"Law without enforcement is only good advice."
Short answer: quote cannot be attributed to Lincoln.
The fine staff at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum
(Mary Ann Pohl,Bryon Andreason, and especially Thomas Scwartz, Interim
Director and leading Lincoln historian) provided the following info.:
You will not find the quote among Lincoln's known writings, THE
COLLECTED WORKS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. It is also not found in Don and
Virginia Fehrenbacher's THE RECOLLECTED WORDS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
which
are utterances attributed to Lincoln and not found in his writings.
This makes it pretty fishy. A quick Internet search shows 7 direct
hits, the earliest in 2003 and most clustering in 2005 including a
Professor Vladimir Kvint who quotes it in a Forbes.com article. But
none of these provides any further clue as to when and where Lincoln
allegedly uttered these words. If something is an attribution, you
need
at the very least a Lincoln contemporary who heard the words as well
as
a specific context (i.e. event, date, etc.) When an attribution
fails
in providing any more information than "Abraham Lincoln," it is
something not to be trusted. You have no way to prove or disprove
the
claim since you cannot prove a negative.
An interesting theory sent to me proved to be misleading:
It may be a (loose) paraphrase from his first inaugural address??:
http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres31.html
<snip>
"In any law upon this subject ought not all the safeguards of liberty
known in civilized and humane jurisprudence to be introduced, so that
a free man be not in any case surrendered as a slave? And might it
not be well at the same time to provide by law for the enforcement of
that clause in the Constitution
which guarantees that "the citizens of each State shall be entitled
to all privileges
and immunities of citizens in the several States"?
Thomas Schwartz:
"This is a stretch since is has nothing to do with the meaning of the
original quote. As I understand the original quote, laws must be
enforced to have any meaning or impact. This quote is Lincoln
addressing the issue whether federal or state authorities should enforce
the fugitive slave act. His answer is that it doesn't really matter.
What matters is that freemen ought to be protected."
Thanks to the many law-libber who offered assistance, and especially
Jeff D. McGuire, Michael McWhite, Candle Wester-Mittan,
******************************************************
Liz Doyle
Supervisory Librarian, ASRC Management Services
U.S. EPA Region 10
1200 Sixth Ave, OMP-104,
Seattle WA, 98101-3188
Phone: 206-553-2134
Fax: 206-553-6346
doyle.liz@epa.gov
******************************************************
(The library is staffed and operated by ASRC Management Services)
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