of this nature, who says, that "Some of the low places are prosecuted,
some broken up." Last Saturday night, the very men who guarded Mr. Sims,
I am told, were playing cards in his prison-house, contrary to the laws
of Massachusetts. In Court Square, in front of the court-house, is a
rum-shop, one of the most frequented in the city, open at all hours of
the day, and, for aught I know, of the night too. I never passed when
its "fire was quenched," and its "worm" dead. Is its owner prosecuted?
How many laws of Massachusetts have been violated this very week, in
this very city, by the slave-hunters here, by the very officers of the
State? What is the meaning of this? Every law which favors the
accumulation of money, must be kept; but those which prohibit the
unjust accumulation of money by certain classes--they need not be
kept.[29]

No doubt it would be a great pity to have the city government careful to
keep the laws of the city,--to suppress rum-shops, and save the citizens
from the almshouse, the jail, and the gallows. Such laws may be executed
at Truro and Wellfleet; but it is quite needless for the officers of
"The Athens of America," to attend to the temperance laws.[30]--What a
pity for the magistrates of Boston to heed the laws of the State! No; it
is the fugitive slave law that they must keep.

II. A great deal of pains has been taken to impress the people with
their "moral duty to obey the fugitive slave law." To carry it out,
government needs base men; and that, my brothers, is a crop which never
fails. Rye and wheat may get blasted many times in the course of years;
the potato may rot; apples and peaches fail. But base men never fail.
Put up your black pirate-flag in the market-place, offer "money and
office," and they will come as other carrion-vultures to their prey. The
olive, the fig, and the orange are limited in their range; even Indian
corn and oats will not grow everywhere; but base men are indigenous all
the world over, between the tropics, and under a polar sky. No bad
scheme ever failed for lack of bad men to carry it out. Do you want to
kill Baptists and Quakers in Boston? There are the men for you. To hang
"witches" at Salem? There are hangmen in plenty on Gallows Hill. Would
James the Second butcher his subjects? He found his "human" tools ready.
Would Elizabeth murder the Puritans and Catholics? There was no lack of
ruffians. Would bloody Mary burn the Protestants? There were more
executioners than victims. Would the Spanish Inquisition torture and put
to death the men for whom Christ died? She found priests and
"gentlemen," ready for their office. Would Nero murder the Christians,
and make a spectacle of their sufferings? Rome is full of scoundrels to
do the deed, and teems with spectators rushing to the amphitheatre at
the cry of "Christians to the Lions!" all finding a holiday in their
brothers' agony. Would the high-priests crucify the Son of man? They
found a commissioner to issue the mandate, a marshal to enforce it, a
commissioner to try him by illegal process,--for the process against
Christ was almost as unconstitutional as that against Sims,--they found
a commissioner ready to condemn Christ, against his own conscience,
soldiers ready to crucify him. Ay! and there was a Peter to deny him,
and a Judas to betray, and now there is a judge with his legal ethics,
to justify the betrayal! I promised not to speak of Judas or the judge
again, but they will come up before me! It is true, that, if in Boston,
some judicial monster should wish to seethe a man in a pot of scalding
water, he would find another John Boilman in Boston, as Judge Jeffries
found one in England, in 1686.

The churches of New England, and the North, have had their trials. In my
time they have been tried in various ways. The temperance reformation
tried them. They have had perils on account of slavery. The Mexican war
tried them; the fugitive slave law has put them to the rack. But, never
in my day, have the churches been so sorely tried, nor done so well as
now. The very letter of the New Testament on the one side, and of the
Old Testament on the other, both condemned the law; the spirit of them
both was against all slavery.

There are two great sects in Christendom,--the churches of Christianity,
and the churches of commerce. The churches of Christianity always do
well: they think that religion is love to God, and love to man. But the
churches of commerce, which know no higher law, what should they do?
Some of the ministers of the churches of commerce were wholly silent.
Why so? The poor ministers were very modest all at once. Now, modesty is
a commendable virtue; but see how it works. Here is a man who has given
his mind ten, twenty, or thirty years to the study of theology, and
knows every Hebrew particle of the Old Testament, and every Greek
particle of the New Testament, as well as he knows the Lord's Prayer;
every great work on the subject of Christianity, from Nicodemus down to
Norton. Let him come out and say that the Old Testament was written like
other books; let him say that the miracles of the Old and New Testament
are like the miracles of the Popish legends; then, ministers in their
pulpits, who never studied theology or philosophy, or pretended to
study, only to know, the historical development of religion in the
world,--they will come down instantly upon our poor man, call his
doctrines "false," and call him an "infidel," an "atheist." But let a
rich parishioner, or a majority of the rich parishioners, be in favor of
the fugitive slave law, and all at once the minister is very modest
indeed. He says to his people, by silence or by speech, "I do not
understand these things; but you, my people, who all your lives are
engaged in making money and nothing else, and worship mammon and nothing
else, you understand them a great deal better than I do. My modesty
forbids me to speak. Let us pray!"[31]

Some ministers have been silent; others have spoken out in favor of the
lower law, and in derision of the higher law. Here is a famous minister,
the very chief of his denomination, reported in the newspapers to have
said that he would surrender his own mother to slavery rather than have
the Union dissolved! I believe him this time. A few years ago, that
minister printed, in the organ of his sect, that the existence of God
was "not a certainty!" He did not mean to say that he doubted or
disbelieved it, only that it was "not a certainty!" I should suppose
that he had gone further in that direction, and thought the
non-existence of God was "a certainty." But he is not quite original in
this proposed sacrifice. He has been preceded and outbid by a Spanish
Catholic. Here is the story in Señor de Castro's History of the Spanish
Protestants, written this very year. I can tell the story shorter than
it is there related. In 1581, there lived a man in Valladolid, who had
two Protestant daughters, being himself a Catholic. The Inquisition was
in full blast, and its fiery furnace heated seven times hotter than
before. This man, according to the commandment of the priests and Pope,
complained to the inquisitors against his daughters, who were summoned
to appear before them. They were tried, and condemned to be burned
alive, at his suggestion. He furnished the accusation, brought forward
the evidence, and was the only witness in the case. That was not all.
After this condemnation, he went round his own estates, and from
selected trees cut down morsels of wood, and carried them to the city
to use in burning his own daughters. He was allowed to do this, and of
course the priest commended him for his piety and love of God! Thus, in
1581, in Valladolid, a father at noon-day, with wood from his own
estate, on his own complaint and evidence, with his own hands, burned
his two daughters alive; and the Catholic Church said, Well done! Now,
in my opinion, the Hidalgo of Valladolid a little surpasses the
Unitarian Doctor of Divinity. I do not know what "recompense of reward"
the Spanish Hidalgo got for his deed; but the American divine, for his
offer, has been put into "one of the priests' offices, that he might eat
a piece of bread." He has been appointed, as the newspapers say, a
Chaplain of the Navy at Washington. Verily he has his reward.

