attached or any code attached, any _sanction_, as we call it, or thing
which enforces the law; a penalty, or fine, or imprisonment. There are
just as good "sanctions" for law outside of the sanctions that our
people usually think of as there are inside of them; and often very
much better. For instance, the sanction of a strong custom. Take any
example you like; there are many States where marriage between blacks
and whites is not made unlawful, but where practically it is made
tremendously unlawful by the force of public opinion. Take the case of
debts of honor, so-called, debts of gambling; they are paid far more
universally than ordinary commercial debts, even by the same people;
but there is no _law_ enforcing them--there is no _sanction_ for the
collection of gambling debts. And take any custom that grows up. We
know how strong our customs in college are. Take the mere custom of a
club table; no one dares or ventures to supplant the members at that
table. That kind of sanction is just as good a law as a law made
by statute and imposing five or ten dollars penalty or a week's
imprisonment. And judges or juries recognize those things as laws,
just as much as they do statute laws; when all other laws are lacking,
our courts will ask what is the "custom of the trade." These be laws;
and are often better enforced than the statute law; the rules of the
New York Stock Exchange are better enforced than the laws of the State
legislature. Now all our early Anglo-Saxon law was law of that kind.
And it was not written down for a great many centuries, and even after
being first written it wasn't usual to affix any _penalty_; they were
mere customs, but of an iron-bound nature--customs that were followed
far more devoutly than the masses of our people follow any of our
written laws to-day. And their "sanction" was twofold: In the first
place, the sanction I have mentioned, universal custom, social
ostracism for breach. A second and very obvious sanction, that if you
do a thing that I don't like and think is against the law, I am going