the employer-owner than the lower ones, and especially more so than the juries in those cases where juries have found occasion to pass on the law of the case. * The like is true as regards suits for damages arising out of injuries sustained by workmen, and so involving the question of the employer's liability. Even a casual scrutiny of the decisions, however, will show that in most cases the decision of the court, whether on the merits of the case or on the constitutionality of the legal provisions involved, ' is well grounded on the metaphysical basis of natural liberty. > That is to say in other words, the decisions will be found on the side of the maintenance of fundamental law and order, "law and order " having, of course, reference to the inalienable rights of ownership and contract. As should fairly be expected, the higher courts, who are presumably in more intimate touch with the principles of jurisprudence, being more arduously trained and more thoroughly grounded in the law at the same time that they have also presumably a larger endowment of legal
' Por ejemplo, en lo que respecta a la responsabilidad del empleador por accidentes o propósitos unitarios, la salvaguarda de la maquinaria, el límite de edad de los trabajadores o el límite de horas de tiempo de trabajo, etc., los tribunales se pronuncian de manera más inequívoca a favor de los principios metafísicos y los aplican con un tacto más seguro y firme. A los ojos de estos adeptos superiores de la ley, la libre contratación es un derecho natural del hombre tan inalienable que ni siquiera un decreto legislativo permitirá que un obrero renuncie a su ejercicio y a su responsabilidad. Por necesidad metafísica, su ejercicio se adhiere al individuo de manera tan indeleble que no puede delegarse