Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 24.pdf/138

 The Courts and Social Questions traditions of individual liberty expressed in East and West New Jersey in the fundamental agreements of the Pro prietors of the two provinces and in Maryland in the charter granted to Lord Baltimore. Continuing, Mr. Keasbey said: These declarations of the early adven turers in Maryland and New Jersey are examples of the fact that the English settlers of what has now become the United States of America brought with them, and publicly affirmed as the funda mental law of the state in the new world, the principle which had become the heri tage of Englishmen in their own country, that the individual has rights which he is entitled to have maintained against the power of the government. This principle established in England as the result of the struggles between the bar ons and the King, and afterward of the alliance between the people and the King as against the barons, is without legal guarantee against the power of Parliament wielding the whole power of the state. In this country, however, the declaration of this principle was em bodied in the constitutions of the sev eral states and of the United States. and has become the warrant for the authority of the courts to maintain the rights of the individual not only against executive officers, but also against the law-making power of the people exerted in the legislature itself. In our day it is the will of the people or the political majority that is kept in check by the courts in giving effect, under new conditions, to these consti tutional provisions which had their ori gin in the struggle of the people to pro tect themselves against the power of the King. It is hard for the people to under stand why they should be met with a phrase taken from Magna Carta when

115

they ask for a law limiting the hours of labor or providing for compensation to workmen injured by machinery in a factory. The need that is felt by the common man just now is not so much protection against political oppression or the power of government officials as protection against the oppression of long hours of labor and hard conditions of life. In the gradual shifting of the centre of the controlling power of the state we have come to the point where the voice of the wage earner is almost compelling in its demand for legislation in favor of his peculiar interests, for the protection of his personal safety, and the improvement of the conditions of living for himself and his family. De mocracy has reached the stage in which the emphasis is not upon the need for the protection of the rights of the indi vidual either with respect to person or property, but rather the satisfaction of the desires of whole classes for a larger share in the products of human activity, whether in property or in the enjoyment of all that life has to offer. There is intense and widespread sym pathy with these aspirations of the work ing men, and earnest and thoughtful men and women have taken upon them selves with passionate earnestness the cause of those who are oppressed by the conditions of modern industrial life. There has come a great reaction against the comfortable doctrine of laissez faire, and there is a prevailing conviction that, taking human life and conditions as they are, it is the duty of the govern ment to do something to equalize con ditions and to prevent the privilege and oppression which have been found to result from individual activity unre strained. From out of a long period dur ing which the laws and the judicial opinions were based upon a public opin ion impregnated and dominated by the