These laws are general and their administration should be
uniform and equal. As a citizen may not elect what laws he will obey,
neither may the Executive eject which he will enforce. The duty to obey
and to execute embraces the Constitution in its entirety and the whole
code of laws enacted under it. The evil example of permitting
individuals, corporations, or communities to nullify the laws because
they cross some selfish or local interest or prejudices is full of
danger, not only to the nation at large, but much more to those who use
this pernicious expedient to escape their just obligations or to obtain
an unjust advantage over others. They will presently themselves be
compelled to appeal to the law for protection, and those who would use
the law as a defense must not deny that use of it to others.
If our great corporations would more scrupulously observe their legal
limitations and duties, they would have less cause to complain of the
unlawful limitations of their rights or of violent interference with
their operations. The community that by concert, open or secret, among
its citizens denies to a portion of its members their plain rights under
the law has severed the only safe bond of social order and prosperity.
The evil works from a bad center both ways. It demoralizes those who
practice it and destroys the faith of those who suffer by it in the
efficiency of the law as a safe protector. The man in whose breast that
faith has been darkened is naturally the subject of dangerous and
uncanny suggestions.
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