The ways of the hour

by James Fenimore Cooper

“What would that have to do with the service of process, if it were true? When a sheriff’s officer comes among these men, they take his authority from him, and send him away empty. Rights are to be determined only by the law, since they are derived from the law; and he who meets the law at the threshold, and denies it entrance, can never seriously pretend that he resists because the other party has no claims. No, no, young gentleman—this is all a fetch. The evil is of years’ standing; it is of the character of the direst oppression, and of oppression of the worst sort, that of many oppressing a few; cases in which the sufferer is cut off from sympathy, as you can see by the apathy of the community, which is singing hosannas to its own perfection, while this great wrong is committed under its very nose. Had a landlord oppressed his tenants, their clamour would have made itself heard throughout the land. The worst feature in the case, is that which connects the whole thing so very obviously with the ordinary working of the institutions. If it were merely human covetousness struggling against the institutions, the last might prove the strongest; but it is cupidity, of the basest and most transparent nature, using the institutions themselves to effect its purpose.”

“I am surprised that something was not done by the last convention to meet the evil!” said Jack, who was much struck with the enormity of the wrong, placed before his eyes in its simplest form, as it had been by his direct-minded and clear-headed kinsman.

“That is because you do not know what a convention has got to be. Its object is to push principles into impracticable extremes, under the silly pretension of progress, and not to abate evils. I made a suggestion myself, to certain members of that convention, which, in my poor judgment, would have effectually cured this disease; but no member had the courage to propose it.[it.] Doubtless, it would have been useless had it been otherwise.”

“It was worth the trial, if such were likely to be its result. What was your plan, sir?”

“Simply to disfranchise any district in which the law could not be enforced by means of combinations of its people. On application to the highest court of the state, an order might be granted that no polls should be held in one, or more, towns, or counties, in which combinations existed of a force sufficient to prevent the laws from being put in force. Nothing could be more just than to say that men who will not obey the law shall not have a voice in making it, and to me it really seems that some such provision would be the best possible expedient to check this growing evil. It would be choking the enemy with his own food.”

“Why was it not done, sir?”

“Simply because our sages were speculating on votes, and not on principles. They will talk to you like so many books touching the vices of all foreign systems, but are ready to die in defence of the perfection of their own.”

“Why was it necessary to make a new constitution, the other day,” asked Sarah, innocently, “if the old one was so very excellent?”

“Sure enough—the answer might puzzle wiser heads than yours, child. Perfection requires a great deal of tinkering, in this country. We scarcely adopt one plan that shall secure everybody’s rights and liberties, than another is broached, to secure some newly-discovered rights and liberties. With the dire example before them, of the manner in which the elective franchise is abused, in this anti-rent movement, the sages of the land have just given to the mass the election of judges; as beautiful a scheme for making the bench coalesce with the jury-box as human ingenuity could invent!”

As all present knew that Mr. Dunscomb was bitterly opposed to the new constitution, no one was surprised at this last assertion. It did create wonder, however, in the minds of all three of the ingenuous young persons, when the fact—an undeniable and most crushing one it is, too, so far as any high pretension to true liberty is concerned—was plainly laid before them, that citizens were to be found in New York against whom the law was rigidly enforced, while it was powerless in their behalf. We have never known this aspect of the case presented to any mind, that it did not evidently produce a deep impression, for the moment; but, alas! “what is everybody’s business is nobody’s business,” and few care for the violation of a principle when the wrong does not affect themselves. These young folk were, like all around them, unconscious even that they dwelt in a community in which so atrocious a wrong was daily done, and, for the moment, were startled when the truth was placed before their eyes. The young men, near friends, and, by certain signs, likely to be even more closely united, were much addicted to speculating on the course of events, as they conceived them to be tending, in other countries. Michael Millington, in particular, was a good deal of a general politician, having delivered several orations, in which he had laid some stress on the greater happiness of the people of this much favoured land, over those of all other countries, and especially on the subject of equal rights. He was too young, yet, to have learned the wholesome truth, that equality of rights, in practice, exists nowhere; the ingenuity and selfishness of man finding the means to pervert to narrow purposes, the most cautious laws that have ever been adopted in furtherance of a principle that would seem to be so just. Nor did he know that the Bible contains all the wisdom and justice, transmitted as divine precepts, that are necessary to secure to every man all that it is desirable to possess here below.