The Struggle for Law
right or of surrendering it. I hold this view, which is to be met with not unfrequently in life, to be reprehensible in the highest degree, and in conflict with the very essence of law. If it were possible that this view should become general, all would be over with the law itself; since whereas the law, to exist, demands that there should be always a manly resistance made to wrong, those who advocate this view preach that the law should flee like a coward before wrong. To this view I oppose the principle: Resistance to injustice, the resistance to wrong in the domain of law, is a duty of all who have legal rights, to themselves—for it is a commandment of moral self-preservation—a duty to the commonwealth;—for this resistance must, in order that the law may assert itself, be universal. I have thus laid down the principle which it is the purpose of the sequel to elaborate.
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