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political organizations is to substitute the whole power of a community for that of individuals in the protecting of their persons and their properties, by means of laws for the restraint and punishment of wrong-doers within, and military combinations to resist foreign aggressions from without. It is on this ground that the doctrine of consent rests. For in any government it is necessary that a portion of the freedom of the individual should be surrendered that the rest may be preserved. He resigns his right of individual self-defence and submits to the restraints of law in order that he may enjoy more perfect security. But if a government be set over him without his consent, this is itself an invasion of his liberty which the law of nature authorizes him to resist. Hence arbitrary governments, whose subjects have neither expressly nor tacitly consented to their institution, and governments whose title to exist is founded on the so-called right of conquest, are in a perpetual state of war with nature, and their subjects have a perpetual and indefeasible right of rebellion against them. No prescription holds against the laws of nature; and such governments, being governments of force and contrary to nature, hold their power subject to the people's right to reassert the law of nature by resisting, and, if possible, destroying their usurped power.

There are, however, few civilized governments to which the subjects have not yielded an express or tacit consent; and lawful governments can only be lawfully resisted when they are perverted from their lawful purposes. Man is a social being, naturally living in societies; to the existence of society, government is necessary; hence anarchy is repugnant to nature; and therefore the wanton subversion of governments, lawfully instituted by consent of their subjects, being an act which tends to anarchy, is a crime against the law of nature. But when lawful governments, instead of protecting life, liberty, and property, become or threaten to become destructive of these or prejudicial to them, they proclaim war against the law of nature, and their subjects have the right to overthrow them. In this case it is the government that is truly rebellious, and the people who are truly obedient to the law of nature.

To this view there are some who object on Scriptural grounds. "All power is of God; "" the powers that be are ordained of God;

the magistrate is "the minister of God;" "let every soul be subject to the higher powers." These are the sayings of St. Paul. We have only, however, to carry his injunctions far enough in order to show that they must be received with considerable limitations. If the magistrate is the minister of God who acquires his authority over a kingdom through an armed force of one hundred thousand men, it is difficult to say why a marauding chief who occupies a district at the head of a band of brigands is not equally the minister of God. And if every soul is to be subject to the edicts of the one, it would be hard to find a reason why the same rule should not hold good of the demands of his less mighty but not less righteous imitator. Scripture itself gives warrant for rebellion against arbitrary and unjust power. The exodus of Israel from Egypt was rebellion against a government to which they had consented by their voluntary settlement under it, but from which they were released because it had become oppressive. And in the instance of Hezekiah, so aptly quoted by Locke, we have a case in which the indefeasible right of rebellion against a subjugating power, even after submission and enforced consent, is perfectly sustained. Hezekiah and his country had been conquered by Assyria, to the king of which he had submitted. On condition of consenting to the supremacy of Assyria, he had been suffered to retain his throne. But "the Lord was with Hezekiah and he prospered; wherefore he went forth, and he rebelled against the king of Assyria and served him not." (2 Kings xviii. 7.) This is spoken of "the good king Hezekiah," and spoken certainly not in reprehension. The sacred penman represents this godly king's rebellion as the consequence of the divine presence and blessing. Unquestionably lawful magistrates are ministers of God for good to men, but when their lawful powers are prostituted to subserve the devil's purposes, whose ministers do they become? The devil himself is styled in Holy Writ the "prince of this world," and, to judge from what we see around us in this nineteenth century, he is one of the mightiest of the "powers that be;" but here at least resistance to the tyrant is obedience to God. The truth is, the religion of the Holy Scriptures is a religion of common sense, and a religion of righteousness. It does not declare a wrong to be right because it is sustained by force, or because it has the trappings of legitimate authority to cover an

unlawful usurpation. Lawful magistrates and lawful governments it is the Christian's duty to obey as ministers of God. Resistance to usurped power—that is, to a robbery of man's most precious heritage—is not contrary either to the letter or the spirit of the Scriptures.

A Christian, then, may lawfully rebel against the government of which he is a subject; but only when it is a lawless government; that is, when its authority is based, not on the law of nature, but of force, or when its power, though lawfully acquired, is not so exercised as to protect the subject in his rights of property and person, which is the object of all government. Against such a government, or one which threatens to become such, but against such only, may a Christian lawfully rebel or aid a revolution.

Politically, however, revolution must be justified by quite a different argument-success. International law takes little cognizance of the original right by which power is acquired. The fact of its existence is the only reason for its recognition. Till the revolution is successful by the overthrow of the government whose destruction is attempted, it is in the eye of international law rebellion. Once successful, the authority it sets up becomes legitimate. Politically speaking, the wrongs which may have caused it, or the rights it was intended to secure, are nothing. Revolution is politically justified by nothing but success.

