This belief that a law ceases to have obligation when it becomes inexpedient to obey it, extends far beyond the recently arrived elements in our population. For instance, a wealthy man with several American generations behind him, who was serving on the jury in an accident case, stood up on a chair as soon as the jury got into the consultation-room and urged them to disregard everything which the judge had instructed them about the inability of the plaintiff to recover if he, as well as the defendant, was negligent. “This doctrine of contributory negligence,” said this educated juryman, “is not the law of France or Germany or any country on the Continent of Europe. A number of eminent writers agree that it is a thoroughly bad law. Let’s have nothing to do with it.” Needless to say, the plaintiff recovered. This conception of a higher law than that on the books may owe something to the Abolitionists’ belief that they were not bound by the laws protecting the inhuman institution of slavery. Many conscientious persons still hold that a man ought not to be punished for disobeying a law which he believes to be morally wrong. Fortunately, a corrective to this dangerous doctrine of the inner legal light is found in the words of a leading Abolitionist, Judge Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, in charging the Grand Jury on riotous resistance to the fugitive slave law, although he himself regarded it as vicious legislation: “A man whose private conscience leads him to disobey a law recognized by the community must take the consequences of that disobedience. It is a matter solely between him and his Maker. He should take good care that he is not mistaken, that his private opinion does not result from passion or prejudice, but, if he believes it to be his duty to disobey, he must be prepared to abide by the result; and the laws as they are enacted and settled by the constituted authorities to be constitutional and valid, must be enforced, although it may be to his grievous harm. It will not do for the public authorities to recognize his private opinion as a justification of his acts.”