The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus Part 261

Certainly we can be under no _such_ responsibility to become and remain _citizens_, as will excuse us from the sinful acts which as such citizens we are called to commit. Does G.o.d make obligatory on his creature the support of inst.i.tutions which require him to do acts in themselves wrong? To suppose so, were to confound all the rules of G.o.d's moral kingdom.

President Wayland has lately been ill.u.s.trating, and giving his testimony to the principle, that a combination of men cannot change the moral character of an act, which is in itself sinful--that the law of morals is binding the same on communities, corporations, &c.

as on individuals.

After describing slavery, and saying that to hold a man in such a state is wrong--he goes on:

"I will offer but one more supposition. Suppose that any number, for instance one half of the families in our neighborhood, should by law enact that the weaker half should be slaves, that we would exercise over them the authority of masters, prohibit by law their instruction, and concert among ourselves means for holding them permanently in their present situation. In what manner would this alter the moral aspect of the case?"

A law in this case is merely a determination of one party, in which all unite, to hold the other party in bondage; and a compact by which the whole party bind themselves to a.s.sist every individual of themselves to subdue all resistance from the other party, and guaranteeing to each other that exercise of this power over the weaker party which they now possess.

Now I cannot see that this in any respect changes the nature of the parties. They remain, as before, human beings, possessing the same intellectual and moral nature, holding the same relations to each other and to G.o.d, and still under the same unchangeable law, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. By the act of holding a man in bondage, this law is violated. Wrong is done, moral evil is committed. In the former case it was done by the individual; now it is done by the individual and the society. Before, the individual was responsible only for his own wrong; now he is responsible both for his own, and also, as a member of the society, for all the wrong which the society binds itself to uphold and render perpetual.

The scriptures frequently allude to the fact, that wrong done by law, that is by society, is amenable to the same retribution as wrong done by the individual. Thus, Psalm 94:20-23. 'Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with them which frame mischief by a law, and gather themselves together against the soul of the righteous, and condemn the innocent blood? But the Lord is my defence; and my G.o.d is the rock of my refuge. And he shall bring upon them their own iniquity, and shall cut them off in their own wickedness; yea, the Lord our G.o.d shall cut them off' So also Isaiah 10:1-4. 'Wo unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grievousness which they have prescribed.' &c. Besides, persecution for the sake of religious opinion is always perpetrated by law; but this in no manner affects its moral character.

There is, however, one point of difference, which arises from the fact that this wrong has been established by law. It becomes a social wrong. The individual, or those who preceded him, may have surrendered their individual right over it to the society. In this case it may happen that the individual cannot act as he might act, if the law had not been made. In this case the evil can only be eradicated by changing the opinions of the society, and inducing them to abolish the law. It will however be apparent that this, as I said before, does not change the relation of the parties either to each other or to G.o.d. The wrong exists as before. The individual act is wrong. The law which protects it is wrong. The whole society, in putting the law into execution, is wrong. Before only the individual, now, the whole society, becomes the wrong doer, and for that wrong, both the individuals and the society are held responsible in the sight of G.o.d."

If such "individual act is wrong," the man who knowingly does it is surely a sinner. Does G.o.d, through society, require men to sin?

OBJECTION IX.

If not being non-resistants, we concede to mankind the right to frame Governments, which must, from the very nature of man, be more or less evil, the right or duty to support them, when framed, necessarily follows.

ANSWER. I do not think it follows at all. Mankind, that is, any number of them, have a right to set up such forms of worship as they see fit, but when they have done so, does it necessarily follow that I am in duty bound to support any one of them, whether I approve it or not? Government is precisely like any other voluntary a.s.sociation of individuals--a temperance or anti-slavery society, a bank or railroad corporation. I join it, or not, as duty dictates. If a temperance society exists in the village where I am, that love for my race which bids me seek its highest good, commands me to join it.

