questions to which there is no answer?"]




CHAPTER XVII

RESTORATION OF LAW AND LIBERTY

_What is long suspended is in danger of being totally
abrogated._--EDMUND BURKE.


It is hardly too much to say that English Constitutional Law has been
scrapped since the War. Immediately after the establishment of Peace the
first duty will be to restore the old Constitutional Law which has been
suspended to meet the new conditions due to the War, and to revive again
the old safeguards for the liberty and rights of the subject against
arbitrary action by the executive. The nation has rightly acquiesced in
the exercise of powers by the executive during the War in a manner which
nothing but the necessity of the time could justify. Powers to take a
person's property at the will of some executive department without any
definite principle or procedure even for assessing compensation ought at
once to cease when there is no longer immediate urgency for using such
powers to secure the safety of the country. Powers to deprive persons of
their liberty on vague charges, or to try anyone except by ordinary
course of law in the regular Courts, should be discontinued. The Reign
of Law must be re-established to control the executive Government as
well as the private citizen. Nothing is more infectious than a habit of
substituting arbitrary will for law. Tyranny breeds anarchy, and anarchy