for any section of our country. It is the duty of the Executive to
administer and enforce in the methods and by the instrumentalities
pointed out and provided by the Constitution all the laws enacted by
Congress. These laws are general and their administration should be
uniform and equal. As a citizen may not elect what laws he will obey,
neither may the Executive elect which he will enforce. The duty to
obey and to execute embraces the Constitution in its entirety and the
whole code of laws enacted under it. The evil example of permitting
individuals, corporations, or communities to nullify the laws because
they cross some selfish or local interest or prejudices is full of
danger, not only to the nation at large, but much more to those who use
this pernicious expedient to escape their just obligations or to obtain
an unjust advantage over others. They will presently themselves be
compelled to appeal to the law for protection, and those who would use
the law as a defense must not deny that use of it to others.
If our great corporations would more scrupulously observe their legal
limitations and duties, they would have less cause to complain of the
unlawful limitations of their rights or of violent interference with
their operations. 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
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