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Show NON-ENFORCEMENT OP LAW We are guided and governed by the eternal laws of justice and everyone, high and low, must obey them if we are to continue to live and prosper, according to Senator Guy D. Goff of West Virginia, Vir-ginia, who writes convincingly in the National Republic under the title, "Guide Pests of Human Experience." Senator Goff says in part: "There is no greater evil today than the non-enforcement by public officials of laws which they have sworn to uphold. It is not for an executive, state or federal, to ask whether a law is good or bad. He should enforce it, or confess failure and resign. There-core, There-core, behind every public official stands a power which creates it, and to which it is responsible. That power under our form of government gov-ernment is the sovereign will of the people. "No government can be maintained without a principle of fear as well as of duty. Good men will obey the latter; bad men will bey only the former. The underlying evil in the administration of our public affairs is simple dishonesty. Our public offices are too often held iy hishonest men, and too often used for dishonest ends. The error is rooted in a mistaken and immoral theory as to the nature of the position they hold. In law and morals, a public office is but an agency of the people. They fix its duties and supply its salary. Few deny this truth, but practically it is contradicted every day in all parts of the Union. To have good government, we must have good citizens, and always, continuously, a warfare without truce or quarter against those who violate the law. It is strange but true, that bad men are combined and good citizens are divided! and that therein lies the cause of lawbreaking. If the good would join hands, the lawless could do nothing because they constitute but a small proportion of the entire population. Burke's well-known well-known words cannot be too often quoted: 'There never was long a corrupt government of a virtuous people.' When we find any self-governing self-governing people afflicted with misgovernment, we can safely believe be-lieve that they do not deserve a better fate." |