Public danger

“ Your up-to-date criminal presses the button of a social mechanism, and at the other end of the land or the year innocent lives are snuffed out. As society grows complex, it can be harmed in more ways. Each advance to higher organization runs us into a fresh zone of danger, so there is more than ever need to be quick to detect and foil the new public enemies that present themselves. The public needs a victim to harrow up its feelings. ”

“ Yet any scheme of classification that may be attempted must encounter great difficulties. Individual judgments vary widely regarding the importance or degree of danger to the public interest of various anti-social developments. ”

“ And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be, by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent it bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume. ”

“ The decrees, posters, and comments of the press, which were intended to prepare public opinion for the measures now being taken, pleaded especially two considerations: The unemployed, so they declared, are a danger to public security ”

“ One need only admit that public tranquillity is in danger and any action finds a justification.
All the horrors of the reign of terror were based only on solicitude for public tranquillity. ”

“ The danger of disturbing the public tranquillity by interesting too strongly the public passions, is a still more serious objection against a frequent reference of constitutional questions to the decision of the whole society. ”

“ When public order breaks down; when men, women and children fear for their safety in the streets and in their homes; when contempt and mistrust characterize citizens' attitudes toward lawful authority, then we all -- young and old, rich and poor -- are victimized. ”

“ How much warmer will be our resentment, if experience should bring the fatal example home to ourselves!
⁠The situation of this country is alarming enough, to rouse the attention of every man, who pretends to a concern for the public welfare. Appearances justify suspicion; and, when the safety of a nation is at stake, suspicion is a just ground of inquiry. ”

“ Were we, however, if only from an abstract point of view, to venture an opinion on the vexed question as to why so many have a leaning towards the seamy and sinister side of life, we should be disposed to consider that, apart from the allurement of the abnormal and the inclination to indulge a morbid curiosity, perhaps [298] the chief influence serving to stimulate the mind of the public when a great crime has been perpetrated in a genuine concern that a serious outrage has been made on society, constituting a veritable menace to its security. ”

“ Every section of the community was held in terror by this miscalled “committee of public safety.” Even the representatives of the people, which thought itself called to liberate the world, and with them the whole people, trembled before these few tyrants, who, elevated from the dust by the power of accidents more than by that of genius, displayed a hideousness never yet beheld. “The whole people was in fearful excitement by anger, by fear, and love of liberty; and the terrorists, grasping at the terrible as the only means of salvation, manifested hereby the fever convulsions of the nation.” ”

“ I have seen many private disasters develop, which I could have checked with five grains of despotic power.—We shall be regretted by the very men who have crippled us when they, like you, stand face to face with some moral monstrosities, which ought to be swept away as we sweep away mud! In public affairs the Police is expected to foresee everything, or when the safety of the public is involved—but the family?—It is sacred! ”

“ In one of the darkest hours of the great struggle for National existence, against rebellious foes, the Government called you from the comparatively safe and easy duties of civil life to place you in front of the enemy and in a position of personal toil and danger, perhaps more hazardous than was encountered by any citizen or military officer of the United States. ”

“ Not regardless of consequences, we must yet meet consequences; seeing the hazards which surround the discharge of public duty, it must yet be discharged. For myself, Sir, I shun no responsibility justly devolving on me, here or elsewhere, in attempting to maintain the cause. ”

“ Assembled together with{334} multitudes of other evil-doers like yourselves, you have, by threats and acts of violence, thrown the peaceable and industrious inhabitants of this city into a state of panic and alarm—you have deprived many of their only means of livelihood—you have carried fire to public buildings and to private dwellings, and have exposed the property of all to pillage, and the lives of many to destruction. Human society cannot be held together, if crimes like these are not put down by the strong hand of the law. ”

“ For in almost every state where, owing to peculiar circumstances, such precautionary measures have not been taken, the most dangerous disorders and jarring discords have affected the whole of public life, as the inevitable consequences of its absence. ”

“ More than this, can any of us doubt the existence of still more odious and detestable evils which, with steady, cankering growth, are more directly than all others threatening our safety and national life? ”

“ It exists even in case of a breach of the law which may endanger public order or safety, or of crime against the safety of the state, without prejudice to such steps as the territorial government may take for its own protection. ”

“ An industrious, and upon that account a wealthy nation is of all nations the most likely to be attacked, and unless the State takes some measures for the public defence, the natural habits of the people render them altogether incapable of defending themselves. ”

“ It is a strange inversion of all notions of government, that crime should come from above rather than below, and that the dread that men feel for the safety of their persons and goods is directed rather to the constituted guardians of order than to the outcasts from society. ”

“ In the most forward, enterprising, inventive, and industrious nations, this spirit is fluctuating; and they who continue longest to gain advantages, or to preserve them, have periods of remissness, as well as of ardour. The desire of public safety, is, at all times, a powerful motive of conduct; but it operates most when combined with occasional passions, when provocations inflame, when successes encourage, or mortifications exasperate.
A whole people, like the individuals of whom they are composed, act under the influence of temporary humours, sanguine hopes, or vehement animosities. ”

“ From feeling that sense of security from lawless violence, which every man, whether guilty or innocent, is entitled to feel, he has been in imminent danger of being torn in pieces by an infuriated mob. ”