But there have been found men in Boston to go a little further. Last
Thanksgiving Day, I said it would be difficult to find a magistrate in
Boston to take the odium of sending a fugitive back to slavery. I
believed, after all, men had some conscience, although they talked about
its being a duty to deliver up a man to bondage. Pardon me, my country,
that I rated you too high! Pardon me, town of Boston, that I thought
your citizens all men! Pardon me, lawyers, that I thought you had been
all born of mothers! Pardon me, ruffians, who kill for hire! I thought
you had some animal mercy left, even in your bosom! Pardon me, United
States' commissioners, marshals, and the like, I thought you all had
some shame! Pardon me, my hearers, for such mistakes. One commissioner
was found to furnish the warrant! Pardon me, I did not know he was a
commissioner; if I had, I never would have said it!

Spirits of tyrants, I look down to you! Shade of Cain, you great first
murderer, forgive me that I forgot your power, and did not remember that
you were parent of so long a line! And you, my brethren, if hereafter I
tell you that there is any limit of meanness or wickedness which a
Yankee will not jump over, distrust me, and remind me of this day, and I
will take it back!

Let us look at the public conduct of any commissioner who will send an
innocent man from Boston into slavery. I would speak of all men
charitably; for I know how easy it is to err, yea, to sin. I can look
charitably on thieves, prowling about in darkness; on rumsellers, whom
poverty compels to crime; on harlots, who do the deed of shame that holy
woman's soul abhors and revolts at; I can pity the pirate, who scours
the seas doing his fiendish crimes--he is tempted, made desperate by a
gradual training in wickedness. The man, born at the South, owning
slaves, who goes to Africa and sells adulterated rum in exchange for men
to retail at Cuba,--I cannot understand the consciousness of such a man;
yet I can admit that by birth and by breeding he has become so
imbruted, he knows no better. Nay, even that he may perhaps justify his
conduct to himself. I say I think his sin is not so dreadful as that of
a commissioner in Boston who sends a man into slavery. A man commits a
murder, inflamed by jealousy, goaded by desire of great gain, excited by
fear, stung by malice, or poisoned by revenge, and it is a horrid thing.
But to send a man into slavery is worse than to murder him. I should
rather be slain than enslaved. To do this, inflamed by no jealousy,
goaded by no desire of great gain,--only ten dollars!--excited by no
fear, stung by no special malice, poisoned by no revenge,--I cannot
comprehend that in any man, not even in a hyena. Beasts that raven for
blood do not kill for killing's sake, but to feed their flesh. Forgive
me, O ye wolves and hyenas! that I bring you into such company. I can
only understand it in a devil!

When a man bred in Massachusetts, whose Constitution declares that "All
men are born free and equal;" within sight of Faneuil Hall, with all its
sacred memories; within two hours of Plymouth Rock; within a single hour
of Concord and Lexington; in sight of Bunker Hill,--when he will do such
a deed, it seems to me that there is no life of crime long enough to
prepare a man for such a pitch of depravity; I should think he must have
been begotten in sin, and conceived in iniquity, and been born "with a
dog's head on his shoulders;" that the concentration of the villany of
whole generations of scoundrels would hardly be enough to fit a man for
a deed like this!

You know the story of Thomas Sims. He crept on board a Boston vessel at
Savannah. Perhaps he had heard of Boston, nay, even of Faneuil Hall, of
the old Cradle of Liberty, and thought this was a Christian town, at
least human, and hoped here to enjoy the liberty of a man. When the ship
arrived here, the first words he spoke were, "Are we up there?" He was
seized by a man who at the court-house boasted of his cruelty towards
him, who held him by the hair, and kept him down, seeking to kidnap and
carry him back into slavery. He escaped!

But a few weeks pass by: the man-stealers are here; the commissioner
issues his warrant; the marshals serve it in the night. Last Thursday
night,--when odious beasts of prey, that dare not face the light of
heaven, prowl through the woods,--those ruffians of the law seized on
their brother-man. They lie to the bystanders, and seize him on a false
pretence. There is their victim--they hold him fast. His faithless knife
breaks in his hand; his coat is rent to pieces. He is the slave of
Boston.[32] Can you understand his feelings? Let us pass by that. His
"trial!" Shall I speak of that? He has been five days on trial for more
than life, and has not seen a judge! A jury? No,--only a commissioner! O
justice! O republican America! Is this the liberty of Massachusetts?

Where shall I find a parallel with men who will do such a deed,--do it
in Boston? I will open the tombs, and bring up most hideous tyrants from
the dead. Come, brood of monsters, let me bring you up from the deep
damnation of the graves wherein your hated memories continue for all
time their never-ending rot. Come, birds of evil omen! come, ravens,
vultures, carrion-crows, and see the spectacle! come, see the meeting of
congenial souls! I will disturb, disquiet, and bring up the greatest
monsters of the human race! Tremble not, women; tremble not, children;
tremble not, men! They are all dead! They cannot harm you now! Fear the
living, not the dead.

Come hither, Herod the wicked. Thou that didst seek after that young
child's life, and destroyedst the Innocents! Let me look on thy face!
No; go! Thou wert a heathen! Go, lie with the Innocents thou hast
massacred. Thou art too good for this company!

Come, Nero! Thou awful Roman Emperor! Come up! No; thou wast drunk with
power! schooled in Roman depravity. Thou hadst, besides, the example of
thy fancied gods! Go, wait another day. I will seek a worser man.

Come hither, St. Dominic! come, Torquemada!--Fathers of the Inquisition!
Merciless monsters, seek your equal here! No; pass by! You are no
companions for such men as these! You were the servants of atheistic
popes, of cruel kings. Go to, and get you gone. Another time I may have
work for you,--not now; lie there and persevere to rot. You are not yet
quite wicked and corrupt enough for this comparison. Go, get ye gone,
lest the sun turn back at sight of ye!

Come up, thou heap of wickedness, George Jeffries!--thy hands deep
purple with the blood of thy murdered fellow men! Ah, I know thee! awful
and accursed shade! Two hundred years after thy death, men hate thee
still, not without cause! Let me look upon thee! I know thy history.
Pause and be still, while I tell it to these men.

Brothers, George Jeffries "began in the sedition line." "There was no
act, however bad, that he would not resort to to get on." "He was of a
bold aspect, and cared not for the countenance of any man." "He became
the avowed, unblushing slave of the court, and the bitter persecutor and
unappeasable enemy of the principles he had before supported." He "was
universally insolent and over-bearing." "As a judge, he did not consider
the decencies of his post, nor did he so much as affect to be
impartial, as became a judge." His face and voice were always unamiable.
"All tenderness for the feelings of others, all self-respect were
obliterated from his mind." He had "a delight in misery, merely as
misery," and "that temper which tyrants require in their worst
instruments." "He made haste to sell his forehead of brass and his
tongue of venom to the court." He had "more impudence than ten carted
street-walkers;" and was appropriately set to a work "which could be
trusted to no man who reverenced law, or who was sensible of shame." He
was a "Commissioner" in 1685. You know of the "Bloody assizes" which he
held, and how he sent to execution three hundred and twenty persons in a
single circuit. "The whole country was strewed with the heads and limbs
of his victims." Yet a man wrote that "A little more hemp might have
been usefully employed." He was the worst of the English judges. "There
was no measure, however illegal, to the execution of which he did not
devotedly and recklessly abandon himself." "During the Stuart reigns,
England was cursed by a succession of ruffians in ermine, who, for the
sake of court favor, wrested the principles of law, the precepts of
religion, and the duties of humanity; but they were all greatly
outstripped by Jeffries." Such is his history.

