Mr. Jones, having murdered his wife, was burying her in the garden one
night, when his neighbour, hearing the noise, asked him what he was doing.
"Just burying the cat," said Mr. Jones.
"Funny sort of time to bury a cat," said the neighbour.
"Funny sort of cat," said Mr. Jones.
Now it is obvious to everyone that, in a community such as the one in
which we live, some kind of law is necessary to try to prevent people like Mr.
Jones from killing their wives. When the world was at a very primitive stage,
there was no such law, and, if a man chose to kill his wife or if a woman
succeeded in killing her husband, that was their own business and no one l
interfered officially.
But, for a very long time now, members of every community have made laws
for themselves in self-protection. Otherwise it would have meant that the
stronger man could have done what he liked with the weaker, and bad men could
have joined together and terrorized the whole neighbourhood.
If it were not for the law, you could not go out in broad daylight without
the fear of being kidnapped, robbed or murdered. There are far, far more good
people in the world than bad, but there are enough of the bad to make law
necessary in the interests of everyone.
There is no difficulty in understanding this but it is just as important
to understand that law is not necessary just because there are bad people in
the world. If we were all as good as we ought to be, laws would still be
necessary. If we never told lies, never took anything that didn't belong to
us, never omitted to do anything that we ought to do and never did anything
that we ought not to do, we should still require a set of rules of behaviour,
in other words laws, to enable us to live in any kind of satisfactory
state.
How is one good man in a motor-car to pass another good man also in a
motor-car coming in the opposite direction, unless there is some rule of the
road? People sometimes hover in front of one another when they are walking on
the pavement before they can pass, and they may even collide. Not much harm is
done then, but, if two good men in motorcars going in opposite directions
hover in front of one another, not knowing which side to pass, the result will
probably be that there will be two good men less in the world.
So you can see that there must be laws, however good we may be.
Unfortunately, however, we are none of us always good and some of us are bad,
or at any rate have our bad moments, and so the law has to provide for all
kinds of possibilities. Suppose you went to a greengrocer and bought some
potatoes and found on your return home that they were mouldy or even that some
of them were stones, what could you do if there were no laws on the subject?
In the absence of law you could only rely upon the law of the jungle. You
could go back to the shop, demand proper potatoes and hit the shopkeeper on
the nose if he refused to give them to you. You might then look round the shop
to try to find some decent potatoes. While you were doing this, the shopkeeper
might hit you on the back of the neck with a pound weight. Altogether not a
very satisfactory morning's shopping.
Or you might pay your money to go to see a film at a cinema. You might go
inside, sit down and wait. When the cinema was full, there might be flashed on
the screen: "You've had it, Chums". And that might be the whole of the
entertainment. If there were no law, the manager could safely remain on the
premises and, as you went out, smile at you and say: "Hope you've enjoyed the
show, sir." That is to say, he could do this safely if he were bigger than you
or had a well-armed bodyguard.
Every country tries,, therefore, to provide laws which will help its
people to live safely and as comfortably as possible. This is not at all an
easy thing to do, and no country has been successful in producing laws which
are entirely satisfactory. But we are far better off with the imperfect laws
which we have, than if we had none at all.
TASK 2. Answer the questions
Rules, laws, regulations - What is your personal understanding of these
words? Is there any difference between them?
TASK 3. Work in groups. Make a list of arguments for
and against the following statements.
Laws haven't changed since primeval times.
However hard people try, laws are always insufficient.
Laws are not for ordinary people, they are for lawyers.