540
THE GREEN BAG
when, in the midst of the most hysterical demands for new laws aiming at certain offenses, successful resort has been had on a large scale to existing laws. The continuance of such efforts will demon strate the adequacy of the laws when rigidly enforced, to put an end to the practices which they were intended to prevent, and at the same time demonstrate anew the wisdom of enacting only such laws as can be enforced, and then to se cure their enforcement. In many cases the misdirected or ignorant zeal of an executive officer is responsible for many new and useless laws. Such an official — generally with the elements in him of the agitator, and often of the demagogue — has been carried into office, after an hysterical canvass, under the promise to prosecute certain kinds of accused persons. Once elected, he takes up his work in the same spirit that had characterized his electoral campaign. He indicts with great facility. He tilts against classes or individuals, only to find that juries do not convict, or that, if they do, courts will not sustain. Then comes a new harvest of laws in order to justify or supplement the zeal of men who may be honest, but who are wanting either in judgment or knowledge. In addition, there is probably no other class of official, and no form of action, which more surely produces contempt for law, whether new or old, than those inherent in spurts among prosecutors. In some instances the opposite of the illustration just cited may be found. An official may insist that it is no part, either of his duty or that of the law, to proceed except where he is fairly assured of his ability to prove every charge, and to as sure conviction. He may have the oldfashioned idea that it is discreditable to indict without reasonable evidence of guilt merely because some ignorant, irrespon sible agitator, or a hysterical victim, or a newspaper, -may suggest or demand it.
This is apt to produce its supply of new bills at the succeeding session of the leg islature, some of which may pass the scru tiny of a careless or an aspiring governor. Another favorite form of legislation is that for the benefit, or at the behoof of, a party. The continual tampering with election laws and regulations; the creation of useless offices, political or judicial; crusades against or favors conferred upon corporations or interests; the reorganiza tion of city governments: the legislation of one class of officials out of office, in or der to put another in; the institution of a state constabulary for the purpose of con trolling the police of great cities for party or personal purposes; the tilting against opponents, a process common to many legislative bodies — all these are produc tive of such infinite and far-reaching harm as to emphasize the doctrine that no par tisan legislation, either proposed before the bodies themselves or pushed in their committees, or enacted into law, can be fair, just, or enduring. The forms of legislative waste here enumerated, and the causes which pro mote them, serve to show why it is that an almost complete change has come over the character of our legislative bodies. Their presence gives speakers almost arbitrary power, makes committees into a new form of tyrant, develops management and in trigue into fine arts, produces bosses as a natural result, and, while keeping the larger men out of legislative halls, puts small ones into their places. Log-rolling becomes a necessity, and mischievous or useless bills pass easily and almost by sufferance. The existence of these ele ments also promotes conflict between ur ban and rural interests in the hope that one or the other may escape a fair share of that taxation which always grows as the result of such a dangerous rivalry. All in all, these conditions interfere continually with the orderliness and the dignity, with the purity and the whole
