310 JOSEPH W. FOLK 



manner in which our laws are carried out. Nearly every state 

 has laws on the statute books to which no attention is paid, 

 and they reap the fruits by having all laws broken. I am not 

 an alarmist when I say, if these conditions be tolerated the 

 republic itself will sooner or later fall, by the props of the law 

 on which it rests being weakened and decayed. Americans 

 are accustomed to regard a repul3lican form of government as a 

 natural condition. That government is mortal and can die, 

 is a thought so entirely foreign to our conditions that it is folly 

 in the minds of some to discuss it. A glance at history does 

 not lend encouragement to this cheerful view. Our republic, 

 though the best, is not the first nor the oldest. We have lasted 

 now one hundred and twenty nine years. Venice had a re- 

 publican form of government for 1,100 years; Carthage, 700 

 years ; Athens, with various intermissions, 900 years ; Florence, 

 300, and Rome, 500 years. These governments have long ago 

 passed from the stage of the world, and some of them are little 

 remembered. If our government were to last three centuries 

 longer and then die, it would go down into history as one of 

 the most splendid and shortest lived among the wrecks with 

 which the shores of time are strewn. What caused the down- 

 fall of these governments by the people? The people made 

 laws until the laws became so many the people began to dis- 

 regard their own laws. The laws of Rome were good; indeed, 

 the Justinian code is said to be the most perfect system of 

 laws ever devised by man, yet Rome rotted and fell, even while 

 this code was in operation. The laws were all right, but the 

 hearts of the people were not right, and the laws were not 

 obeyed. When the laws ceased to reign, the government 

 resting upon that foundation of law commenced to topple over. 

 The reign of law means the rule of the people, for a major- 

 ity of the people make the laws. They register their will 

 crystallized in the form of statutes. We need a revival of the 

 rule of the people. Four years ago the law against bribery 

 in all of the states was considered as practically a dead letter. 

 Up to that time, for the fifty years preceding, there had been 

 only about thirty four cases of bribery reported in the books 

 in all the United States. When the prosecutions were com- 

 menced in St. Louis, the members of the house of delegates 