So if a Government is formed in the land where I live, the same feeling bids me to support it, if I innocently can. This is the whole length of my duty to Government. From the necessity of the case, and that const.i.tution of things which G.o.d has ordained, it follows that in any specified district, the majority must rule--hence results the duty of the minority to submit. But we must carefully preserve the distinction between _submission_ and _obedience_ --between _submission_ and _support_. If the majority set up an immoral Government, I obey those laws which seem to me good, because they are good--and I submit to all the penalties which my disobedience of the rest brings on me. This is alike the dictate of common sense, and the command of Christianity. And it must be the true doctrine, since any other obliges me to obey the majority if they command me to commit murder, a rule which even the Tory Blackstone has denied. Of course for me to do anything I deem wrong, is the same, in quality, as to commit murder.

OBJECTION X.

But it is said, your theory results in good men leaving government to the dishonest and wicked.

ANSWER. Well, if to sustain government we must sacrifice honesty, government could not be in a more appropriate place, than in the hands of dishonest men.

But it by no means follows, that if I go out of government, I leave nothing but dishonest men behind. An act may be sin to me, which another may sincerely think right--and if so, let him do it, till he changes his mind. I leave government in the hands of those whom I do not think as clear-sighted as myself, but not necessarily in the hands of the dishonest. Whether it be so in this country now, is not, at present, the question, but whether it would be so necessarily, in all cases. The real question is, what is the duty of those who presume to think that G.o.d has given them clearer views of duty than the bulk of those among whom they live?

Don't think us conceited in supposing ourselves a little more enlightened than our neighbors. It is no great thing after all to be a little better than a lynching--mobocratic--slaveholding--debt repudiating community.

What then is the duty of such men? Doubtless to do all they can to extend to others the light they enjoy.

Will they best do so by compromising their principles? by letting their political life give the lie to their life of reform? Who will have the most influence, he whose life is consistent, or he who says one thing to-day, and swears another thing to-morrow--who looks one way and rows another? My object is to let men _understand me_, and I submit that the body of the Roman people understood better, and felt more earnestly, the struggle between the people and the princes, when the little band of democrats _left the city_ and encamped on _Mons Sacer, outside_, than while they remained mixed up and voting with their masters, shoulder to shoulder. _Dissolution_ is our _Mons Sacer_--G.o.d grant that it may become equally famous in the world's history as the spot where the right triumphed.

It is foolish to suppose that the position of such men, divested of the glare of official distinction, has no weight with the people. If it were so, I am still bound to remember that I was not sent into the world _to have influence_, but to do my duty according to my own conscience. But it is not so. People do know an honest man when they see him. (I allow that this is so rare an event now-a-days, as almost to justify one in supposing they might have forgotten how he looked.) They will give a man credit, when his life is one manly testimony to the truthfulness of his lips. Even Liberty party, blind as she is, has light enough to see that "Consistency is the jewel, the everything of such a cause as ours." The position of a non-voter, in a land where the ballot is so much idolized, kindles in every beholder's bosom something of the warm sympathy which waits on the persecuted, carries with it all the weight of a disinterested testimony to truth, and p.r.i.c.ks each voter's conscience with an uneasy doubt, whether after all voting _is_ right. There is constantly a Mordecai in the gate.

I admit that we should strive to have a _political_ influence--for with politics is bound up much of the welfare of the people. But this objection supposes that the ballot box is the _only_ means of political influence. Now it is a good thing that every man should have the right to vote. But it is by no means necessary that every man should actually vote, in order to influence his times. We by no means necessarily desert our social duty when we refuse to take office, or to confer it. Lafayette did better service to the cause of French liberty when he retired to Lagrange and refused to acknowledge Napoleon, than he could have done had he stood, for years, at the tyrant's right hand. From the silence of that chamber there went forth a voice--from the darkness of that retreat there burst forth a light; feeble indeed at first, like the struggling beams of the morning, but destined like them to brighten into perfect day.

This objection, that we non-voters shall lose all our influence, confounds the broad distinction between _influence_ and _power_.

