Unjustice

“ What I am concerned to know is, that that man's influence and authority were on the side of the slaveholder, and not of the slave,—of the guilty, and not of the innocent,—of injustice, and not of justice. ”

“ Must not injustice be a strife which arises among the three principles—a meddlesomeness, and interference, and rising up of a part of the soul against the whole, an assertion of unlawful authority, which is made by a rebellious subject against a true prince, of whom he is the natural vassal—what is all this confusion and delusion but injustice, and intemperance, and cowardice, and ignorance, and every form of vice? ”

“ Or, if it be done under the colour of law and justice, that is oppressing the afflicted in the gate, where they ought to be protected from wrong and to have justice done them against those that oppress them. ”

“ That part of the moral constitution, which exists in some degree in us all, which leads us to feel pain at the sight of injustice, and to desire retribution for cruelty and crime, seemed in him to have become an absorbing sentiment, as if he had been chosen by some higher power as the instrument of doom. ”

“ “Where there’s law there’s injustice,” put in the little man. ”

“ If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine. ”

“ This is one of the modes in which justice vindicates itself, under the providence of God; the wrongs committed by communities reacting on themselves, in the shape of a demoralization that soon brings its own merited punishment. ”

“ I see the injustice in this city, its pauperism, suffering, and crime, men smarting all their life, and by no fault of theirs. I know there must be another hemisphere to balance this; another life, wherein justice shall come to all and for all. ”

“ The spirit that would have chosen danger in preference to crime,—to perish with justice rather than live with dishonor,—to dare and suffer whatever might betide, rather than sacrifice the rights of one human being,—could never have been subjugated by any mortal power. ”

“ Injustice—there is the loathed crime which curses the memory of the world. The slave doomed by his lord’s caprice to perish under tortures—one feels it a dreadful and intolerable thing; but it is merely the crude presentment of what has been done and endured a million times in every stage of civilization. Oh, the last thoughts of those who have agonized unto death amid wrongs to which no man would give ear! ”

“ I am speaking, as before, of injustice on a large scale in which the advantage of the unjust is most apparent; and my meaning will be most clearly seen if we turn to that highest form of injustice in which the criminal is the happiest of men, and the sufferers or those who refuse to do injustice are the most miserable—that is to say tyranny, which by fraud and force takes away the property of others, not little by little but wholesale ”

“ Justice is sweet and musical; but injustice is harsh and discordant. ”

“ And tortures strange were heralds unto death.
’Twas an unequal struggle; but for that,
Should a free people have bent down the knee?
Is the expedient, then, our only law?
Must we give up the right, because we feel
That we are weak, and the oppressor strong? ”

“ The seventh topic is one which we employ when we say that any deed is foul, and cruel, and nefarious, and tyrannical; that it has been effected by violence or by the influence of riches—a thing which is as remote as possible from the laws and from all ideas of equal justice.
LIV. An eighth topic is one of which we avail ourselves to demonstrate that the crime which is the present subject of discussion is not a common one,—not one such as is often perpetrated. And, that is foreign to the nature of even men in a savage state, of the most barbarous nations, or even of brute beasts. ”

“ When an evil thought suggests that there is injustice in the circumstance that the hare falls a prey to the lion or wolf, and the fly to the spider, Reason steps in warning him as follows: How can I charge the all-Wise with injustice when I am convinced of His justice, and that injustice is quite out of the question? ”

“ which is always sure to be injustice done, for violence does even justice unjustly. ”

“ How many examples one could give of want of scruple violating the idea of honesty and responsibility!
How many sins, grave in themselves, are committed by men in power, knowing themselves safe from the arm of the law; how many actions, unpunishable, yet which are an outrage upon the liberty of others, a breach of respect for human nature, and an injury to society! ”

“ If a person has the audacity to say the contrary, the answer is—Then why do criminals require the hand of the executioner, and not die of themselves? ‘Truly,’ he said, ‘injustice would not be very terrible if it brought a cessation of evil; but I rather believe that the injustice which murders others may tend to quicken and stimulate the life of the unjust.’ You are quite right. ”

“ Ours shall be such only as the opposition of moral purity to moral corruption, the destruction of error by the potency of truth, the overthrow of prejudice by the power of love, the abolition of slavery by the spirit of repentance. ”

“ I maintain that every condemnation, be it to death, or to any punishment whatever, imperatively supposes, in order to be any thing else than a repression of violence by violence, the four following points:—1st, That there is an essential distinction between good and evil, justice and injustice, and that to this distinction is attached, for every intelligent and free being, the obligation of conforming to good and justice ”

“ Shall a man with a heart feel this horrible injustice, and not rebel? Grant that I am rightly punished for my impatience, my pride, my jealousy, how have you been rewarded for your stainless youth, your innocent trust, your almost miraculous goodness? ”

“ If he murmur, there is the tormenting lash; if he resist, it is death.—And the injustice extends even beyond the grave; for the story of the slave is told by his oppressor, and the manly spirit which the poor creature shows, when stung to the very heart's core, is represented as diabolical revenge. ”

“ We have never gone out of our way to look for trouble, being more inclined to attend to our own affairs than to oversee those of our neighbors, and, yet, when, repeatedly, gross acts of injustice and cruelty have been forced under our observation, we have, at times, been aroused to a state of what we have honestly believed to be righteous indignation, and, in these circumstances, we have conducted ourselves in accordance with our ability and the fervor of our convictions. ”

