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Updated: June 22, 2025
A business man, with a knowledge of men, naive and deep, passionate, full of himself, he identified his business with the business of France, and even with the affairs of humanity. His own interests, the prosperity of his paper, and the salus publica, all seemed to him to be of equal importance and to be narrowly associated.
Thus at least the citizens might escape observing it, when it was plain that it would cause detriment to the republic, and they might then put in its place the most ancient of all laws, 'salus populi suprema lex."
In some cases this leads to a slight alteration of the Latin axiom, Salus populi est suprema lex, which may be read, "the will of the people is the supreme law." The American constitution is admirable in theory; it enunciates the incontrovertible principle, "All men are free and equal."
Salus populi suprema lex, ever has been and ever will be the substantial canon of policy with public men, and morality is bound to hesitate before it censures them. There are some acts of injustice which no national interest can excuse, however great in itself that interest may be, or however certain to be attained by the means proposed.
Nunquam enim hoc convenisse naturae auctori parentique rerum omnium bonarum. Sed hanc utilitatem rei majoris alia quaedam incommoditas extrinsecus consecuta est, ut fieret caput tenuiter munitum et ictibus offensionibusque parvis fragile. Proinde morbi quoque et aegritudines partae sunt, dum salus paritur.
But that his main purpose was to break down a rotten system, and establish a sound one on its ruins, and that no petty motive of expediency guided him, but only the one principle, 'salus populi suprema lex, is incontrovertible.
There have been periods since, in which I should have been, what I now am, a moderate Tory, a supporter, as far as my little influence extends, of a well-poised balance between the crown and people: but should the scale preponderate against the Salus populi, that moment may it be said 'The dog's a Whig! We had a calm after the storm, staid the evening and supped, and were pleasant and gay.
Once more, when the panic reached its height during the spring of 1918, British subjects were deprived of liberty without due process of law and by arbitrary tribunals sitting behind closed doors; once more we reverted to the old maxim of Roman law and the everlasting plea of despots, salus populi suprema lex, and learnt to practise ourselves the precepts we scorned in others.
The one regards international covenants to which it has pledged its own word as 'scraps of paper' when they stand in the way of salus populi; the other regards the maintenance of such covenants as a grave and inevitable obligation.
However, I do not at all intend to excuse myself with such observations, for I have always had one compass only, one lode-star by which I have steered: Salus Publica, the welfare of the State.
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