

“ But we maintain that the right way of examining into laws is to proceed as we have now done, and I admired the spirit of your exposition; for you were quite right in beginning with virtue, and saying that this was the aim of the giver of the law, but I thought that you went wrong when you added that all his legislation had a view only to a part, and the least part of virtue, and this called forth my subsequent remarks. ”

“ Laws take on the form of universal concepts only when they forbid actions, not when they prescribe actions. Laws concerning what we ought to do must be given to the unfree spirit in wholly concrete form. ”

“ But, good or bad, as laws in this country are merely the expression of the people’s will, they should be respected as long as they remain laws. For law is just as necessary to the human race as is the air we breathe or the food we eat. ”

“ In vain do we seek freedom under the power of the laws. The laws! Where is there any law? Where is there any respect for law? Under the name of law you have everywhere seen the rule of self-interest and human passion. But the eternal laws of nature and of order exist. ”

“ But this fearless assertion of the rights of conscience necessarily involved the right to sit in judgment upon all human laws and the powers that ordained them, and to determine for themselves whether the law was lawful. ”

“ Before you can begin to lay down the law you must know what that law is, and your heart, soul, and spirit must not only know it, but approve it, before you can gain a willing obedience to it from those on whom you wish to impose it. ”

“ On the contrary, there reigns in Asia a servile spirit, which they have never been able to shake off; and it is impossible to find, in all the histories of this country, a single passage which discovers a free soul: we shall never see any thing there but the heroism of slavery. ”

“ No obstacle to the unfettered enjoyment of those rights which we possess from God in the natural law, and that are guaranteed to us in the Constitution and laws of the land—the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. ”

“ That is a matter of individual taste and temperament; one loves contention more, and the other peace; from the standpoint of law both conclusions are to be equally respected; for the law leaves to every one who has a legal right, the choice of asserting his right or of surrendering it. ”

“ It is in such ways and under such conditions that constitutions and great principles of jurisprudence are written; the letter and spirit are ever on the side of liberty; and highly organized minds, governed by principle, invariably give true interpretations; while others, whose law is expediency, coarse and material in all their conceptions, will interpret law, Bible, constitution, everything, in harmony with the public sentiment of their class and condition. And here is the reason why men differ in their interpretations of law. ”

“ He sees the happiness of a society, of which he is not so much as a member; he sees the security of others fenced by laws, himself without any protection. He sees his master has a soul, that can enlarge itself; while his own is constrained to submit to a continual depression. Nothing more assimilates a man to a beast, than living among freemen, himself a slave. Such people as these are the natural enemies of the society, and their number must be dangerous.
It is not therefore to be wondered at, that moderate governments have been so frequently disturbed by revolts of slaves ”

“ The law which drives them to the act is as necessitating as the law which causes the smoke to rise upwards. Nothing in the universe of God, animate or inanimate, is left without the government of appropriate law, unless that thing being the noblest creature of God: the human spirit. ”

“ And it will be long before social discipline has so far modified human character that reverence for law, as rooted in the moral order of things, will serve in place of reverence for the power which enforces law. ”

“ For the essence of legal right is, as I have frequently remarked already, action. What the air is to the flame, freedom of action is to the feeling of legal right. Refuse it this freedom, and the feeling dies. ”

“ There are some who look upon laws as an evil and a profanity, and who regard governing and being governed from natural love, hereditary, divinity or nobility, by faith and trust, as the genuine order of life, while the reign of law is held an order of corruption and injustice. ”

“ According to the argument there is one among these cords which every man ought to grasp and never let go, but to pull with it against all the rest; and this is the sacred and golden cord of reason, called by us the common law of the State ”

“ The principles, the feelings, of our common nature rise in rebellion against it. Be the appeal made to the understanding or to the heart, the sentence is the same that rejects it. In vain you tell me of laws that sanction such a claim. There is a law above all the enactments of human codes,—the same throughout the world, the same in all times: ... it is the law written on the heart of man by the finger of his Maker ”

“ Why are we thus loyal to law? First, because we make the laws ourselves, and for ourselves; and next, because the laws actually represent the conscience of the people, and help them keep the laws of God. The value of human laws is only this—to conserve the great eternal law of God ”

“ Until the sublime lessons of the Sermon on the Mount become the inspiration of every human heart—that is, until the millennium shall come—mankind must be governed by law, and the laws must be made by human beings who have all the frailties and imperfections of their fellows. ”

“ I go into your great halls where laws are made—I see the wise men making laws to bind the weak and tempted with iron chains—laws to help bad men lead lives of impurity—laws to make legal crimes that your Holy Book says renders one forever unfit for Heaven. ”

“ But who will take up with such slaves? As for infants, nature, who has supplied their mothers with milk, had provided for their sustenance, and the remainder of their childhood approaches so near the age in which they are most capable of being of service, that he who supports them cannot be said to give them an equivalent, which can intitle him to be their master.
Nor is slavery less opposite to the civil law than to that of nature. What civil Jaw can restrain a slave from running away, since he is not a member of society, and consequently has no interest in any civil laws? ”

“ Our enemies have already had evidence that our present constitution contains in it the justice and ardor of freedom, and the wisdom and vigor of the most absolute system. When the law is the will of the people, it will be uniform and coherent ”