“ Certain alarmists will exclaim that such an alteration in our manners would bring about a public dissoluteness which would be frightful; that the laws, and the customs which prompt the laws, could not after all authorize scandal and immorality; and if certain unavoidable abuses do exist, at least society ought not to sanction them. ”

“ Well, public safety requires a sentence of death, and those who have to ensure that safety must not be left ignorant of the fact that the government is with them, and will know how to protect them, if need be. ”

“ All conduct which we class as wrong or criminal is, or we suppose it to be, an attack upon some vital interest of ourselves or of those we care for, (a category which may include the public, or the whole human race) : conduct which, if allowed to be repeated, would destroy or impair the security and comfort of our lives. We are prompted to defend these paramount interests by repelling the attack, and guarding against its renewal; and our earliest experience gives us a feeling, which acts with the rapidity of an instinct, that the most direct and efficacious protection is retaliation. ”

“ Nothing, however, but a revolution (horrid as the idea is to humanity) can save it, and that is already begun, I suspect, and I hope the traitors will fall. I am quite of the opinion that Public safety is the Supreme Law, and the cant of humanity, when the country is to be saved, I consider as weak and unmanly. They have paid dearly for a bigoted adherence to old absurd forms and prejudices. ”

“ When we make the belief of the citizen the basis of government action, we move toward the concept of total security. Yet total security is possible only in a totalitarian regime [2] -the kind of system we profess to combat. ”

“ Long practice in confronting danger had made him absolutely fearless. He would face death with an indifference that had become constitutional, and the spirit of reckless bravado with which he was animated made him the terror of the citizens. ”

“ Well, know this: the danger is above your heads, the danger is under your feet; conspiracy, conspiracy, conspiracy; the people in the streets read the papers together, and shake their heads at one another; six thousand men, without tickets of civism—returned refugees, Muscadins, and Mathevons,—are concealed in cellars and attics, and in the wooden galleries of the Palais-Royal; people form a line in the baker's shop; good women wring their hands on the doorsteps, saying: "When shall we have peace?" ”

“ The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual, and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty. ”

“ In the midst of contending parties, a single hand might turn their influence, with tremendous effect, to which ever side presented the most potent attraction, and should they ever become disposed to exert their influence for evil, which may Heaven prevent, they would surround our institutions with an element of danger, more to be dreaded than an armed and hundred-eyed police. ”

“ The still remaining anarchical tendencies of certain individual members of the state, lagging behind the rest, will generate occasional acts of violence, threatening, directly or indirectly, the very life and existence of the state. These acts will excite the horror of all the more orderly members of the community, and will be denominated by some such term as crimes. ”

“ A few more turbulent spirits might inwardly repine at the disappointment of their daring projects, but they would be forced to acquiesce silently in the general sentiment. Perhaps for a little time, some of the moil profligate of that unthinking multitude who have broke through the restraints of law, might continue a system of devastation and outrage; but the ordinary means of legal controul, aided by the vigilant exertions of all the intelligent part of the community,—would quickly re-establish peace and Security. ”

“ We are alarmed at the state of society which is doomed to receive again, in these our days, such a pestilence into its bosom, to contaminate entire masses of its most unprotected members;—those who look up for help, for advice, and assistance to the higher classes, and the higher powers are thus exposed to the cold-hearted callous-souled creators of crime, the murder-manufacturers of these sad times. ”

“ 103 The urgent consideration of the public safety may undoubtedly authorize the violation of every positive law. How far that, or any other, consideration may operate to dissolve the natural obligations of humanity and justice, is a doctrine of which I still desire to remain ignorant. ”

“ By this means also the most speedy and effectual alarm is given all over the nation when any great public misconduct happens, or upon any appearance of a design against the constitution; and many evils are detected and prevented, which otherwise might have been unobserved, till they had become too strong for remedy. ”

“ Reason at least seems to demonstrate, and what has passed before our own eyes authorises us to believe that it is as dangerous, as inconsistent, to entrust arms for the protection of society, to the hands of those whom society has itself rejected from its bosom ”

“ The apprehension of danger, at all times, is so great, that three-fourths of their time is lost in the necessary steps taken for their own safety. There is also another serious drawback unavoidably accompanying every large party. ”

“ The effect might be, if the law could be carried out, to prevent a certain number of crimes; but it must also be to generate a more dangerous spirit in the class which you regard simply as dangerous, instead of regarding it as the possible raw materials of a more civilised and orderly society. ”

“ And to all those evils we have to add another, and perhaps the worst of all—that of which you are all conscious, of which experience and observation reaches you every day in all the forms of social life—a system of unseen terrorism, a system of terror and tyranny that the well-disposed class of the community ought to detest and abhor, and in reference to which, on all sides, I have heard, in this county and other counties, one universal expression of desire—that some means should be found to put an end to it. ”

“ Closely related to the exaggerated confidence in our country's greatness which tends to a disregard of the rules of national safety, another danger confronts us not less serious. I refer to the prevalence of a popular disposition to expect from the operation of the Government especial and direct individual advantages. ”

“ As an aggregate man, society has no escape from this law. It must reap as it sows. If its customs be safe and good, its members, so far as they are influenced by these customs, will be temperate, orderly and virtuous; but if its tone be depraved and its customs evil or dangerous, moral and physical ruin must; in too many sad cases be the inevitable result. ”