_Influence_ every honest man must and will have, in exact proportion to his honesty and ability. G.o.d always annexes influence to worth. The world, however unwilling, can never get free from the influence of such a man. This influence the possession of office cannot give, nor the want of it take away. For the exercise of such influence as this, man is responsible. _Power_ we buy of our fellow men at a certain price. Before making the bargain it is our duty to see that we do not pay "too dear for our whistle." He who buys it at the price of truth and honor, buys only weakness--and sins beside.

Of those who go to the utmost verge of honesty in order to reach the seats of worldly power, and barter a pure conscience for a weighty name, it may be well said with old Fuller, "They need to have steady heads who can dive into these gulfs of policy, and come out with a safe conscience."

OBJECTION XI.

This withdrawing from government is pharisaical--"Shall we, 'weak, sinful men,'" one says, "perhaps even more sinful than the slaveholder, cry out, No Union with Slaveholders?" Such a course is wanting in brotherly kindness.

ANSWER. Because we refuse to aid a wrong-doer in his sin, we by no means proclaim, or a.s.sume, that we think our _whole character_ better than his. It is neither pharisaical to have opinions, nor presumptuous to guide our lives by them. If I have joined with others in doing wrong, is it either presumptuous or unkind, when my eyes are opened, to refuse to go any further with them in their career of guilt? Does love to the thief require me to help him in stealing? Yet this is all we refuse to do. We will extend to the slaveholder all the courtesy he will allow. If he is hungry, we will feed him; if he is in want, both hands shall be stretched out for his aid. We will give him full credit for all the good that he does, and our deep sympathy in all the temptations under whose strength he falls. But to help him in his sin, to remain partners with him in the slave-trade, is more than he has a right to ask. He would be a strange preacher who should set out to reform his circle by joining in all their sins! It is a principle similar to that which the tipsy Duke of Norfolk acted on, when seeing a drunken friend in the gutter, he cried out, "My dear fellow, I can't help you out, but I'll do better, I'll lie down by your side."

OBJECTION XII.

But consider, the abstaining from all share in Government will leave bad men to have everything their own way--admit Texas--extend slavery, &c. &c.

ANSWER. That is no matter of mine. G.o.d, the great conservative power of the Universe, when he established the right, saw to it that it should always be the safest and best. He never laid upon a poor finite worm the staggering load of following out into infinity the complex results of his actions. We may rest on the bosom of Infinite Wisdom, confident that it is enough for us to do justice, he will see to it that happiness results.

OBJECTION XIII.

But the same conscientious objection against promising your support to government, ought to lead you to avoid actually giving your support to it by paying taxes or sueing in the courts.

ANSWER. This is what logicians call a _reductio ad absurdum_: an attempt to prove our principle unsound by showing that, fairly carried out, it leads to an absurdity. But granting all it asks, it does not saddle us with any absurdity at all. It is perfectly possible to live without pet.i.tioning, sueing, or holding stocks.

Thousands in this country have lived, died, and been buried, without doing either. And does it load us with any absurdity to prove that we shall be obliged to do from principle, what the majority of our fellow-citizens do from choice? We lawyers may think it is an absurdity to say a man can't sue, for, like the Apostle at Ephesus, it touches our "craft," but that don't go far to prove it. Then, as to taxes, doubtless many cases might be imagined, when every one would allow it to be our duty to resist the slightest taxation, did Christianity allow it, with "war to the hilt." If such cases may ever arise, why may not this be one?

Until I become an Irishman, no one will ever convince me that I ought to vote, by proving that I ought not to pay taxes! Suppose all these difficulties do really encompa.s.s us, it will not be the first time that the doing of one moral duty has revealed a dozen others which we never thought of. The child has climbed the hill over his native village, which he thought the end of the world, and lo! there are mountains beyond! He won't remedy the matter by creeping back to his cradle and disbelieving in mountains!

But then, is there any such inconsistency in non-voters sueing and paying taxes?

Look at it. A. and B. have agreed on certain laws, and appointed C.

to execute them. A. owes me, who am no party to the contract, a just debt, which his laws oblige him to pay. Do I acknowledge the rightfulness of his relation to B. and C. by asking C. to use the power given him, in my behalf? It appears to me that I do not. I may surely ask A. to pay me my debt--why not then ask the keeper, whom he has appointed over himself, to make him do so?

