It has been very easy to tamper with Law among ourselves, very easy to try experiments. And people get the notion that Law is a mere human affair, the act of a legislature, the will of a majority. It is all a mistake. A Nation's living laws are the slow growth of ages. They are its solemn convictions on wrongs and rights, written in its heart. The business of a wise legislator is to help all those convictions to expression in formal enactment. Meddling fools try to choke them, pass acts against them even, think they can annihilate such convictions. One day the convictions insist on being heard, if not by formal law, then by terrible informal protest against some legalized wrong. Think how laboriously lawmakers have toiled to prevent the expression of the Nation's determined convictions on the subject of Slavery! Think of the end! Nay, all enactments which accord with these deep decisions of the National Conscience, which help them to better expression and clearer acknowledgment, are the real Laws of the Land. All that oppose these decisions, though passed by triumphant majorities, with loud jubilation, and fastened on the Nation as its sense of right, are mere rubbish, sure to be swept away as the waves of the National life roll on. We, by no means, hold that even the best nation, in its most living laws, always declares perfect truth and perfect right. Human errors and weaknesses enter into all things with which men deal. And the Nation is ordered and guided by men. Nevertheless the Nation is an authorized teacher of morals, and these errors are the accidents of the institution. They are not of its essence. So far as they exist, they block its working, they stand in its way. Pure, clear Justice is the perfect ideal toward which a living, advancing Nation aims. That it daily come nearer this ideal is the basis of its permanence. And, meanwhile, though the result be far from attained, we none the less hold that the Law of the Nation is, to every man within it, the Law of God. His business, as a wise man, is to accept it, obey it, help it to amendment where he believes there is error, with all patience and loyalty.