Come, shade of a judicial butcher! Two hundred years thy name has been
pilloried in face of the world, and thy memory gibbeted before mankind!
Let us see how thou wilt compare with those who kidnap men in Boston! Go
seek companionship with them! Go claim thy kindred, if such they be! Go
tell them that the memory of the wicked shall rot,--that there is a God;
an Eternity; ay! and a Judgment too! where the slave may appeal against
him that made him a slave, to Him that made him a man.

What! Dost thou shudder? Thou turn back? These not thy kindred! Why dost
thou turn pale, as when the crowd clutched at thy life in London Street?
It is true, George Jeffries, and these are not thy kin. Forgive me that
I should send thee on such an errand, or bid thee seek companionship
with such--with Boston hunters of the slave! Thou wert not base enough!
It was a great bribe that tempted thee! Again I say, pardon me for
sending thee to keep company with such men! Thou only struckst at men
accused of crime; not at men accused only of their birth! Thou wouldst
not send a man into bondage for two pounds! I will not rank thee with
men who, in Boston, for ten dollars, would enslave a negro now! Rest
still, Herod! Be quiet, Nero! Sleep, St. Dominic, and sleep, O
Torquemada! in your fiery jail! Sleep, Jeffries, underneath "the altar
of the church" which seeks with Christian charity to hide your hated
bones.

"But," asks a looker-on, "What is all this for?" Oh! to save the Union.
"A precious Union which needs a saving such as this! And who are to rend
the Union asunder?" Why, men that hate slavery and love freedom for all
mankind. "Is this the way to make them love the Union and slavery, and
hate freedom for all mankind?" We know none better. "What sort of a
measure is this fugitive slave law?" Oh! it is a "peace measure." Don't
you see how well it works? how quiet the city? in the country not a
mouse stirring? There will not be a word against the peace measure in
all New England on this Fast Day. Blessed are the peace-makers, saith
Lord! "But you have great warrant for such deeds?" Oh yes, the best in
the world,--the example of Washington. He also "saved the Union." "So
men blaspheme."

Let me tell you a little of that great man. Shortly after the passage of
the law of 1793, a favorite female slave of Washington's wife ran away
from the President of the new republic, and went into New Hampshire. She
lived at Portsmouth. Washington wrote to Mr. Whipple, a United States'
marshal, I think, or, at any rate, an officer of the United States,
saying that he should like to have the woman sent back to him, if it
could be done without tumult, and without shocking the principles and
the feelings of the people. He added that the slave was a favorite of
his wife. Mr. Whipple wrote back, and said,--It cannot be done without
tumult, nor without shocking the principles and feelings of the people.
Washington said no more! The woman died at a great age, a few years ago,
at Portsmouth. That was the example of Washington,--the man who at his
death freed his slaves! Would to God he had done it before! But they
that come at the eleventh hour shall never be cast out from my charity.

See what is the consequence of this measure! See what has been the
condition of Boston for the past week! Read the mingled truth and lies
in the newspapers; look at men's faces in the street; listen to their
talk; see the court-house in chains; see one hundred policemen on guard,
and three companies of military picketed in Faneuil Hall; behold the
people shut out from the courts--I will not say of justice! See the
officers of Massachusetts made slave-hunters--against the law;
constitutional rights struck down--against the law; sheriffs refusing to
serve writs--against the law; see the great civil rights our fathers
gained five hundred years ago, the trial by jury, by our "peers," by the
"law of the land," all cloven down; the writ of "personal replevin" made
null--no sheriff daring to execute a law made to suit such a case as
this, made but eight years ago! Where is your high Sheriff? Where is
your Governor? See the judges of Massachusetts bend beneath that chain;
see them bow down, one by one, and kneel, and creep, and cringe, and
crouch, and crawl, under the chain! Note the symbol! That was the chain
on the neck of the Commonwealth, visible on the necks of the judges as
they entered the Bastile of Boston,--the Barracoon of Boston! A few
years ago, they used to tell us, "Slavery is an abstraction;" "we at the
North have nothing to do with it," Now liberty is only an abstraction!
Here is a note just handed me in the pulpit:--

     "Marshal Tukey told me this morning, that his orders were
     _not merely to keep the peace_, but to _assist the United
     States' marshal in detaining and transporting the slave_;
     that he _knew he was violating the State law, as well as I
     did_; but it was not his responsibility, but that of the
     Mayor and Aldermen. I thought you might like to know this."

Well, my brethren, I know Boston has seen sad days before now. When the
stamp act came here in our fathers' time, it was a sad day; they tolled
the bells all over town, and Mayhew wished "they were cut off that
trouble you." It was a sad day when the tea came here, although, when it
went down the stream, all the hills of New England laughed. And it was a
sadder day still, the 17th of June, 1775, when our fathers fought and
bled on yonder hill, all red from battle at Concord and Lexington, and
poured sheeted death into the ranks of their enemies, while the
inhabitants of this town lifted up their hands, but could not go to
assist their brethren in the field; and when, to crown all their
sadness, they saw four hundred of the houses of their sister town go up
in flames to heaven, and could not lend a helping hand! A sadder day
when they fired one hundred guns in Boston for the passage of the
fugitive slave law. It was the saddest day of all, when a man was
kidnapped in Boston by the men of Boston, and your court-house hung with
chains.

It was not from the tyrants of the other side of the world that this
trouble came!

If you could have seen what I have this morning, at sunrise, one hundred
of the police of this city, contrary to the laws of the State, drilling
with drawn swords, to learn to guard a man whilst he should be carried
into bondage! And who do you suppose was at their head? A man bearing an
honorable name--Samuel Adams! Tell it not in Massachusetts; let not your
children hear of this, lest they curse the mothers that bore them. It is
well that we should have a day of fasting and humiliation and prayer,
when such things are done here.

Well, my brethren, these are only the beginning of sorrows. There will
be other victims yet; this will not settle the question. What shall we
do? I think I am a calm man and a cool man, and I have a word or two to
say as to what we shall do. Never obey the law. Keep the law of God.
Next I say, resist not evil with evil; resist not now with violence. Why
do I say this? Will you tell me that I am a coward? Perhaps I am; at
least I am not afraid to be called one. Why do I say, then, do not now
resist with violence? Because it is not time just yet; it would not
succeed. If I had the eloquence that I sometimes dream of, which goes
into a crowd of men, and gathers it in its mighty arm, and sways them as
the pendent boughs of yonder elm shall be shaken by the summer breeze
next June, I would not give that counsel. I would call on men, and lift
up my voice like a trumpet through the whole land, until I had gathered
millions out of the North and the South, and they should crush slavery
forever, as the ox crushes the spider underneath his feet. But such
eloquence is given to no man. It was not given to the ancient Greek who
"shook the arsenal and fulmined over Greece." He that so often held the
nobles and the mob of Rome within his hand, had it not. He that spoke as
never man spake, and who has since gathered two hundred millions to his
name, had it not. No man has it. The ablest must wait for time! It is
idle to resist here and now. It is not the hour. If in 1765 they had
attempted to carry out the Revolution by force, they would have failed.
Had it failed, we had not been here to-day. There would have been no
little monument at Lexington "sacred to liberty and the rights of
mankind," honoring the men who "fell in the cause of God and their
country." No little monument at Concord; nor that tall pile of eloquent
stone at Bunker Hill, to proclaim that "Resistance to tyrants is
obedience to God." Success is due to the discretion, heroism, calmness,
and forbearance of our fathers: let us wait our time. It will
come--perhaps will need no sacrifice of blood.

