The fact that morals and traditions cannot be directly
changed, as laws may be, by legislative enactment must not
be mistaken for immunity from other forms of change. Indeed
though a moral rule or tradition cannot be repealed or changed
by deliberate choice or enactment, the enactment or repeal of
laws may well be among the causes of a change or decay of
some moral standard or some tradition. If a traditional practice
such as the celebrations on Guy Fawkes night is forbidden by law and punished, the practice may cease and the tradition
may disappear. Conversely, ifthe laws require military service
from certain classes, this may ultimately develop a tradition
among them which may well outlive the law. So too legal enactments
may set standards of honesty and humanity, which
ultimately alter and raise the current morality; conversely,
legal repression of practices thought morally obligatory may,
in the end, cause the sense of their importance and so their
status as morality to be lost; yet, very often, the law loses
such battles with ingrained morality, and the moral rule continues
in full vigour side by side with laws which forbid what
it enjoins.