88
SIX
FEET
OF
GROUND.
BY WM. ARCH. MC.CLEAN. THE law doth hedge itself about man so completely that poor mortal, stretching his arms piteously toward the Sphinx, cries aloud in his bewilderment, "Was law made for man, or was man made for a plaything for law?" Law tracks man to cover before ever he was, accompanies him with hue and cry through life and at the end trees him in his six feet of ground. Before ever his cradle was fashioned, it concerns itself about his parents, whether they be joined in wedlock according to the provisions of the statutes in such cases made and provided. When, peradventure, human nature has not been able to keep within due legal channels, the law will seek to discover who has gone into the creation business contrary to the peace and dignity of the commonwealth, Starting thus early, law keeps pace with man until the finish. In the days of his ten der youth law is indulgent. The babe upon his high-chair is as great as the king upon his throne in the most absolute of mon archies. He knows no law. He is a law unto himself. He hurls the symbols of his sceptership after his vassals with impunity. He plays the part of a young bull whenever so inclined even in his mother's china closet. He commits the most willful indiscretions to the horror of the lords and ladies in his train. He makes a handmaiden of crime, yea, may do murder as imperiously as the sultan who shouts, "Off with his head." With all this, it is not in the mouth of man according to law to impute wrong to him, for the babe, like the king, can do no wrong. There cometh a time, however, when the age of the babe doth lose its tenderness, a time when the law will permit the people to inquire into his indiscretions, provided the people assume the burden of proving that the infant doth know right from wrong. As long as right and wrong are but relative
terms to the infant, he is as sheik, sultan or emperor. As the numbering of his days pro ceeds, he gradually emerges from his bar baric condition, passes through a state of semi-civilization, until at length reaching the age where, knowing the right, he doth the wrong pursue, the law compels him to stand and deliver the first magna Charta of the rights of fellow beings about him. From that time until he reaches his major ity man leads a dual legal life, goes into the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde business. On the one hand, he has reached his criminal man hood, while on the other, civilly, he is a suckling. Knowing right from wrong, he must answer for all violations of the penal code. Knowing, however, what estate he is possessed of, in what ways he desires to squander his patrimony, what contracts he would enter into and what promises he would make for a consideration or have made to him for a like reason, yet for all such purposes he is a helpless infant. It lies with him after majority to plead infancy civilly to all promises and contracts made before. If the infant is smart, he will do all his robbing civilly and eschew the criminal ways of robbery, and when the neighbors point the finger crying "thief," he will retort, "It is legal." At length, when this two-faced being doth reach the age of voting, he is a peer among peers, he may sit upon a jury or have a jury sit upon him, civilly as well as crimi nally. He hath come into his full inheritance of accountability, which will dog his heels until the end of his days, provided he doth not become before that time an habitual drunkard or lunatic. Then cometh the end, when man hath earned his six feet of ground, when he must hand in his resignation as the plaything of law, when he is aweary, carrying law like an