Resist, then, by peaceful means; not with evil, but with good. Hold the
men infamous that execute this law; give them your pity, but never give
them your trust, not till they repent. Then swiftly forgive. Agitate,
discuss, petition, and elect to office men whom you can trust; not men
who never show their face in the day of darkness and of peril. Choose
men that are men.

I suppose that this man will be carried back to slavery. The law of the
United States has been cloven down; the law of Massachusetts cloven
down. If we have done all that we can we must leave the result to God.
It is something that a man can only be kidnapped in Boston by riding
over the law, and can only be tried in a court-house surrounded by
chains, when the crouching judges crawl under the iron of slavery to
enter their house of bondage; that even on Fast Day it is guarded by one
hundred police, and three companies of military are picketed in Faneuil
Hall--the "Sims Brigade!"[33]

The Christians saw Christ crucified, and looked on from afar; sad, but
impotent. The Christians at Rome saw their brethren martyred, and could
not help them: they were too weak. But the blood of martyrs is the seed
of the church. To-day is St. Bademus' Day: three hundred and seventy-six
years after Christ, that precious saint was slain because he would not
keep the commandment of the king. By crucified redeemers shall mankind
be saved. If we cannot prevent crucifixion, let us wait for the
redemption.

Shall I ask you to despair of human liberty and rights? I believe that
money is to triumph for the present. We see it does in Boston,
Philadelphia, New York, and Washington: see this in the defence of
bribery; in the chains of the court-house; in the judges' pliant necks;
in the swords of the police to-day; see it in the threats of the press
to withdraw the trade of Boston from towns that favor the unalienable
rights of man!

Will the Union hold out? I know not that. But, if men continue to
enforce the fugitive slave law, I do not know how soon it will end; I do
not care how soon the Union goes to pieces. I believe in Justice and the
Law of God; that ultimately the right will prevail. Wrong will prevail
for a time, and attract admiration. I have seen in a haberdasher's
shop-window the figure of a wooden woman showily arrayed, turning round
on a pivot, and attracting the gaze of all the passers-by; but ere long
it is forgotten. So it will be with this transient love of slavery in
Boston; but the love of right will last as long as the granite in New
Hampshire hills. I will not tell you to despair of freedom because
politicians are false; they are often so. Despair of freedom for the
black man! No, never. Not till heaven shakes down its stars; nay, not
till the heart of man ceases to yearn for liberty; not till the eternal
God is hurled from his throne, and a devil takes his place! All the arts
of wicked men shall not prevail against the Father; nay, at last, not
against the Son.

The very scenes we have witnessed here,--the Court-House in chains,--the
Laws of Massachusetts despised,--the Commonwealth disgraced,--these
speak to the people with an eloquence beyond all power of human speech.
Here is great argument for our cause. This work begets new foes to every
form of wrong. There is a day after to-day,--an eternity after
to-morrow. Let us be courageous and active, but cool and tranquil, and
full of hope.

These are the beginning of sorrows; we shall have others, and trials.
Continued material prosperity is commonly bad for a man, always for a
nation. I think the time is coming when there will be a terrible contest
between liberty and slavery. Now is the time to spread ideas, not to
bear arms. I know which will triumph: the present love of thraldom is
only an eddy in the great river of the nation's life; by and by it will
pass down the stream and be forgot. Liberty will spread with us, as the
spring over the New England hills. One spot will blossom, and then
another, until at last the spring has covered the whole land, and every
mountain rejoices in its verdant splendor.

O Boston! thou wert once the prayer and pride of all New England men,
and holy hands were laid in baptism on thy baby brow! Thou art
dishonored now; thou hast taken to thy arms the enemies of men. Thou
hast betrayed the slave; thy brother's blood cries out against thee from
the ground. Thou art a stealer of mankind. In thy borders, for long
years, the Cradle of Liberty has been placed. The golden serpent of
commerce has twined its snaky folds about it all, and fascinated into
sleep the child. Tread lightly, soldiers: he yet may wake. Yes, in his
time this child shall wake, and Boston shall scourge out the memory of
the men who have trodden her laws under foot, violated the dearest
instincts of her heart, and profaned her religion. I appeal from
Boston, swollen with wealth, drunk with passion, and mad against
freedom--to Boston in her calm and sober hour.

O Massachusetts, noble State, the mother that bore us all; parent of
goodly institutions and of noble men, whose great ideas have blessed the
land!--how art thou denied, dishonored, and brought low! One of thine
own hired servants has wrought this deed of shame, and rent the bosom
which took him as an adopted son. Shall it be always thus? I conjure
thee by all thy battle-fields,--by the remembrance of the great men born
of thee, who battled for the right, thy Franklin, Hancock, the
Adamses--three in a single name,--by thine ideas and thy love of
God,--to forbid forever all such deeds as this, and wipe away thy deep
disgrace.

America, thou youngest born of all God's family of States! thou art a
giant in thy youth, laying thine either hand upon thine either sea; the
lakes behind thee, and the Mexique bay before. Hast thou too forgot thy
mission here, proud only of thy wide-spread soil, thy cattle, corn, thy
cotton, and thy cloth? Wilt thou welcome the Hungarian hero, and yet
hold slaves, and hunt poor negroes through thy land? Thou art the ally
of the despot, thyself out-heathening the heathen Turk. Yea, every
Christian king may taunt thee with thy slaves. Dost thou forget thine
own great men,--thy Washington, thy Jefferson? forget thine own proud
words prayed forth to God in thy great act of prayer? Is it to protect
thy wealth alone that thou hast formed a State? and shall thy wealth be
slaves? No, thou art mad. It shall not be. One day thou wilt heed the
lessons of the past, practise thy prayer, wilt turn to God, and rend out
of thy book the hated page where Slavery is writ. Thy sons who led thee
astray in thy madness, where shall they appear?

And thou our God, the Father of us all, Father and Mother too, Parent of
freemen, Parent also of the slave, look down upon us in our sad estate.
Look down upon thy saints, and bless them; yea, bless thy sinners too;
save from the wicked heart. Bless this town by thy chastisement; this
State by thine afflictions; this nation by thy rod. Teach us to resist
evil and with good, till we break the fetters from every foot, the
chains from every hand, and let the oppressed go free. So let thy
kingdom come; so may thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

FOOTNOTES:

[26] The above paragraph refers to cases which had then recently
occurred, and were known to everybody.

[27] Mr. Peleg Sprague.

[28] The above paragraph was written in April, 1851, and was only
historical, not also prophetic.

