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The question is often put, "cannot one voluntarily consent to, and thus authorize, his own bondage?" That he can sell his own services, and put them at the option of another, and that he most often ought so to do, is undoubted. But that he can alienate the right or the duty of being a party to the bargain, (the condition of slavery,) and of seeing that it subserve no sinister end, is equally untrue. In so far as his birthright of liberty gives to him in trust, certain duties to be maintained and discharged, he cannot release himself from the obligation, or alienate from himself the right to oversee and fulfil them. What father can disengage himself from his duties to his offspring? Would consent or willingness on the part of father or child, justify or even legalize the fiendish project? Does the promise to lie or cheat, authorize such iniquity, or render it obligatory? Would a compact of an idiot or child, for perpetual enslavement, be righteous or binding? Can consent in any case legalize iniquity, or does the absence of it make void or lessen any obligation? Can our duty to be slaves, or to burst our fetters, be affected by consent or will? Intrinsically, it plainly cannot. Undoubted and even self-evident as it is, that our duties and correspondent rights exist, incapable of being shifted by individual will or consent, perhaps no error more widely or injuriously prevails in this country, than the opposite doctrine. In strict consistency with their principles, therefore, this people and especially the slave-holding portion of it, whose disorganizing doctrines. rest on this error for their foundation, cannot evade the conclusions of certain reasoners upon slavery, who demand the immediate and absolute rupture of all ties and relations, not originating in the consent of the parties. This doctrine

needs to be examined and tested.

That the father ought to subdue the will, and check the waywardness of any son, who is not a moral wonder, cannot be questioned. But that the child has a right to his protection and affectionate and faithful guardianship, is likewise true. If the master ought to govern his apprentice, he ought also to indoctrinate him into the mysteries, and familiarize him with the handiwork of his craft. If the husband have property in his wife, how is it vice versâ? In all these cases, the person subjected does not thereby become a thing, and the obligations exist independently of consent or refusal; a circumstance worth the remembrance of some who have instanced these examples in analogy to, or elucida

tion of, slavery. So the duty of loyalty has no relation whatever to the voluntary acquiescence of the subject in the form of government. A republican in England or France, owes allegiance to the king, and this, whether he recognizes the sound and rightful derivation of his authority or not. What sane man would maintain, that the withholding of consent, on the part of any citizen, would annul the jurisdiction of the government over him? Is it said that the settling within her domain is an implied acquiescence in her authority? But suppose him expressly to avow disaffection, and refuse consent, would his obligation to obedience cease, and would the restraint laid by government on his lawlessness become usurpation? Speculate, declaim, and hold Bacchanalian revels as we will, about the people being the fountain of all power, government originating in a compact stipulating conformity to its mandates; we challenge, as a matter of fact, any one to conceive of the possibility of isolating a man from duties and obligations, arising from relations. having no foundation in consent, without isolating him from all neighborhood to his fellow-men. No man can seat himself in the midst of his fellow-men, without needing, and being entitled to, the protection of government against the lawless aggressions of his neighbors. The obligations of the government and its subjects are reciprocal, and immutably above the transient gusts and eddyings of inclination in either.

In what, then, is government, and the duty of obeying it, founded? Its primeval origin has been assumed to be a compact, in order to give color and consistency to the idea. of basing it on consent. But, besides that history is an unvaried contradiction of this assumption, what obligation can a contract impose, which had no prior existence? My agreement to pay a sum due from me, does not enhance the obligation to do so; it only transfers it from the scale of obligations, technically styled imperfect, i. e. incapable of being enforced, to that of perfect, i. e. enforceable obligations. The reality of the obligation is in both cases identical. But if on the strength of malicious misrepresentations, I promise to pay the sum, I am not morally and actually, though I may be legally, bound to do it. The laws construe the promise into a presumption of a true obligation, because it is the common character, under which, alone, obligations can be cognizable or enforceable before her tribunals, unless

they degenerate into instruments of capricious tyranny. The imperfect, and only real obligation is, that the person empowered by a legal fiction to extort the money, should waive the exercise of his power. Again, if I agree to pay a sum which I know I ought not to pay, the promise does not exculpate the wrong, but constitutes it, for in the eye of the law, the transfer is to all just intents, made. Can it seriously be claimed, that I ought to lie, cheat, steal, or in any way violate my duty, because I promise to do so? If not, neither ought I to uphold and aid in perpetuating a government, which scoffs at the wants, and is indifferent concerning the weal of its subjects, and the social compact is a figment of speculators, at war with fact, and the fitness of things. The query has been very appositely put, what obliged them to form the compact?

