The Struggle for Law
thus relieving him of the hardest part of the work. But even in respect to those violations of law, the prosecution of which is left entirely to the individual, care is taken that the struggle may not be interrupted; for every one does not follow the policy of the coward, and even the latter takes his place in the line of combatants, at least when the value of the object in controversy outweighs his ease. But let us suppose a state of things in which the protection afforded by the police power and by the criminal law is wanting; let us transfer ourselves to a time when, as in ancient Rome, the pursuit of the thief and the robber was the affair only of the person injured, and who does not see to what such an abandonment of one’s legal rights would have led? To what would it have conduced but to the encouragement of thieves and robbers? The very same thing is true of the life of nations. Here each nation is thrown entirely on its own resources. No higher power relieves it of the necessity of asserting its rights, and I need only recall the example
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