SOCIAL REGULATION 265 



to give effect to principles for which their advocates erroneously 

 believe the community is prepared. The history of legislation con- 

 tains many such wrecks of unseaworthy statutes, and they are not 

 less numerous to-day, in spite of the far greater power of the state 

 to enforce its laws. Legislation intended to promote what a friend 

 of mine calls " righteousness by statute " is particularly common in 

 the United States, because of the easy and irresponsible way in 

 which statutes are enacted, and because it suits both the idealistic 

 temper and the practical qualities of the people to pass unwise laws 

 designed to work moral reforms, and then leave them unenforced. 



Most prominent among statutes of the kind are the liquor laws 

 in many places, the evasions of the law being sometimes clandestine, 

 sometimes open, and sometimes done with the connivance of the 

 authorities. Statutes of this class are passed on many subjects, out 

 of good nature, or in deference to the urgent appeals of deputations 

 of influential citizens. They may be enacted without any serious 

 intention of enforcing them, or they may be such that local opinion - 

 as is often the case with game laws or the difficulty of proving 

 violation as in the case of laws concerning railway rates makes it 

 very difficult to enforce them. Some of these laws are harmless; 

 others are demoralizing to the men who evade them and weaken the 

 law-abiding character of the people; while others are a fertile source 

 of political corruption. The author of The Boss, an exceedingly 

 acute study of New York city politics, written under a feigned name, 

 and far less widely known than it deserves to be, has pointed out 

 that sumptuary laws, which can be violated on payment of a con- 

 tribution to the campaign fund of the party, are almost a necessity 

 for the support of the machine in the city. 



Apart from tentative, ephemeral, and inoperative statutes, 

 political contests are the struggles of political growth, and the 

 political growth of a nation is eventually embodied in its laws. 



All this may be supposed to refer to public rather than to private 

 law. Napoleon expressed that idea when he said: " The legislature 

 should legislate, i. e., construct grand laws on scientific principles of 

 jurisprudence, but it must respect the independence of the executive 

 as it desires its own independence to be respected. It must not criti- 

 cise the government, and as its legislative labors are essentially of 

 a scientific kind, there can be no reason why its debates should be 

 reported." 1 In other words, he regarded private civil jurisprudence 

 as a science, quite independent of politics and public opinion. This 

 may be true of the construction of a code based upon existing law; 

 but it is certainly not true of legislative changes. In countries with 

 a popular government, deliberate alterations of the law are made to- 



1 Quoted in Ilbert's Legislative Methods and Forms, p. 208. The original letter 

 does not appear to be extant. 



