Foxy Hedgehog

The notion was not without merit, because the facts of the case were beyond dispute, but those who proposed it forgot that he who takes the law into his own hands will render a service to justice only if he is willing to transform the situation in such a way that the law can again operate and his act can, at least posthumously, be validated.

...the territorial principle, whose great significance lies in the fact that the earth is inhabited by many peoples and that these peoples are ruled by many different laws, so that every extension of one territory's law beyond the borders and limitations of its validity will bring it into immediate conflict with the law of another territory.

This does not mean that justice is erratic or variable, but that the times over which it presides are not always the same, for it is the nature of times to change. Man's life on earth is short and he cannot, by his own perception, see the connexion between the conditions of earlier times and of other nations, which he has not experienced himself, and those of his own times, which are familiar to him. But when only one individual, one day, or one house is concerned, he can easily see what is suitable for each part of the whole and for each member of the household, and what must be done at which times and places. These things he accepts: but with the habits of other ages he finds fault!

Upon the whole, it might rather be thought, that he, who, in view of its inconsistencies, says of human nature the same that, in view of its contrasts, is said of the divine nature, that it is past finding out, thereby evinces a better appreciation of it than he who, by always representing it in a clear light, leaves it to be inferred that he clearly knows all about it.

...what came first was constitutionality, rule of law, and the separation of powers. Democracy almost always came last.