Render Unto Caesar

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 518, 27 May 1949, Page 11

Render Unto Caesar

POSSIBLY listening to the life of Emmeline Pankhurst in the BBC Torch of Freedom programme recently put me completely out of sympathy with the idea of the Law as an entity, entitled to respect for its own sake, since the embers of revolt kindled by the Pankhurst programme were still in full glow when the 2YA M@nday night discussion came on at 8.20. The subject was, "Do We Respect the Law?", the speakers, the Rev, Harry Squires, G. H. A. Swan, a barrister, and Miss E. H. Merrin, a -- probation officer. Naturally the disputants did not go deeply into the. question of the law’s fallibility, and tended to beg the question whether there can be such a thing as an unjust law. Not, as the Rev. Squires said firmly, that that would be any excuse for breaking it, since the breaking of any law tends to bring the whole moral fabric into disregard. Generally speaking the disputants were stern in their attitude to the lawbreaker, refusing to admit any moral distinction between the man who hits his mother-| in-law over the head (because he doesn’t like her) and the man who flouts a ceiling-price regulation (because he doesn’t like it). Howevet, in spite of the elevated moral tone of the discussion it had its lightet side. I particularly liked the Chairman’s point that there is such a thing as over-legislation; and better the session that produces a good thin statute-book than that which produces a good thick one, ,