Fiatch

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There are limitations to the powers of governments and of peoples that inhere in the constitution of things, and that neither despotisms nor democracies can overcome.

Legislatures are as powerless to abrogate moral and economic laws as they are to abrogate physical laws.  They cannot convert wrong into right or divorce effect from cause, either by parliamentary majorities, or by unity of supporting public opinion.  The penalties of such legislative folly will always be exacted by inexorable time.  While these propositions may be regarded as mere commonplaces, and while they are acknowledged in a general way, they are in effect denied by many of the legislative experiments and the tendencies of public opinion of the present day.

John Mackay
Toronto General Trusts Building,
Toronto, 31st March, 1914