And, prudentially, a revolution must be justified, both by success and by a capacity to organize a better government than that which it subverts. It is not enough that the original government may have been bad or badly administered, for unless it be successful, and unless the new form of administration or the new rules be better than the old, the uncertainties and strife of revolution have been incurred in vain. The French Revolution, though productive in the end of good results, was not, prudentially, a justifiable revolution. Its success was merely temporary, and the government it organized instead of that of the beheaded Louis was in all respects worse than that they cast down. It was wrong prudentially, first, because it failed of permanent success, and second, because, while its power continued, it did not improve the government, but rather made it

worse.

The revolution of the colonies was right religiously, politically, and prudentially.

It was right religiously, for it was a revolution against a tyranny, that is, against a government which assumed, in the language of King James, to "exercise power beyond right."

It was justified politically, by complete and permanent success. It was justified prudentially, by its creation of a government. whose constitution is the admiration of the world. If the virtue of the people rise again to an equality with the incomparable wisdom of the Constitution, then the lover of free institutions may cry, Esto perpetua; and the prophet may respond, ERIT PERPETUA. If otherwise- ?

NOTE.

1. THE following significant article, which we give verbatim as recently published in a leading daily paper of the city of New York, will serve to show the power of a vigorous and homogeneous MINORITY to turn the machinery of government from its purposes of common benefit to the subservience of petty and peculiar interests:

"THE YANKEE TYRANNY-THE CENTRAL AND WESTERN STATES MERE "HEWERS OF WOOD" TO NEW ENGLAND.

"Previous to the present civil war the agitators of New England were eternally denouncing the alleged ascendency of the seven Cotton States in shaping and controlling the policy of our National Government. Everything is shaped to

'The

benefit the Cotton States,' was the cry of the New England fanatics. whole Government is in the hands of the South, and every measure of legislation is held subordinate to Southern interests.' That there was a small basis of fact for these assertions is not to be denied, and that basis had this extent, no more: The seven Cotton States demanded that the Constitution of the United States should be upheld, and that no legislation hostile to their property interests in the institution of slavery should be undertaken by Congress. They also further demanded, in one single instance—the Fugitive Slave Law-that Congress should make some legislative provision to enforce one of the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution against the treasonable and unconstitutional opposition thereto of these same New England fanatics. This was about all the 'peculiar legislation' the South demanded, and, in turn for receiving it, they—a wholly agricultural and producing people-acquiesced without murmur in all the legislation demanded by the complex commercial, agricultural, and manufacturing interests of the remainder of the Union.

"Well, the Union was at last broken up, the South being no longer able to bear peacefully the constant irritation and dangers resulting from the aggressive character of New England's anti-slavery fanaticism. The fourteen Senators from the seven Cotton States not only lost their ascendency in our national affairs, but stepped out of the Union altogether. And now what do we find to be the result? Just this: That the twelve Senators of the six New England States have adopted the role which they so vehemently denounced in what they were pleased to call the 'Black Gulf Squadron,' and that our whole national policy is to-day subservient to the interests and dictates, the bigotries and narrow, puritanical prejudices, of the twelve Senators who, forming the 'Black Republican Squadron,' are sent from the New England States to Washington. Our present actual masters are more sordid, grasping, and cruel than were the alleged Southern managers of the past. They legislate with a view exclusively to New England interests, and their object would seem to be to throw all the burdens of taxation and revenue upon the other portions of the loyal States, while compelling us all, by high protective and prohibitory importation duties, to purchase New England manufactures, however inferior to those we could obtain much cheaper abroad, at just such prices as may suit the pockets-we will not say consciences, for they appear to have none-of New England's manufacturing aristocracy.

"The main burdens of our internal revenue were thrown by the legislation of last winter upon two articles-whiskey and tobacco-in which the New England States have but the slightest interest, while our custom-house duties were advanced to figures making regular importation all but certainly unprofitable, and of necessity driving the trade, heretofore centred at New York, to be mainly transacted thereafter by active parties of smugglers along the Canadian border. So much is this the case, that the Secretary of the Treasury is now devising means to check this very smuggling, which has reached, even while yet in its infancy, enormous proportions--Secretary Fessenden apparently forgetting Sir Robert Peel's maxim, as the result of English experience, that 'it is utterly impossible to check any smuggling which, if successful, will pay a profit of over thirty per cent. In our case, however, the profits of running certain articles into the United States from Canada will be many hundreds per cent.; nor can this be stopped in any manner, unless we build along the Canadian frontier such a wall as divides the Chinese from the old Tartar empire. Even this would hardly suffice; for, with such a profit as New England greed has left open to the smugglers, it would be a remunerative speculation to start a hundred large balloons in this species of traffic.

"In the last session of the Senate, let it not be forgotten, the chairman of every important committee was a New Englander, the presiding officer was a New Englander, and all the legislation ground out was either to benefit New England interests, or to supply food to New England bigotries and hates. The trade of New York city was to be destroyed by imposing duties which would force foreign merchandise up to Canada, and thence, by smuggling, into the United States; while New England was to avoid the heavy burden of taxation,

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