[29] It was well known that the laws of Massachusetts were violated, but
no prosecution of the offenders was ever begun. The committee to whom
the matter was referred, thought that the Supreme Court of Massachusetts
was not to be trusted to vindicate the laws of the State, against
kidnappers in Boston.

[30] In November, 1851, the City Marshal reports to the Board of
Aldermen, the following facts:--There are fifteen hundred places in
Boston, where intoxicating drinks are sold, in violation of the laws of
Massachusetts.

    Kept by Americans,                       490
    Kept by foreigners,                     1010
    Open on Sunday,                          979
    Groceries that keep intoxicating drink,  469
    Other places,                           1031

All the "First class hotels," except four, have open bars, for the sale
of intoxicating drink. The government of Boston, which violated the laws
of Massachusetts, to kidnap a man, and deliver him to his tormentors,
asks the city marshal to give such information as is calculated to check
the progress of crime and intemperance. He reports--"Execute the laws!"
In 1851, Boston has the honor of kidnapping one of her inhabitants, and
sending him to slavery, and of supporting fifteen hundred rum-shops, in
continual violation of the laws of Massachusetts.

[31] While these volumes are getting printed, one of the sectarian
newspapers of Boston publishes the following paragraph:--

"The English railways are all in use on the Sabbath, and all evidently
under a curse. Their stock is ruinously low. Three hundred and fifty
millions of dollars have been embarked in these enterprises, and the
average dividends which they pay is but three per cent. And more than
this, a large number of fatal accidents have occurred of late. While we
regret that the business men of England, who control these lines, have
not wisdom enough to see the folly of making haste to be rich, in
defiance of the ordinances of God, we rejoice that so many of the
railroad operators in this country, rest on the Sabbath day, according
to the commandment." See note [B]** on p. 267.

[32] The tattered garment is still kept as a melancholy monument of the
civilization of Boston in the middle of the nineteenth century.

[33] Mr. Sims was sent off to bondage in the barque Acorn by the city
authorities of Boston. I believe he is the first man ever returned as a
fugitive slave from Massachusetts by the form of law since the adoption
of the Constitution. Arrived at Savannah, he was immediately conducted
to prison. His mother and other relatives were not allowed to see him.
He was cruelly and repeatedly scourged. Meantime the citizens of Boston,
who had aided in kidnapping him, and had accompanied him to Savannah,
were publicly feasted by the inhabitants of Georgia. The present fate of
Mr. Sims is unknown to me.

Nov. 27th, 1851.

VII.

THE THREE CHIEF SAFEGUARDS OF SOCIETY.--CONSIDERED IN A SERMON AT THE
MELODEON, ON SUNDAY, JULY 6, 1851.

PROVERBS XIV. 34.

Righteousness exalteth a Nation.

This is the first Sunday after the anniversary of the national
birth-day. It seems proper, on this occasion, to go beyond matters
merely personal, and affecting us only as individuals. I will speak of
the duties of man in a wider sphere; of political affairs. So I ask your
attention to a Sermon of the Safeguards of Society. I choose this
subject, because some men profess a fear that American society is in
danger, and because some persons are busily teaching doctrines which
seem hostile to the very design of society itself. I shall not speak of
politics as economy, but as morality, and look at the affairs of State
from a religious point of view.

We are often told, that human society is of divine
appointment,--society meaning the mass of men living together in a
certain fellowship. If this means that man is by nature a social being,
and in their progressive development men must unite and form societies,
then, it is true, society is of divine appointment. But so is a farm;
for man is by nature and position an agricultural being, and in their
progressive development men make farms and practise agriculture.
Agriculture is as necessary as society.--But it does not follow from
this, that the Egyptian, the Flemish, or the American mode of
agriculture is of divine appointment, and men bound by God to practise
that, or to limit themselves thereto; and it no more follows that the
Egyptian, the Flemish, or the American mode of society is of divine
appointment, and men bound by God to limit themselves to it. It would be
thought ridiculous to claim divinity for Dutch farming, or any other
special mode of farming; but it is just as ridiculous to claim divinity
for Dutch society, or any other society. The farm and the society are
alike and equally the work of men.

Then we are often told, that human government is of divine appointment,
and men morally bound to submit to it,--government being used as a
collective term to include the political, ecclesiastical, and social
establishments of a people, and the officers who administer them. If
this means, that, at a certain stage of man's progressive political
development, it is necessary to have certain political, ecclesiastical,
and social establishments, such as a monarchy or an aristocracy, with
persons to administer them, then it is true, and government is of divine
appointment.--But the fence of a farm is just as necessary to
agriculture, at a certain stage of agricultural development, as
government to society. However, it does not follow from this, that a
stone-wall or a rail-fence is of divine appointment; and it no more
follows that a monarchy or an aristocracy is of divine appointment. It
would be thought ridiculous for a farmer to claim divinity for his
fence; it is just as absurd for a politician to claim it for his
government. Both are alike and equally the work of men.

Again it is said that human statutes are of divine appointment, and
therefore binding on the conscience of men. If this means, that, at a
certain stage of social and political development, men must form certain
rules for social and political conduct, then it is true, and human
statutes are of divine appointment. But rules for agricultural conduct
are just as necessary for the farm and the garden as political rules for
society and the State, and so equally divine.--But it does not follow
from this, that the agricultural rules for the farm and the garden laid
down by Columella the Roman, or Cobbett the Briton, are of divine
appointment; and it no more follows that the political rules for society
and the State laid down by the men of New England or the men of New
Holland,--by men "fore-ordained" at birth to be lawgivers, or by men
"elected" in manhood to make laws,--are of divine appointment. It would
be thought ridiculous for a British farmer to claim divinity for
Tusser's "Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry;" but it is just as
absurd for a British politician to claim divinity for the British
Constitution, or the statutes of the realm. Rules for farming the land
and rules for farming the people are alike and equally the work of men.

Still further, it is said that human officers to execute the statutes,
administer the government, and sustain society, are also of divine
appointment; and hence we are morally bound to employ, honor, and obey
them. If this means, that at a certain stage of man's social, political,
and legal development, it is necessary to have certain persons whose
official business it shall be to execute those statutes, then it is
true, and human officers are of divine appointment. But it is just as
necessary to have certain persons, whose official business it shall be
to execute the rules for farming the land; and so the agricultural
officers are just as much of divine appointment as the political. But it
does not follow that ploughman Keith and reaper Gibson are such by the
grace of God, and therefore we are morally bound to employ, honor, and
obey them; and it no more follows that King Ferdinand or President
Fillmore are such by the grace of God, and we morally bound to employ,
honor, and obey them. It would be thought ridiculous for Keith and
Gibson to claim divinity for their function of ploughman or reaper; but
it is equally absurd for Fillmore and Ferdinand to claim divinity for
their function of president or king. The farm-office and the
state-office are alike and equally the work of men.

Yet it is often taught that society, government, statutes, and officers
are peculiarly and especially of divine appointment, in a very different
sense from that mentioned just now; and therefore you and I are morally
bound to respect all the four. We are told this by men who would be
astonished if any one should claim divine appointment for farm-fences,
rules of husbandry, for ploughmen and reapers.--This is sometimes done
by persons who know no better.

