The attitude of the law was thus or so, and not otherwise.

It was not for the individual to pass upon any of these questions.

It was for the courts to do so, the approved machinery set aside, under the social compact, for reducing the friction of the wheels of society, for securing the permanency of things beneficial to that society, and for removing things injurious thereto.

The Law itself was immutable.

The courts must administer that Law without malice, without feeling, impersonally, justly.
In so far as there had hitherto been no Law in Heart's Desire, went on the speaker, thus far had our citizens dwelt in barbarism, had indeed been unfit, under the very definition of things, to bear the proud title of citizens of America, the justest, the most order-loving, as well as the bravest and the most aggressive nation of the world.