of Governor Herbert R. O'Conor 515

On the other hand and more happily, there is that nation where law and
law-enforcement are the voice and the strong right arm of the people them-
selves.

There has never been a time in America when this was not BO. There has
never been a time when it was more important for this to continue being so.
The threat of an enemy from without very much increases the heed of vigilance
against lawlessness from within. We have to keep and to guard that which was
brought to this continent more than -three hundred years ago-^the Anglo-Saxon
sense of Justice. This. Justice is the very, pillar of Democracy. It is a mighty
fortress for the defense of what we call the American way of life. Where there
is justice, there is freedom. Where kidnappers and killers, saboteurs and gang-
sters fear to tread—there the honest man can prosper; there he can raise up
his children in the fear only of God and in the light of truth.

And this was always the aim and ideal of the American system of law. It
is not too much to say that it has been the only purpose of the machinery of
law enforcement. It is interesting and instructive to look back and take note

of how this machinery grew from crude beginnings into the complicated and
smooth-running engine of today.

For there have always been law-breakers. Had we been alive in the late
1600's we would. have seen them sitting in stocks in the village squares of New
England and the Middle Atlantic colonies. There, in the public view, the mis-
creant was left to face the disapproval of his fellow-citizens and to repent. We
think of that today as a rather primitive way to control the spirit of lawless-
ness. Perhaps it was, but then it was the outgrowth of a very primitive civiliza-
tion where crime itself was a relatively simple outbreak against the locality.

, Still it is worth noting that the colonists, like ourselves today, were living
under menace from savages. The Indian prowled the forests and pirates
roamed the seas, but our forefathers did not let these threats divert their minds
from the essential matter of guarding themselves and their homes against the
lawbreaker and the footpad. Equal justice for all under the law—for the honest
worker who deserved protection; for the breaker of self made laws who in the
judgement of his peers, deserved to sit in the stocks or even to take his punish-
ment at the whipping post.

American law-enforcement kept abreast of its responsibilities. The town
constable soon needed assistants. The stocks gave way to a different sort of
confinement the local jail. But, as the Country expanded westward, we had
another sort of problem in crime. The Bad Man of the West—the highwayman

—the crooked gambler—the claim jumper—the horse thief and the cattle
rustler. Here again law enforcement had to be set up to meet a set of par-
ticular conditions. The village constable with his wooden staff gave way to the
two-gun sheriff on horseback. The outlaws were hunted down by volunteer
posses, and punishment was often a quick and final thing told on the end of a
rope.

But the same spirit prevailed. The Anglo-Saxon sense of fair play, which
had come to America in sailing vessels, now proceeded to extend itself over
America by covered wagon and ox cart. There had to be security for the