Prejudices, third seriesMencken, H. L. (Henry Louis)
History
Prejudices, third series
Mencken, H. L. (Henry Louis)
American essays -- 20th century; American literature -- History and criticism; Literature -- History and criticism
You are naturally somewhat irritated by your experience and perhaps
your wife urges you to seek redress. Well, what are your remedies? If
you are a firebrand, you reach out absurdly for those of a preposterous
nature: the instant jailing of the sergeant, the dismissal of the
Police Commissioner, the release of Mooney, a fair trial for Sacco and
Vanzetti, free trade with Russia, One Big Union. But if you are a
100 per cent. American and respect the laws and institutions of your
country, you send for your solicitor—and at once he shows you just how
far your rights go, and where they end. You cannot cause the arrest of
the sergeant, for you resisted him when he attempted to arrest you,
and when you resisted him he acquired an instant right to take you
by force. You cannot proceed against him for accusing you falsely,
for he has a right to make summary arrests for felony, and the courts
have many times decided that a public officer, so long as he cannot be
charged with corruption or malice, is not liable for errors of judgment
made in the execution of his sworn duty. You cannot get the detectives
on the mat, for when they questioned you you were a prisoner accused of
murder, and it was their duty and their right to do so. You cannot sue
the turnkey at the watch house or the warden at the jail for locking
you up, for they received your body, as the law says, in a lawful and
regular manner, and would have been liable to penalty if they had
turned you loose.
But have you no redress whatever, no rights at all? Certainly you have
a right, and the courts have jealously guarded it. You have a clear
right, guaranteed to you under the Constitution, to go into a court
of equity and apply for a mandamus requiring the _Polizei_ to cease
forthwith to expose your portrait in the Rogues’ Gallery among the
murderers. This is your inalienable right, and no man or men on earth
can take it away from you. You cannot prevent them cherishing your
portrait in their secret files, but you can get an order commanding
them to refrain forever from exposing it to the gaze of idle visitors,
and if you can introduce yourself unseen into their studio and prove
that they disregard that order, you can have them haled into court for
contempt and fined by the learned judge.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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