A CHAPTER VIII ELEMENTS OF DISORGANIZATION IN THE S a nation advances in civilization the problems confronting it increase in complexity. The problems confronting a savage race are very simple; to the savage they are as difficult as our more complex problems are to us. As savage tribes progress the problems take on a new character. How to plant a little corn, construct a rude hut, make the simplest clothing; such problems are joined with the more rudimentary problems of self-preservation. Further advancement introduces new and more complex questions for consideration and decision, and brain development comes about in precisely this way. In proportion as the problems of production and distribution, of ethics and government, of science and invention, are solved and practically applied, a people flourishes and becomes civilized. There is little reason to doubt that if a nation should advance as far ahead of the United States as the latter is of Venezuela, there would be proportionally as great a number of new and complicated problems confronting it as there are now confronting us in comparison with those facing Venezuela. The problems of civilization are necessarily complicated. How to make one hundred persons of good character live in comfort on the land upon which only one savage existed in squalor, that is the heart of the aim of civilization, and the resultant problems growing out of this central object increase in complexity the farther we travel on the road to a realization of the ideal. But because grave problems confront us that is no reason why we should grow faint-hearted. Rather they should make us stronger and more hopeful. Every force which plays upon us now, hostile as well as friendly, tends to our intellectual development. It will do no harm, however, to consider some of the dangers which threaten the American people, if for no other purpose than to see what, if any, effect they should have on our policy towards Latin America. I. FAILURE OF THE AMERICAN JUDICIARY SYSTEM "In order to establish justice"-so says the Constitution of the United States, "promote the general welfare"-here we have justice again; for there can be no general welfare without justice "and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity," that means justice once more, for there can be no liberty without justice. The State Constitutions are no less explicit in regard to the necessity of establishing and maintaining justice. That of Illinois, as typical of the rest, says: "Every person ought to find a certain remedy in the laws for all injuries and wrongs which he may receive in his person, property, or reputation; he ought to obtain by law, right and justice freely, and without being obliged to purchase it, completely and without denial, promptly and without delay." These words sound well; they show that the fathers, at least, were men of high ideals. How far short their offspring have come from "making good," in establishing our judiciary system, is a matter of common notoriety; for it is not too much to say that in no State of this Union can justice be obtained at all, within any time or at any price, not alone "completely and without denial, promptly and without delay." The administration of justice is confessedly a complicated subject. It is the most difficult department of the government, and the one most neglected by the people at large. The American citizens, including the Constitution makers, have devoted profound thought to the executive department of the government. There has always been among us an acute aversion to executive usurption, a disposition to criticise unsparingly every chief magistrate, or other executive officer, to limit his powers by all sorts of constitutional prohibitions, and to hold him to the strictest accountability to the people by frequent elections. This has come about because the tyrannies from which our forefathers escaped proceeded mainly from the executive branch of the government, and it was not deemed probable that the legislative or the judiciary department might become an even greater tyrant than any Emperor or Czar. This intense scrutiny exercised by the American people with reference to the executive department has resulted, as might have been expected, in a high degree of excellence; and it may safely be asserted that the executive department, not only of the national government, but also of the several States and municipalities, has no equal, certainly no superior, in any nation of ancient or modern times. No country has ever had a line of kings or emperors which would compare with the American presidents, from Washington to Roosevelt; while examples of insolence, usurpation, corruption, or depravity among our inferior executive officers are rare indeed. It is the executive department which has chiefly made the reputation of this Republic as a land of liberty. Our legislative department is on the average bad - the people pay less attention to it than to the executive; a representative is considered of less importance than a governor; an alderman than a mayor; so that while the latter are usually good men, the former are frequently bad. The almost universal pollution of our legislative bodies, the vast number of "freak" and blackmailing laws, and the general odor of "graft" connected with practically all legislative proceedings, are bringing this department of the government into disrepute. A discovery of mild corruption in the agricultural or post-office department causes an instantaneous sensation, while corrupt bills by the hundred are passed in the State legislature with but little or no comment from the public. But public interest is at least to some extent directed towards the legislature. It is in the judiciary department, however, where the American system of free government shows its gravest defects. The normal American attitude towards the judiciary is that of blind support and unthinking adherence. Unnumbered outrages are committed by the courts every day to which nobody pays any attention. If a tithe of the crimes committed in the name of the law, by the judges who are appointed as its ministers and the juries which are ordained as its organs, were done by the Executive, there would be an instantaneous revolution. But committed by the judiciary department, nothing is said, for we give the same unquestioned worship to the judiciary that the heathen do to their clay gods. As long as this spirit prevails among our people there will be inefficiency and corruption in our courts, and they will continue to be, as many of them are at present, a menace to the property and lives of honest men and a joy to criminals and blackmailers. It was not Choate who was so severely criticised, I take it, as it was the judiciary itself, by Phillips, when he said: "Suppose we stood in that lofty temple of jurisprudence - on either side of us the statues of the great lawyers of every age and