any part of New York state and a judge of any duly constituted court happened to be nearby, he undoubtedly would issue a writ of habeas corpus and the person be brought into the court for substantiation of the charges in a legal manner according to the common law.  It would not matter whether there were a government or not, the inalienable common law rights of an American citizen would continue to exist and the destruction of the government would only remove one of the means of protecting these rights and not destroy the rights themselves.  In other words, the judge would merely act on the common law rights of the individual.

Furthermore, in the United States no person, whether high or low, official or private citizen, is immune from the operation of the common law.  All are finally subjected to it, and the temporary immunity of the President, a Governor, or any other official, only exists during the term of office for which that official has been elected.  At the expiration of the term the obligations and penalties of the law immediately are again in operation.  On the other hand, in the countries of Continental Europe the officials are not subject to the common law but to the Droit Administratif or Administrative Law, which is an official law for the regulation or trial of officials.  The average European would consider it almost an act of sacrilege to hale an official into court like any other private citizen.

All the above goes to show why many of our foreign-born population look upon a government as “something from above.”  They are wont to be more subservient to it, or to look upon it as responsible for the welfare of its citizens.  Therefore Socialism, which stands essentially for the dependence of the individual upon the State as well as for the governmental direction of the individual and the substitution of State for individual judgment, for this reason appeals to them, and it has made its greatest gains upon the Continent of Europe or among the foreign-born or descended citizens of the United States.

The Socialists answer the charge that Socialism is not American by saying—­“Neither is Christianity.  It is a ‘foreign importation.’  Its founder was a ‘foreigner,’ and never set foot on American soil.  Then there is the printing press.  It isn’t American, either, though somehow we manage to get along with it as well as the other ’foreign importations’ mentioned.”  Of course this smart kind of argument gets nowhere.  It is, in fact, intended to appeal to the half-baked type of mind which has only begun to think and has never progressed beyond the point of a consequent mental indigestion that would account for its Socialist nightmare.  What the Socialists do know and are not honest enough to admit, is that this country was settled three centuries or more ago by a people who did not come hither to enjoy the fruits of other men’s labor but who came here to carve out a new State in America literally by the sweat of their brows.