the people's
behest. Fixed, definite, precise, formal expressions of popular will,
when time is wanting for these, must be replaced by those which are more
quickly ascertained and less systematically expressed. The Executive
must forecast the general desire and forestall its commands, regarding
the tacit acceptance of the people or their _informal_ laws, such as
resolutions, conventions, and various modes of expressing popular accord
or dissent, as indications of the course which they approve. Nor is this
an anomaly in our legal system. The citizen ordinarily is not at liberty
to take the law into his own hands; he must appeal to the constituted
authorities, and through the machinery of a law court obtain his redress
or protection. But there are times when contingencies arise in which
more wrong would be done by such delay than by a summary process
transcending the customary law. The man who sees a child, a woman, or
even an animal treated with cruelty, does not wait to secure protection
for the injured party by the common methods of legal procedure, but, on
the instant, prevents, with blows if need be, the outrage. He oversteps
the forms of law to secure the ends of law, and rests in the
consciousness that the law itself will accept his action. When the case
is more desperate, his usurpation of power generally prohibited to him
is still greater, up to that last extremity in which he deliberately
takes the whole law into his own hands, and, acting as accuser, witness,
judge, executioner, slays the individual who assaults him with deadly
weapons or with hostile intent.

In this case now stands the nation. Along her borders flashes the steel
of hostile armies, their cannon thunder almost in hearing of our
capitol, their horses but recently trampled the soil of neighboring
States. A deadly enemy is trying to get its gripe upon the republic's
throat and its knife into her heart. The nation must act as an
individual would under similar circumstances; and the nation must act
through its Executive. If one person, attacked by another, should snatch
from the hands of a passer his cane, in order to defend his life; if, in
his struggles with his assailant, he should strike a second through
misconception, how immeasurably ridiculous would be the action of these
individuals, should they, while the death struggle were still raging,
berate the man, one for breaking the law by taking away his cane, and
the other for breaking the law by