In conformity with that fourfold claim of divinity for things of human
appointment, we are told that the great safeguard of man's social
welfare is this,--Entire subordination of the individual to the
community, subordination in mind and conscience, heart and soul; entire
submission to the government; entire obedience to the statute; entire
respect for the officer; in short, the surrender of the individual to
the State, of his mind to the public opinion, of his conscience to the
public statute, of his religion to some bench of attorneys, and his will
to the magistrate. This fourfold subordination of the individual is
demanded, no matter what the community, the government, the statutes,
or the officers may be.--Let us look a little more narrowly into this
matter, and see what is the purpose, the end, and aim of individual
human life, and of social human life; then we may be the better able to
determine what are the safeguards thereof.

What is man here on earth to accomplish? He is to unfold and perfect
himself, as far as possible, in body and spirit; to attain the full
measure of his corporeal and spiritual powders, his intellectual, moral,
affectional, and religious powers; to develop the individual into a
complete man. That, I take it, is the purpose, the end, the scope, and
final cause of individual life on earth. Accordingly, that is the best
form of individual life which does this most completely; that worst
which does it least. He is the most fortunate man who gets the greatest
development of his body and his spirit in all their several and
appropriate functions: all else is means thereto, and this the end
thereof. Ease, wealth, honor, fame, power, and all the outward things
men wish for, and all such things as are valuable, are means to this
end, no more. Wise men do not account him lucky who comes into the world
born to riches, distinction, thrones of power; but him who goes out of
it wise, just, good, and holy.

Accordingly, all else is to be subordinated to the attainment of this
purpose; this to nothing. But what faculties of the individual are to
rule and take precedence? The highest over the lowest; the lasting over
the transient; the eternal over the perishing. I will wound my hand to
save my head, subordinating the less to the greater. Not barely to live,
but to live nobly, is my purpose. I will wound or sacrifice my body to
save the integrity of my spirit, to defend the rights of my mind, of my
conscience, of my affections, of my religious faculty--my soul.
Conscience, when awakened, commands this. Prophets of the Old Testament,
and apostles of the New Testament, martyrs of all the churches under
heaven, are historical witnesses to this instinct of human nature.
Millions of soldiers have been found ready to sacrifice the life of
their body to the integrity of their spirit: they would die, but not
run.

Man is social by nature: gregarious by instinct, he is social with
self-conscious will. To develop the individual into the perfect man, men
must mix and mingle. Society is the condition of individual development.
Moses or Newton, living all alone, would not have attained the human
dignity of a clown or a savage; they would never have mastered
articulate speech: the gregarious elephant, the lonely eagle, would
surpass these men, born to the mightiest genius. Society, companionship
of men, is both a necessity and a comfort, a good in itself, a means to
other good.

As the great purpose of human life is to develop the individual into
the complete and perfect man in body and spirit, so the purpose of
society is to help furnish the means thereto; to defend each, and
furnish him an opportunity and all possible help to become a complete
and perfect man. Individuals are the monads, the primitive atoms, of
which society is composed: its power, its perfection, depend primarily
on the power and perfection of the individuals, as much so as the weight
of a pendulum or of Mount Sheehallin depends on the primitive atoms
thereof. Destroy the individuality of those atoms, human or
material,--all is gone. To mar the atom is to mar the mass. To preserve
itself, therefore, society is to preserve the individuality of the
individual.

Such is its general purpose: this involves several particulars. One is
purely negative in its form,--To prevent men from hurting one another.
In early ages, that was the chief business of society which men had
become conscious of. Society was recognized as an instrument to help
accomplish two things: first, to defend itself against other societies
or collections of men, and so preserve the integrity of the mass. This
was done by means of armies, forts, fleets, and all the artillery of
war. The next thing was, within itself, to defend the many feeble from
the few that are strong, or the few strong from the many weak; to
preserve the integrity of the individuals, the atoms which compose the
mass. This was done by statutes of prohibition, declaring, "Thou shalt
not." This defence from foreign or domestic harm involves two things:
first, the protection of the person, the substance of the community or
the individual; and, next, the protection of the property, the accident
of the social or individual person. All this may be comprised in one
term as the negative function of society, appearing in two modes, as it
protects from foreign or domestic hurt. This function is performed
consciously: one community says to other communities, "You shall not
hurt me," and to its own members, "You must not hurt one another," and
knows what it is about in so doing. Some of the nations of Europe have
scarcely got beyond this; their government seems to acknowledge no
function but this negative one.

Then comes the positive function of society. That is, To furnish
opportunities for the mass, as such, to develop itself; and the
individual, as such, to develop himself, individually and socially, and
exercise all his faculties in his own way; subject only to this rule,
that he hurts nobody else. See how this is done abroad between society
and society. This community agrees with others, that they, mutually,
shall not only not injure each other, but positively help one another.
"Protect my citizens by your statutes, whilst in your land; and I will
do the same with yours," says Belgium to France. That is agreed upon.
"Let my ships into your harbors," says England, "come whence they may,
and with what they may bring; and I will do the same by yours." America
says, "Agreed;" and it is so to the good of both. Thus each Christian
nation secures for itself opportunities for development in all other
Christian countries, and so helps the person, and also his property.
This is done by treaties; and each nation has its ministers and consuls
to lie abroad, and help accomplish this work. This is the foreign part
of the positive function of society, and is destined to a great
expansion in times to come.

See how it is done at home, and the whole furnishes positive helps to
the special parts. Society establishes almshouses, hospitals, schools,
colleges, churches, and post-offices; coins money as a standard measure
of all values; builds roads of earth, of water, or of iron; carries
letters; surveys the land; prints books telling of its minerals, plants,
and living things that swim or creep or fly or walk; puts light-houses
along the coast, and breakwaters to protect a port. Thus society
furnishes its members a positive help for the mind, body, and estate;
helps the individual become a complete and perfect man, by affording him
facilities for the development of his substance, and the possession of
his accidents. This is the domestic part of the positive function of
society. Some men, as the socialists in France, wish to extend it much
further, making the government patriarchal to bless,--not, as of old,
despotic to curse. This also is done with a distinct self-consciousness
of the immediate end and the means thereto.

But the greater part of this positive work is done with no such distinct
consciousness thereof: it is brought about by the men living together;
is done, not by government, but by society. The presence of numbers
increases the intellectual temperature, so to say, and quickens the
social pulse. Machines are invented, science extended, new truths in
morals and religion are found out, literature and art create new
loveliness, and men become greater and more noble, while society takes
no heed; and so all are helped. The government often only checks this
work.

By most subtle contrivances, though not of you and me, a provision is
made for the great. Without willing it, we prepare a cradle for every
giant, ready to receive him soon as he is born. A young woman has a rare
genius for music; no legal and constitutional provision has been made
for her, society having no instinctive and prophetic consciousness of
such an advent; but men with music in their souls, and spell-bound by
their ears, are drawn together, and encourage her sweet soul into all
the wildest, sweetest, and most bewildering witchery of song. If some
lad of marvellous genius is born in the woods, men seek him out, and
train him up with the accumulated wisdom of ten thousand years, that
this newest diamond from the mine of God may be appropriately set. So
it is with a thousand other things; and thus society calls out the
dainties of the cook, the machine of the inventor, the orator's
persuasive power, the profound thought of the thinker, the poet's vision
and his faculty divine, the piety of the highest saint God sends. Thus,
spite of all the Herods in Jerusalem, a crown is got ready for him that
is born King of the world; wise men are always waiting for the star
which goes before the new-born Son of God; and, though that star stand
still over a stable, they are ready on the spot with their myrrh, their
frankincense, and their gold. Society has its shepherds watching their
flock, and its angels to proclaim the glad tidings of great joy to all
mankind.