I am a prisoner among pirates. The mate is abusing me in some way contrary to their laws. Do I recognize the rightfulness of the Captain's authority, by asking him to use the power the mate has consented to give him, to protect me? It seems to me that I do not necessarily endorse the means by which a man has acquired money or power, when I ask him to use either in my behalf.

An alien does not recognize the rightfulness of a government by living under it. It has always been held that an English subject may swear allegiance to an usurper and yet not be guilty of treason to the true king. Because he may innocently acknowledge the king _de facto_ (the king _in deed_,) without a.s.suming him to be king _de jure_ (king by _right_.) The distinction itself is as old as the time of Edward the First. The principle is equally applicable to suits. It has been universally acted on and allowed. The Catholic, who shrank from acknowledging the heretical Government of England, always, I believe, sued in her courts.

Who could convince a common man, that by sueing in Constantinople or Timbuctoo, he does an act which makes him responsible for the character of those governments?

Then, as for taxes. It is only our voluntary acts for which we are responsible. And when did government ever trust tax-paying to the voluntary good will of its subjects? When it does so, I, for one, will refuse to pay.

When did any sane man conclude that our Saviour's voluntary payment of a tax acknowledged the rightfulness of Rome's authority over Judea?

"The States," says Chief Justice Marshall, "have only not to elect Senators, and this government expires without a struggle."

Every November, then, we _create_ the government anew. Now, what "instinct" will tell a common-sense man, that the act of a _sovereign_,--voting--which creates a wicked government, is, _essentially_ the same as the submission of a _subject_,--tax-paying,--an act done without our consent. It should be remembered, that we vote as _sovereigns_,--we pay taxes as _subjects_. Who supposes that the humble tax-payer of Austria, who does not, perhaps, know in what name the charter of his bondage runs, is responsible for the doings of Metternich? And what sane man likens his position to that of the voting sovereign of the United States?

My innocent acts may, through others' malice, result in evil. In that case, it will be for my best judgment to determine whether to continue or cease them. They are not thereby rendered essentially sinful. For instance, I walk out on Sabbath morning. The priest over the way will exclaim, "Sabbath-breaker," and the infidel will delude his followers, by telling them I have no regard for Christianity. Still, it will be for me to settle which, in present circ.u.mstances, is best,--to remain in, and not be misconstrued, or to go out and bear a testimony against the superst.i.tious keeping of the day. Different circ.u.mstances will dictate different action on such a point.

I may often be the _occasion_ of evil when I am not responsible for it. Many innocent acts _occasion_ evil, and in such case all I am bound to ask myself before doing such _innocent act_, is, "Shall I occasion, on the whole, more harm or good." There are many cases where doing a duty even, we shall occasion evil and sin in others.

To save a slaveholder from drowning, when we know he has made a will freeing his slaves, would put off, perhaps forever, their emanc.i.p.ation, but of course that is not my fault. This making a man responsible for all the evil his acts, _incidentally_, without his will, occasion, reminds me of that principle of Turkish law which Dr. Clarke mentions, in his travels, and which they call "homicide by an intermediate cause." The case he relates is this: A young man in love poisoned himself, because the girl's father refused his consent to the marriage. The Cadi sentenced the father to pay a fine of $80, saying "if you had not had a daughter, this young man had not loved; if he had not loved, he had never been disappointed; if not disappointed, he would never have taken poison." It was the same Cadi possibly, who sentenced the island of Samos to pay for the wrecking of a vessel, on the principle that "if the island had not been in the way, the vessel would never have been wrecked!"

Then of taxes on imports. Buying and selling, and carrying from country to country, is good and innocent. But government, if I trade here, will take occasion to squeeze money out of me. Very well. I shall deliberate whether I will cease trading, and deprive them of the opportunity, or go on and use my wealth to reform them. 'Tis a question of expediency, not of right, which my judgment, not my conscience, must settle. An act of mine, innocent in itself, and done from right motives, no after act of another's can make a sin.