In other words, on what is the obligation to loyalty founded? The point of the inquiry is, to ascertain the source of the rights of government, and its subjects, that, in the light of this standard, we truly measure our duties. The true foundation of government is the social instinct, interpreted and regulated by reason and conscience. It is a part of our humanity, to live in mutual dependence on each other, for the supply of our comforts and necessities. It is an instinct, which of itself, aside from its subservience to other ends, ministers largely to our happiness, while its exercise and gratification are indispensable to the realization of that condition, for which man is fitted. It is necessary to the perfection of manhood, and, with few exceptions, such, however as presuppose the rule, to the propagation and continuance of our race. The disposition to unite in families, neighborhoods and communities, by peculiar ties, does not spring primarily from a consideration of their expediency. The prior impulse and disposition render it expedient. These are a part of the spontaneous activity of our being, antecedent to reflection, though afterwards, doubtless, sanctioned and regulated by it. Its naturalness is sufficient proof of its necessity. Like the instinct to acquire knowledge, or enlarge our power, or to strive for our own existence and preservation, it impels us to select and adapt the fit means for accomplishing the end; and while conscience commands us to pursue it, it also, aided by the eye of the judgment, discerns what means we ought to adopt, and how far any given order of means are "sanctified by the end."

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Now the social instinct, like all the beneficent springs of action in man, finds obstacles to its own realization, which it impels us to counteract, while it leads to the creation of those positive institutions, which tend to cherish it, and to perfect its benignant influences. The selfish rapacity of man constitutes a barrier to the action of the social principle, which nothing but the strong arm of the law can vanquish. In the imaginary unsocial state of our jacobin theorists, (for whose actual existence they must date back to chaos,) mutual violence and rapine, must force men into a hostile seclusion and desolate estrangement from each other. On the other hand, concentrated action, which presupposes a head, and contains the germ of government, is necessary for the accomplishment of ends, which individuals, in their separate and broken efforts, could never push to their fulfilment. great public enterprises for facilitating public intercourse, opening the hidden and dormant resources of a people, all ample endowments and institutions for the intellectual, moral and religious culture of man, would be unheard of, in the absence of government. In the development of man's being, therefore, the entrance into the political state is as natural and necessary, as the providing of food, or the formation of language. And it is the free and unbidden dictate of conscience, to merge all individual will in the predominance of LAW, as the organ of right and justice, as the utterance of a voice, which "fit audience finds" in "natures preconfigured to its influence." "Of law there can be no less acknowledged, than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world. All things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, the greatest as not exempted from her power; both angels and men, and creatures of what sort and condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet, all with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy.

The authority of all government is bottomed on this duty of subordination to a law, beyond and above the capricious impulses of personal will; a duty of submission to the higher powers, first in the parental, always in the political form, a conviction of which, every human being carries with him, and dare not question. These powers are ordained of God. The duty of obedience to the authorities, under which God's providence has placed us, is not to be put aside or gainsaid, by questionings about its rightful origin, derivation or descent.

The true question is, are they the organs, depositories, administrators of the Law, or of despotism and personal caprice? If the former, they are ordained of God. If the latter, they are the powers of darkness, and are to be combatted as such, that place may be given to the ministers of law. Thus Paul rebukes the seditious clamorers against the Roman government, who urged, that sway had been gained by usurpation. The real question at issue between our forefathers and king George, was not, whence did he derive his right to rule over them, but whether he should longer be suffered to tyrannize over them with misrule, to outrage law, and stifle justice. Hence the old watchword of loyalty, "the king can do no wrong," was not without a hearty and high-souled sense of its propriety on the lips of the English patriots, before it became poisoned in the mouth of jacobinical detraction. For the king was the impersonated and embodied law of the realm, which, so far from doing wrong, leaves no room for wrong, except in its own violation. As such, was the king, not the man, reverenced, but when he merged the king in the tyrant, and from being the guardian and organ of the law, came to defy all law, he lost the wonted veneration and support of his subjects. With perfect consistency an Englishman might in the same breath, exclaim, down with Charles, God save the king, the king can do no wrong, Charles is a tyrant.

Hence it follows, that the form of government has little to do with unalienable rights; the question being not what form of government is consistent with our original rights, but, what constitution is best calculated to secure and beneficially regulate their exercise, and promote the great ends of civil society? While the ends of civil society, and the obligation to become incorporated with it, originate in the conscience, prior to calculation, nevertheless expediency, or wise adaptation of means, is necessary for the effectual realization of this end. Conscience is the pole-star, and expediency the compass for navigating the ship of state. The gradation from the paternal to the patriarchal, and thence to the monarchical, along with the progress of our race, was natural and easy. But as society became more extended and complex, "the balance of powers" became necessary. It is the highest problem of practical statesmanship, to determine this balance, and adjust its fluctuations. In modern civilized states, it has vacillated from the tyranny of the autocrat, to the tyranny

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