clime and let us see what part New England - Puritan, educated, free New England - would bear in the pageant. Rome points to a colossal figure and says, "That is Papinian, who, when the Emperor Caracella murdered his own brother, and ordered the lawyer to defend the deed, went cheerfully to death rather than sully his lips with the atrocious plea.' And France stretches forth her grateful hands, crying, "That is D'Agnesseau, worthy, when he went to face an enraged King, of the farewell his wife addressed him—“Go! forget that you have a wife and children to ruin, and remember only that you have France to save." England says, "That is Coke, who flung the laurels of eighty years in the face of the first Stuart, in the defence of the people.' "This is Selden, on every book of whose library you saw written the motto of which he lived worthy, 'Before everything Liberty!' That is Mansfield, silver-tongued, who proclaimed, 'Slaves cannot breathe in England.' This is Romilly, who spent life trying to make law synonymous with justice, and succeeded in making life and property safer in every city of the Empire. That is Erskine, whose eloquence, in spite of Lord Eldon and George III, made it safe to speak and print. "Then New England shouts, "This is Choate, who made it safe to murder; and of whose health thieves asked before they began to steal.'" Mr. Phillips, while merely criticising Choate, was, in fact, uttering a most sweeping condemnation of the whole judiciary system of New England. If the courts of New England had been efficient, what difference would it have made whether Choate's health were good or bad? The law, the administration of the law, touches every man and woman at every point of their existence. Every commercial transaction is based on the law; do I live to do a day's work, the law governs; do I undertake to float a syndicate, again the law controls. My titles to my estate depend upon the law and its honest administration. Turn which way I will, in no relation of life can I move without touching the law. Nay, now that I have been freed, by patriotic forefathers, from executive tyranny, my liberty, my life itself, depends upon the lawupon just law, justly enforced, which implies a decent judiciary department. And if the law be maladministered, the outrages from which I may suffer under its name may be greater than any Nero or Lopez would have dared to perpetrate. Now, what are the facts with reference to the administration of law in the United States? The facts are that the administration of justice has fallen into disrepute; that our courts, instead of being the bulwarks of justice, have in many instances become the mechanism for the levying of blackmail; that the most sacred functions of justice have been prostituted to technicality; that the very pretence of obtaining justice in the courts of the United States, whether State or federal, is a delusion and a snare, and the proceedings of those courts are mostly a farce. The maladministration of our courts has added a new terror to life, for no man, however innocent he may be, can positively affirm that his estate will not be confiscated on some trivial pretext, at the instance of a blackmailing suitor, or even his liberty or his life forfeited on trumpedup, perjured, or wholly circumstantial and frivolous evidence. The maladministration of our courts has added a new terror to death, for every man realizes that the moment he dies his estate is liable to be squandered through the machinations of unscrupulous lawyers and the connivance of the judges; so that while he has devoted a life of arduous endeavor to provide something for his wife and children, as against the final summons, they nevertheless, through and because of the iniquitous proceedings of our courts, stand, as he knows, in danger of losing all if the slightest hook or quibble of the law can once place their inheritance at the mercy of our tribunals. The courts upon which inexperienced widows and helpless orphans ought to be able to rely with complacency become engines of extortion, cooperating with cunning and unprincipled lawyers in despoiling them of their only sustenance. The record of broken wills and looted estates, of properties consumed in litigation which should have gone to the support of the heirs of the deceased, constitutes an indictment against our judiciary system which no amount of palliation can cover up or excuse. In the same category with the maladministration of the civil law we may place the scandalous maladministration of the criminal law. It is a matter of common knowledge that criminals of all types and classes are set free and turned loose upon the community upon the slightest and most ridiculous technicalities. So grave has this evil become that it is a public scandal. But a still graver public scandal is the fact that many innocent men are imprisoned or executed by these same brutally incompetent courts. We see the same prisoner condemned to death by one judge and jury, and set free by another judge and jury, upon the same statement of facts, with the same identical witnesses and the same lawyers. I personally know of many innocent men condemned to death or to life imprisonment, and the records are full of such cases. One friend of mine in particular died at a good old age-through no fault of the law. When a young man, he was arrested for murder and sentenced to death on circumstantial evidence of the most conclusive character; the Supreme Court of the State confirmed the sentence, and the Governor refused to interfere. The gallows were erected, but during the night preceding the projected hanging he escaped from jail. He fled to a foreign country, disguised himself, changed his name, engaged in the mercantile business, became very wealthy and a useful citizen in the community, married and had a large and attractive family. A year or two before his death the real murderer died, making a confession on his deathbed; but my friend would never set foot again on the soil of the United States. He said he abhorred a country where it was possible for an ignorant and brutal court to commit the murderous outrage of condemning an innocent man to death, where such a crime against a son could send a gray-haired mother in sorrow to the grave. His case is only one of thousands; it cries aloud to high Heaven for redress. II. GENERAL CAUSES OF THE INEFFICIENCY AND CORRUPTION OF OUR JUDICIARY There are several primary and several secondary causes of the general condition of inefficiency, not to say corruption and anarchy, into which our judiciary system has fallen. Briefly, I would classify them as follows: 1st. The sublime confidence which the American people exhibit towards their judiciary, resulting in a complete acquiescence in its acts, however wrong they may be. 2d. The practical impossibility, under existing conditions, of punishing corrupt, vindictive, ignorant, or criminal judges. |