Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/646

628 Yet no citizen will be allowed to give evidence in a court of justice who does not profess belief in a God and a future state. The result of this is that infidels may be looked upon as outlaws, and, if the conviction of a robber depends on their testimony, he may go free. This rule admits the evidence of those atheists who deny their faith, and excludes those who are brave enough to openly affirm it. A citizen's safety, rights, and property may thus be made to depend upon his belief. What rational man would not willingly believe the testimony of Huxley, Spencer, or Ingersoll on questions involving rights between themselves and other men? Yet these, under our free government, might be challenged as witnesses on religious ground, and thus deprived of the protection of the state.

By the Constitution of the United States all citizens are to be protected against all unlawful searches and seizures; but these rights are continually violated, without redress, by the action of brutal and ignorant officers who, without authority, make police raids and do irreparable injury to innocent men.

Space will not permit of the further recital of offenses, but what has been said will show clearly that the state has done acts that are as deserving of the name of crime as anything committed by the citizen; and, further, that we have drifted into a passive condition of assent to the doctrine that "we, the people" can do no wrong. The effect on the community of the ills that have been set forth is demoralizing, and weakens the stability of the state as a body.

The principal question of human affairs must ever be the proper adjustment of the rights of the individual as against society. The value of existence to the citizen depends upon the restraints placed on the actions of other people. Yet looking at the subject in its widest sense, how little has been done! The influence of custom is so great that the rules laid down by the superior power appear self-justifying. The struggle between liberty and authority—the man and the tyrant—has given place to a more representative government; but success in politics, as in persons, sometimes brings with it infirmities, and popular control may perpetuate in other forms the wrongs of despots long gone.

The question is not new. In some form or other it has been before mankind from the remotest ages. The law that the king could do no wrong has been declared inapplicable to our republican government. But in the monarch's place appears the hydra-headed tyrant—the state. The authority of this body, more dangerous than the power of the king, presents itself under new conditions that require deep consideration and fundamental treatment.

The remedy for many of the troubles is extremely simple. Let