There Ought to Be a Law Against That!

In protesting something we disapprove, we may sometimes say, “There ought to be a law against that!” As a matter of fact, somewhere or other in the world, there are laws against almost everything. But multiplicity of laws does not make men good or society safe. The Ten Commandments gave us a pretty good start, except that no one seems to be able to enforce them or to induce any great number of people to follow them. And so, when you can’t enforce a few laws, the popular thing to do, it seems, is to make many laws, with the result that we have more laws than the world has ever known – and, in some ways, more lawlessness! Perhaps there is a correlation between these two. From the man whose offense involves nothing worse than keeping a book too long out of the library, right down to the man who devastates and steals another man’s possessions or takes his life, we are seeing a worldwide siege of lawlessness. Fortunately, however, it is impossible for any man to disregard all law, because there are laws that cannot be set aside. And, whenever a man breaks a law and thinks he is getting away with it, he is in fact merely setting in motion other laws, which through conscience or from fear of being caught, or through loss of self-respect, always take their toll, whether a person knows it or not. Call it what you swill – the law of cause and effect, the law of retribution, the law of compensation – it is all these and more – and assures us that all things have their consequences. As Emerson said it: “It is impossible for a man to cheat anyone but himself.”