“ Such have always been, and such must always be, the consequences of a want of this right of all men to share in the making of the laws, a right, as I have before shown, derived immediately from the law of Nature, springing up out of the same source with civil society, and cherished in the heart of man by reason and by experience. ”

“ The law itself, the Eternal Right, for right's own sake, that alone must be our motive, the spring of our resolution, the ground of our obedience. Deep from our inmost souls comes forth the mandate, the bare and simple law claiming the command of our whole existence merely by its proper right, and disdaining alike to menace or to bribe. ”

“ Therefore it is no longer the law, but the fulfiller of the law, who is the model, the guiding thread, the rule of thy life. He who fulfils the law annuls the law. The law has authority, has validity, only in relation to him who violates it. ”

“ Legality, hard-and-fast rules that must not be broken and that are interpreted in the narrowest spirit, depressing enough in all conscience although they be, are to him an enjoyment and a matter of incessant thought; since if they circumscribe, they also define and secure the spaces of personal liberty. ”

“ All have recognized that a certain law which is distinct from the individual will encircles him,—a law which is called either reason, morality, or truth, and from which he cannot separate his conduct without making the exercise of his liberty either absurd or criminal. ”

“ Would the setting up of just legislation, in accord with the Divine laws which guarantee the happiness of society and protect the rights of all mankind and are an impregnable proof against assault—would such laws, insuring the integrity of the members of society and their equality before the law, inhibit their prosperity and success? ”

“ It 'binds heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne,' upon men's consciences, but puts not forth 'the tip of a finger' to enable men to bear them. And this is true about law in all forms, whether it be the Mosaic Law, or whether it be the law of our own country, or whether it be the laws written upon men's consciences. ”

“ Shall we assume that some one is accusing us among unholy men, who are trying to escape from the effect of our legislation; and that they say of us―How dreadful that you should legislate on the supposition that there are Gods! Shall we make a defence of ourselves? or shall we leave them and return to our laws, lest the prelude should become longer than the law? ”

“ How striking and instructive to observe the abstract rules of justice brought to bear, with equal readiness and precision, upon ordinary and extraordinary combinations of circumstances!—to witness the dead letter of the law become animated with potent vitality for the regulation of human affairs! ”

“ Because the laws have been made by the people, for the people, and are laws which respect justice. Here is a law which the people will not keep. It is a law of our Southern masters; a law not fit to keep. ”

“ What are the true limits of State power in relation to appetites and propensities? Are sumptuary laws effectual? Does history, as the philosophy of example, justify such enactments? Can the law eradicate innate tendencies? Can character be transformed by statute? Is it possible to legislate morality into mankind? What should be the policy of statesmen and reformers in the realm of morals? If it is not possible to extirpate the passions by law, how may they be regulated, directed, educated and purified? ”

“ Here is little respect for universal humanity; little for the Eternal Laws of God which override all the traditions and contrivances of men; more reverence for a statute, or constitution, which is indeed the fundamental law of the political State, but is often only an attempt to compromise between the fleeting passions of the day and the Immutable Morality of God. ”

“ Does he do well never to distinguish those who acknowledge only the religion of nature, from those who acknowledge both natural and revealed religion? Does he do well to turn frantic whenever the author considers man in the state of natural religion, and whenever he explains any thing on the principles of natural relgion? Does he do well to confound natural religion with Atheism? Have I not heard that natural religion is employed to prove the truth of revelation against the Deists? and that the same natural religion is employed to prove the existence of a God against the Atheists? ”

“ We can see the policeman on his beat, or the judge in court, or the members of the legislature—the men who, respectively, maintain, administer, and make the laws; and we can see the record of the laws in books. But the idea or principle of Law which has caused men to construct all this machinery for the making and enforcing of the laws, exists only in the mind. ”

“ In the gradual growth of a milder civilisation, and the more common dominance of legal justice, such a law may have come into force, as expressive of that voice of conscience which is to sincere nations the voice of God. ”

“ The Judge just lifts his hand and raises from each soul before him every law of constraint whose pressure has been its education. He lifts the laws of constraint, and their results are manifest. The real intrinsic nature of each soul leaps to the surface. Each soul's law of liberty becomes {239} supreme. ”

“ DEmocratic and aristocratic states are not necessarily free. Political liberty is to be met with only in moderate governments: yet even in these it is not always met with. It is there only when there is no abuse of power: but constant experience shews us, that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it; he pushes on till he comes to the utmost limit. Is it not strange, though true, to say, that virtue itself has need of limits?
To prevent the abuse of power, it is necessary that by the very disposition of things power should be a check to power. ”

“ Away with those whose aim it is to “fulfil the law by means of many observances.” “The law is to be observed not because we must keep it, but because we choose to do so, not because it is necessary, but because it is permitted. ”

“ Christianity gives us the habit of subduing this pride; the world gives us the habit of concealing it. With the few virtues we have what would become of us, if the whole soul was set at liberty, and if we were not attentive to the least words, the least signs, and the least gestures? Now when persons of a respectable character discover passions which the men of the world durst not suffer to appear, these begin to believe themselves better than they really are. ”

“ But the great domain of opinion, the great realm of religion, the framers of our constitution, not that they regarded it unimportant, but that they regarded it so important that no power, legislative or court, would attempt to lay down and assign a rule to bind conscience and the minds of the people. ”