Page:Struggle for Law (1915).djvu/149

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Assertion of Rights a Social Duty


accessories to, the institutions of the state. Here belong the secret courts of criminal justice in the middle ages and the feudal law, which bear weighty evidence to the impotence or the partiality of the criminal courts of the time and to the weakness of the state power; in the present, dueling, which is a palpable proof that the penalties which the state inflicts on attacks on one’s honor are not sufficient to satisfy the delicate feeling of honor of certain classes of society. Here also belong the revenge for bloodshed of the Corsicans and so-called lynch-law in the United States. All these show very plainly that the legal institutions of the country are not in harmony with the feeling of the people or of a class. They always imply a reproach to the state, either that it makes them necessary or that it endures them. When the law has prohibited them, without, however, being able to abolish them, they may become, for the individual, the source of a very serious conflict. The Corsican who obeys the law rather than have

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