The rule of law and Daniel Webster

THIS WEEK’S WINNER

Khalil Dalig Manabilang, 31, is a labor arbitration associate from the National Labor Relations Commission under the Department of Labor and Employment. He earned his degree from the Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology, where he is a member of the College of Law Advocates and Nobles.

By itself, the constitution is a sheaf of papers; the flag, a piece of cloth. But the men and women who assume the task of leading their nations pledge their allegiance to them, not for what they are but for what they represent.

The majesty of the law rests on the intangibles. Even the most brilliant men of science can never quantify justice, an abstract idea that reflects an eternal truth. Yet, the pursuit of justice is the spark that has ignited the passion in the hearts of untold millions, the pen that has written and revised history throughout the millennia.

Justice, truth, transparency, accountability. These may never literally assuage the hunger pains of the average man on the street, but they are, to borrow the title of retired Senate President Jovito Salonga’s classic treatise, “the intangibles that make a nation great.”

Injustices, unfortunately, will continue to exist for centuries to come. That’s why we need the mechanism to right all that has been done wrong.

I am a lawyer who was named after the Lebanese mystic, poet and artist Kahlil Gibran. The rule of law and the transformative wisdom of literature are both part of my heritage. The book I want to share is the classic that is the stuff of legends, the story that crystallizes the moral ascendancy of justice and freedom — The Devil and Daniel Webster by Pulitzer prizewinner Stephen Vincent Benét.

It is about the struggle of good versus evil, the agony of a man who’s about to lose his freedom, and the most gut-wrenching and deeply stirring trial that ever was.

Through it all stands the towering figure of the most formidable lawyer of them all. “A man with a mouth like a mastiff, a brow like a mountain, and eyes like burning anthracite — that was Dan’l Webster in his prime,” writes Benet. “And the biggest case he ever argued never got written down in the books, for he argued it against the Devil, nip and tuck and no-holds barred.”

A legal career with the greatest accomplishments begins with a single client. Jabez Stone of Cross Corners, New Hampshire is the epitome of an unlucky man. He is a farmer with a sick family and a broken plowshare. “It’s enough to make a man sell his soul to the Devil,” he despairs, “And I would too, for two cents!”

Speaking of the Devil, a stranger soon comes and he and Jabez make a back-barn deal. “After that, all of a sudden, things began to prosper for Jabez Stone,” relates Benét. Apparently, the deal was that Stone would achieve great success in exchange for his soul. Stone keeps postponing the deliberation, which the Devil grants but overrules his motion for reconsideration — much more his motion to quash.

Condemned, Stone “can’t bear it any longer, and, in the last day of the last year, he hitches up his horse and drives off to seek Dan’l Webster,” says Benét. In the Webster home, “Dan’l was up already, talking Latin to the farmhands” and “working up speeches to make against John C. Calhoun.”

Upon hearing Stone’s Faustian deal, Webster booms: “Neighbor Stone, I’ve got about 75 other things to do and the Missouri compromise to straighten out but I’ll take your case!”

The countdown begins.

Webster and Stone are in Stone’s kitchen, awaiting midnight, and the arrival of the Devil. Stone is panicking as his time draws near while Webster is calm and reassuring. “There’s a jug on the table and a case in hand,” he says. “And I never left a jug or a case half-finished in my life.”

Punctual as a clock, the Devil arrives. He is polite, tells Webster to call him Scratch, and the cold liquor he is given turns to steam. Thus begins the initial duel. “The argument began — and it went hot and heavy,” says Benét. The great Daniel Webster was “being forced back at point after point.” The issue at hand was Stone’s signature on Scratch’s document — prima facie evidence in favor of the petitioner. The mortal respondent is legally and spiritually doomed.

Deviously, Webster questions Scratch’s citizenship. It turns out that the Devil was already in America even before Columbus. He says, “Mr. Webster, though I don’t like to boast of it, my name is older in this country than yours.”

Like a chess tactician, Webster seizes a loophole. “Aha!” he declares. “Then I stand by the Constitution!” He demands a trial with an American judge and jury. “Let it be the quick or the dead; I’ll abide the issue.”

Suddenly, a terrifying sound is heard outside, and “they were not like the footsteps of living men.” It is the jury. Among them are King Philip, the Rev. John Smeet, Governor Dale, Simon Girty and some of the most fearsome characters in the history of early America. The judge is Justice Hathorne, who had sent dozens of people to the gallows during the Salem witch-hunts.

To top it all, the ghosts are biased in favor of the claimant. They sustain the Devil’s objections and overrule Webster’s. Naturally, Webster gets mad, and he begins “to heat, like iron in the forge.”

But then comes the numbing realization. Webster suddenly knows in his heart that it was he the jury has come for, not his client. It is Webster’s anger that fires the eyes of the jury, so he changes the tone of his summation.

 “He began by talking about the things that make a country a country, and a man a man, the simple things that everybody’s known and felt,” says Benét. And how the most beautiful things in life turn ugly without freedom. 

Daniel Webster talks of young America. He is unforgiving in his criticism, but also celebrates the many acts of redemption, showing how “everybody had played a part in it, even the traitors.”

He points to his client, an ordinary man who had only asked for fairness in life. It is a miscarriage of justice to condemn him for eternity just for that. Jabez Stone is not a saint, but he is a man. “There was sadness in being a man, but it was a proud thing too.” It has now gone beyond Stone. Daniel Webster “was telling the story and the failures and the endless journey of mankind. They got tricked and bamboozled, but it was a great journey.”

When Webster finishes his speech, the glitter is gone from the eyes of the judge and jury, “they were men again, and they knew that they were men.” In the end they acquit Jabez Stone and “even the damned” may salute the eloquence of Mr. Webster.

Good, no matter how the world turns, always triumphs over evil; a sense of nobility overcomes even the blackest of hearts. This, at its core, is the story of our collective journey.