THE HOPE OF THE WORLD
Did you ever pause to think what our country would be
like if we did not have a settled government interested in
the passing of good laws for the benefit of all the people,
and officers whose duty it is to see that these laws are
obeyed? Let us look for a moment at England as it was eight
hundred years ago. A man who was an actual eyewitness
of what was then happening tells us that at that time
"Every rich man built his castles and defended them against
the king, and they filled the land with castles. They
greatly oppressed the wretched people by making them
Work at their castles, and, when the castles were finished,
they filled them with devils and evil men. They took those
whom they suspected to have any goods, by night and by
day, and they put them in prison for their gold and silver,
and tortured them with pains unspeakable." This is a
very terrible picture and hard to reconcile with the England
of to-day. But, even several hundred years later, when
two men laid claim to the same piece of property, the
ownership was frequently decided by a hand-to-hand
combat between the claimants, or by a light between the
friends and followers of each. In fact, for the rich and
powerful in those days, as the poet Wordsworth says,
"the good old rule
Sufficeth them, the simple plan,
That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can."
Of course, even in the England of eight hundred years
ago, there were laws forbidding such cruel deeds as we have
just described, but the king was not strong enough to
enforce the laws that he had himself made, He was afraid to
anger his proud and haughty barons, and allowed them to
do very much as they pleased, Consequently, as we have
seen, life and property were not safe. Men were forced to
go about armed in order to protect themselves. The
poor and the weak were at the mercy of their wealthy and
powerful neighbors, By slow degrees, a little at a time, all
this has been changed. Now, throughout the whole
British Empire, we have strong governments who carry
out the will of the people. We have laws which are so
framed as to be fair and equitable to all, and we have men
whose special duty it is to enforce these laws. We have
law courts and judges to settle our private disputes. People
who break the laws of the land are punished for their
disobedience. And what is true in this respect of the
British Empire is true, more or less, of all the individual
countries of the civilized world to-day.