While society, in its positive function, thus helps the strong, it
provides also for the weak, and gives them the benefit of the strong
man's protection: thus the individuality of the ablest and the most
feeble is defended at the same time. This is done in part by private
charity; in part also by the organized public charity. The sick, the
poor, the crazy, the lame, the blind, the deaf, are sacredly cared for.
Even the fool is not left in his folly, but the wisdom of society
watches over his impotent and wretched brain. Thus the two extremes of
the human race are provided for: the man of vast genius and a tough body
gets his culture and his place; and from his station in the senate, the
pulpit, or the closet, sends out his thunder, his lightning, or his
sunshine over all the land, to save the people and to bless; while the
lame man, the lunatic woman, the blind boy, the poor and sickly little
girl, born with the scrofulous worm feeding on her cheek,--all have the
benefit of the manifold power of society. The talent of a Webster, the
genius of an Emerson, the frailty of an unacknowledged child left on the
doorstone at night, to die next month in the almshouse, all have their
place in the large cradle of society, whose coverlet wraps them
all,--the senator, the poet, and the fool. Attend a meeting of the
alumni of Harvard College, of the heads of the railroads or factories of
New England, a convention of merchants, naturalists, metaphysicians, of
the senate of the nation, you see how society gives place and protection
to the best heads in the State. Then go to some house of industry, and
see the defence afforded for the worst; you see what a wonderful
contrivance society itself is. I say a contrivance, yet it is not the
contrivance chiefly of Solon or Charlemagne, but of Almighty God; a
contrivance for three things,--To prevent men from hurting one another
in person or property; to give the strong and the weak the advantage of
living together; and thus to enable each to have a fair chance for the
development of his person and the acquisition of property. The mechanism
of society, with its statical and dynamical laws, is the most marvellous
phenomenon in the universe. Thereby we are continually building wiser
than we know, or rather the providence of the Father builds by us, as by
the coral insect of Pacific Seas, foundations for continents which we
dream not of.

These three things are the general end of society, and indispensable to
the purpose of life. To attain them, there must be a certain amount of
individual variety of action, a certain amount of social unity of
action; and the two must be to a certain degree balanced into
equilibrium. The larger the amount of individual variety and social
unity of action, the more complete the equilibrium of the two, the more
completely is the purpose of individual and social life accomplished and
attained: the atom is not sacrificed to the mass, nor the mass to the
atom; the individual gains from being a citizen, the citizen from his
individuality; all are the better for each, and each for all.

To accomplish this purpose, men devise certain
establishments,--institutions, constitutions, statutes--human machinery
for attaining the divine end in the individual and the social form. But
here is the condition of existence which all these establishments must
conform to. Every thing in nature has a certain constant mode of action:
this, we call a law of nature. The laws of nature are universal,
unchangeable, and perfect as God, whose mind they in part express. To
succeed in any thing, we must find out and keep the natural laws
relating thereto. There are such laws for the individual,--constant
modes of action which belong to human nature, writ therein by God. My
mind and conscience are the faculties by which I learn these laws.
Conscience perceives by instinct; mind sees afterwards by experiment.
There are also such laws for society, constant modes of action, which
belong to human nature in its social form. They are also written in the
nature of man. The mind and conscience of the individuals who make up
the society are the faculties by which these laws likewise are found
out. These laws, constant modes of individual or social action, are the
sole and exclusive basis of human establishments which help attain the
end of individual and social life. What conforms to these natural rights
is called right; what conforms not, is wrong. A mill-dam or a monument
must conform to the statical laws of matter, or not serve the purpose it
was meant for; a mill or a steam-engine must conform to the dynamical
laws of matter, or it is also useless. So all the social establishments
of mankind, designed to further the positive or negative functions of
society, must conform to the laws of human nature, or they will fail to
achieve the purposes of individual and social life.

As I come to individual self-consciousness, I give utterance to these
natural laws, or my notion of them, in certain rules of conduct which I
make for myself. I say, "This will I do, for it is right; that will I
not do, for it is wrong." These are my personal resolutions, personal
statutes. I make them in my high act of prayer, and in my common life
seek to conform thereto. When I rise higher, in another act of prayer
which has a greater experience for its basis and so represents more
life, I shall revise the old rules of conduct, and make new ones that
are better. The rules of conduct derive all their objective and real
value from their conformity with the law of God writ in my nature; all
their subjective and apparent value, from their conformity to my notions
of the law of God. The only thing which makes it right, and an
individual moral duty for me to keep my resolutions, is, that they
themselves are right, or I believe them so. Now, as I see they are
wrong, or think I see it, I shall revise or change them for better.
Accordingly, I revise them many times in my life: now by a gradual
change, the process of peaceful development; now by a sudden change,
under conviction of sin, in penitence for the past, and great concern of
mind for the future, by the process of personal revolution. But these
rules of conduct are always provisional,--my ladder for climbing up to
the purposes of individual life. I will throw them away as soon as I can
get better. They are amenable subjectively to my notion of right, and
objectively to right itself,--to conscience and to God.

As the individuals, all, the majority, or some controlling men, come to
social self-consciousness, they express these natural laws, or their
notion thereof, in certain rules of social conduct. They say, "This
shall all men do, for it is right; that shall no man do, for it is
wrong." The nation makes its social resolutions, social statutes, in its
act of prayer; for legislation is to the State what prayer is to the
man,--often an act of penitence, of sorrow, of fear, and yet of faith,
hope, and love. When it rises higher, it revises and makes better rules
of conduct: they derive all their objective and real value from their
conformity with the law of God; all their subjective and apparent value,
from their conformity with the nation's notion thereof. The only thing
which makes it right, and a social moral duty for society, or any of its
members, to keep these social statutes, is that they are right, or
thought so. In the progress of society, its rules of conduct get revised
a good many times: now it is done by gradual, peaceful development; now
by sudden and stormy revolutions, when society is penitent for the sin
of the past, and in great anxiety and concern of mind through fear of
the future. These social statutes are only provisional, to help men
climb up to the purpose of social life. They are all amenable
subjectively to the notion of right; objectively to right itself,--to
the conscience of the individuals and to God.

Then society appoints officers whose special conventional function is to
see to the execution of these social rules of conduct. They are legally
amenable to the rules of conduct they are to carry out; socially
amenable to the community that appoints them; individually amenable to
their own conscience and to God.

