16 in the minds of the people. If it holds the integrity of the laws as the bond of its security, executing them with rigorous impartiality, the law will be magnified in the eyes of every citizen. The importance of this cannot be overestimated. A free government can loose anything better than the sanctity of law in the popular mind. It is the very frame of its being. The devastations of war, in the destruction of commerce, the interuptions of trade and agriculture, the desolation of towns and cities, may be repaired by the well directed energies of a law-abiding people. The taint of treason may be removed ; but let the authority of law be prostrated in the mind of a nation, and history points to but one remedy, but one hand with power to raise it up again, and that the tyrant's hand. Lawless power is the restorer of the power of law. Too low already has inefficient government brought the authority of law in the minds of our people. In many sections, the laws which are meant to protect reputation, personal liberty, and even life, are mere names, whilst the inflamed passions of the mob are the real law. In our best regulated States, we pass laws which are openly set at defiance and trampled under foot by the mob, thus bringing into disrepute the name and authority of all law. Law should be enforced at the point of the bayonet, and the people would be careful for what they asked and legislators what they enacted, and the rights of every man be more secure. When a just law is defied, every American citizen should- feel his rights invaded, and demand its execution in the name of his personal safety. No sacrifice can be too great on the part of a people to insure the supremacy of law. Human governments may well pattern by the Divine, where the dying agonies of the Son of God, and the flames of an eternal hell, are the
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