“ There is, in the meantime, no doubt that, however wild, ferocious, and savage they may have appeared, the strong and terrible hand of injustice and oppression had much, too much, to do with the crimes which they had committed, and which drove them out of the pale of civilized life. ”

“ The wind bore through the air the echoes of so many acts of injustice!... The tale of injustice is unnumbered: in remedying one there is danger of causing others. What is injustice?—To one man it means a shameful peace, the fatherland dismembered. ”

“ Of the many evils which throw back the well-being of society, none raise in the honest mind more painful and indignant feelings, than beholding the judgment seat of mercy and justice filled by an unjust, corrupt, and wicked judge, who has become, step by step, hardened in his impious enormities, and is the fully-prepared tool and supporter of tyranny and arbitrary208 power. ”

“ But go zealously on, ye good governors, you will stand higher with the people if you kill us, torture us, condemn us, grind us to the dust; your injustice is the proof that we are innocent. God permits us to suffer. ”

“ Seeing then that there are these two evils, the doing injustice and the suffering injustice—and we affirm that to do injustice is a greater, and to suffer injustice a lesser evil—by what devices can a man succeed in obtaining the two advantages, the one of not doing and the other of not suffering injustice? ”

“ I know you to have this man's property, and your own heart even now convicts you of the injustice you practise. Nothing is hidden from God;—reflect on the punishment prepared for the unrepenting hypocrite. ”

“ Every man’s observation may suggest to him many kinds of injustice and oppression which the rich, the insidious, or the powerful, can commit in spite of law, or perhaps by the aid of law, against the poor, the unsuspecting, and the friendless.—Many, who can silence conscience and evade law, tremble at the thoughts of their injustice being published ”

“ In both lie dangers, difficulties, and troubles, which no human foresight can foreshadow or perceive; but they are not equal in magnitude. One is beset with humiliation, dishonor, emeutes, rebellion,—with submission in the beginning to all, and at all times, and confiscation and slavery in the end. ”

“ It was painful to gaze upon this sorrowing group, to contemplate the suffering, the mental anguish that spoke plainly in every face; to think of the wrongs which one man can legally put upon another—the deep sinful wrongs, the outrage of every human principle. ”

“ Have we no evils and sins of our own, which, if the Divine justice were to call us to account for, as rigorously as we are ready to call our fellow-men to account for theirs, would bring down fearful condemnation on our heads? ”

“ See what reform of laws goes on continually; what pains are taken to defend the most exposed classes of mankind. Down must fall the gallows—type of a malignant God; the Sun of Righteousness must shine into the dungeon; jails must no more be savage torture-chambers, but civil hospitals to heal the sickly man; crime must become amenable to correction which would bless, not subject only to vengeance which would but burn and kill. ”

“ The same powerful motives which command the observance of these primary moralities, enjoin the punishment of those who violate them; and as the impulses of self-defence, of defence of others, and of vengeance, are all called forth against such persons, retribution, or evil for evil, becomes closely connected with the sentiment of justice, and is universally included in the idea. ”

“ This exposes me to a worse consequence, to the accusation of meaning to paint a cruel, corrupted, and debased society, when my sole pretention is to prove that not even the most insignificant actions are in themselves insignificant or lost for good or evil. ”

“ To say nothing of those evils one man brings upon another, as poverty, imprisonment, infamy, dishonesty, racks, snares, treachery, reproaches, actions, deceits--but I'm got into as endless a work as numbering the sands--for what offenses mankind have deserved these things, or what angry god compelled them to be born into such miseries is not my present business. ”

“ For what reason do you afflict your souls while you continue to find pleasure in oppression and to take delight in injustice? Behold, you fast for the sake of strife and contention and to smite with the fist of wickedness. ”

“ Where this idea does not pre-exist, there remain, instead of recompense and penalty, only the attraction of pleasure and the fear of suffering, added to a prescription deprived in itself of morality. In that we come back to the punishments of earth invented for the purpose of frightening popular imagination, and supported solely on the decrees of legislators, on an abstraction of good and evil, of justice and injustice, of merit and demerit. ”

“ Civilization is good, barbarism is evil; freedom, good; slavery, evil. Now, this imaginary knowledge annihilates the instinctive, beatific, primitive craving for the good that is in human nature. And who will explain to me what is freedom, what is despotism, what is civilization, what is barbarism? ”

“ And we may well say in reply:—Woe to mankind, woe to every individual, woe to the world, were they doomed to be finally judged according to this rigid justice, and this rigid justice only, by Him who alone has the power and the right to dispense such severe justice unto men, and judge them by its rules. ”

“ Can it, then, be justifiable, on account of any vague fears of we know not what evils, to reject this just, salutary and hitherto uninjurious measure; and to cling to a system which we know, by certain experience, is producing crime, misery and death, during every day of its existence? ”

“ They could dodge under the fences of the law and climb the barbed wire of morality with equal impunity, and the utmost rigor of punishment had little terror for those whose hardships could scarcely be artificially worsened. ”

“ From the highest to the lowest, there is no health or moral soundness. From the crown of the head to the soles of the feet, there is nothing but wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores. The laws, and their violation, and the punishments everywhere invented for the suppression of vice, prove the universality of the evil. ”

“ With this prudent reserve, they taught that injustice is a powerful and beautiful principle, reckoning it among the virtues, and attributing to it all the characteristics usually attributed to justice. ”