People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 November 1895 — Personal Liberty. [ARTICLE]

Personal Liberty.

An attache of the British legation in Washington is quoted as saying that we have far less respect for personal liberty in this country than they hare in Great Britain, And much as we. vaunt our glorious freedom, it is the plain truth. Men’s personal rights are more Jealously guarded there than here. There is a nearer approach to perfect equality before the law. The high andthe low, the rich and the poor, are more, nearly on the same level in courts of justice. English law and the English constitution recognize certain exclusive privileges, but in the administration of the law, even-handed justice to all alike is the rule. English juries do not acquit rich murderers. English policemen do not club helpless prisoners, English law as administered does* not bind the weak and free the strong. We have in this country a strange compound of law and license. We have made a fetich of liberty, and yet we are not free, for we have forgotten, in our worship of the mere name of liberty, our respect for law. Yet law is the only guardian and protector of liberty. People are not free where life is not protected. They are not free where the right to shoot or to lynch is more regarded than the right to a fair trial and to the law’s protection from unlawful ziolence. —Memphis Commercial-Ap-peal. The republicans seem to forget that the people were as badly disgusted will* their party in 1892, as they are now with the democratic party. The republican victories are being won for ttws most part, not by an increased republican vote over 1892, but by a decreased democratic vote.