To sum up all this in one formula: Officers are conventionally amenable
to society; society, with its officers and its rules of conduct,
amenable to the purpose of society; the design of individual life, to
the individuals that compose it; individuals, with their rules of
conduct, amenable each to his own conscience; and all to the law of the
universe, to the Eternal Right, which represents the conscience of God.
So far as society is right, government right, statutes right, officers
right, all may justly demand obedience from each: for though society,
government, statutes, and officers are mere human affairs, as much so as
farms, fences, top-dressing, and reapers, and are as provisional as
they; yet Right is divine, is of God, not merely provisional and for
to-day, but absolute and for eternity. So, then, the moral duty to
respect the government, to keep the statutes, to obey the officers, is
all resolvable into the moral duty of respecting the integrity of my own
nature, of keeping the eternal law of nature, of obeying God. If
government, statutes, officers, command me to do right, I must do it,
not because commanded, but because it is right; if they command me to
do wrong, I must refuse, not because commanded, but because it is wrong.
There is a constitution of the universe: to keep that is to preserve the
union between man and man, between man and God. To do right is to keep
this constitution: that is loyalty to God. To keep my notion of it is
loyalty to my own soul. To be false to my notion thereof is treason
against my own nature; to be false to that constitution is treason
against God. The constitution of the universe is not amenable to men:
that is the law of God, the higher law, the constant mode of action of
the infinite Father of all. In that He lives and moves, and has His
being.

It is now easy to see what are the Safeguards of society, the things
which promote the end and aim of society,--the development of the body
and spirit of all men after their law,--and thus help attain the purpose
of individual life. I will mention three of these safeguards, in the
order of their importance.

First of all, is Righteousness in the People: a religious determination
to keep the law of God at all hazards; a sacred and inflexible reverence
for right; a determined habit of fidelity each to his own conscience.
This, of course, implies a hatred of wrong; a religious and determined
habit of disobeying and resisting every thing which contradicts the law
of God, of disobeying what is false to this and our conscience. There is
no safeguard for society without this. It is to man what
impenetrability, with the other primary qualities, is to matter. All
must begin with the integral atoms, with the individual mind and
conscience; all be tried by that test, personal integrity, at last. What
is false to myself I must never do,--at no time, for no consideration,
in nowise. This is the doctrine of the higher law; the doctrine of
allegiance to God; a doctrine which appears in every form of religion
ever taught in the world; a doctrine admitted by the greatest writers on
the foundation of human law, from Cicero to Lord Brougham. Even Bentham
comes back to this. I know it is now-a-days taught in the United States,
that, if any statute is made after the customary legal form, it is
morally binding on all men, no matter what the statute may be; that a
command to kidnap a black man and sell him into slavery, is as much
morally binding as a command for a man to protect his own wife and
child. A people that will practically submit to such a doctrine is not
worthy of liberty, and deserves nothing but law, oppressive law,
tyrannical law; and will soon get what it deserves. If a people has this
notion, that they are morally bound to obey any statute legally made,
though it conflict with public morals, with private conscience, and with
the law of God, then there is no hope of such a people; and the sooner
a tyrant whips them into their shameful grave, the better for the world.
Trust me, to such a people the tyrant will soon come. Where the carcass
is thither will the vultures be gathered together. Let no man put
asunder the carrion and the crow. So much for the first and
indispensable safeguard.

The next is derivative therefrom, Righteousness in the Establishments of
the People. Under this name I include three things, namely,
institutions, constitutions, and statutes. Institutions are certain
modes of operation, certain social, ecclesiastical, or political
contrivances for doing certain things. Thus an agricultural club is a
social institution to help farming; a private school is a social
institution for educating its pupils; a church is an ecclesiastical
institution for the promotion of religion; an aristocracy is a political
institution for governing all the people by means of a few, and for the
sake of a few; a congress of senators and representatives is a
legislative institution for making statutes; a jury of twelve men is a
judicial institution to help execute the statutes; universal suffrage is
a democratic institution for ruling the State.

Constitutions are fundamental rules of conduct for the nation, made by
the highest human authority in the land, and only changeable thereby,
determining what institutions shall be allowed, how administered, by
whom and in what manner statutes shall be made.

Statutes are particular rules of conduct to regulate the action of man
with man, of individuals with the State, and of the State with
individuals.

Statutes are amenable to the constitutions; the constitutions to the
institutions; they to the people; all subjectively to the conscience of
the individual, and objectively to the conscience of God.

Establishments are the machinery which a people contrives wherewith to
carry out its ideas of the right or the expedient. In the present state
of mankind, they are indispensable to accomplish the purpose of
individual life. There are indeed a few men who for their good conduct,
after they are mature, require no human laws whatever. They regulate
themselves by their idea of right, by their love of truth, of justice,
of man and God. They see the law of God so clear that they need no
prohibitive statutes to restrain them from wrong. They will not lie nor
steal, though no statutes forbid, and all other men both lie and steal;
not if the statutes command falsehood and theft. These men are saints.
The wealth of Athens could not make Aristides unjust. Were all men like
Jesus of Nazareth, statutes forbidding wrong would be as needless as
sails to a shark, a balloon to a swallow, or a railroad to the lightning
of heaven. This is always a small class of men, but one that continually
increases. We all look to the time when this will include all men. No
man expects to find law books and courts in the kingdom of heaven.

Then there is a class, who need these statutes as a well-known rule of
conduct to encourage them to do right, by the assurance that all other
men will likewise be made to do so, even if not willing. They see the
law of God less clear and strong, and need human helps to keep it. This
class comprises the majority of mankind. The court-house helps them,
though they never use it; the jail helps them, though never in it. These
are common men. They are very sober in Connecticut; not very sober in
California.

Then there is a third class who will do wrong, unless they are kept from
it by punishment or the fear thereof. They do not see the law of God, or
will not keep it if they do. The court-house helps them; so does the
jail, keeping them from actual crime while there, deterring while out of
it. Take away the outward restraints, their seeming virtue falls to
pieces like a barrel without its hoops. These are knaves. I think this
class of men will continually diminish with the advance of mankind; that
the saints will grow common, and the knaves get scarce. Good
establishments promote this end; those of New England, especially the
schools, help forward this good work, to convert the knaves to common
men, to transfigure the common men to saints. Bad establishments, like
many in Austria, Ireland, and South Carolina, produce the opposite
effect: they hinder the development of what is high and noble in man,
and call out what is mean and low; for human laws are often instruments
to debauch a nation.

If a nation desires to keep the law of God, good establishments will
help the work; if it have none such, it must make them before it can be
at peace. They are as needful as coats and gowns for the body. Sometimes
the consciousness of the people is far in advance of its establishments,
and there must be a revolution to restore the equilibrium. It is so at
Rome, in Austria and Prussia. All these countries are on the brink of
revolution, and are only kept down by the bayonet. It was so here
seventy-five years ago, and our fathers went through fire and blood to
get the establishments they desired. They took of the righteousness in
the people, and made therefrom institutions, constitutions, and
statutes. So much for the second and derivative safeguard.

The third is Righteousness in the Public Officers, good men to
administer the establishments, manage the institutions, expound and
enforce the constitutions and execute the statutes, and so represent the
righteousness of the people. In the hands of such men as see the purpose
of social and individual life, and feel their duty to keep the integrity
of their conscience and obey the law of God, even bad establishments
are made to work well, and serve the purpose of human life; because the
man puts out the evil of the institution, constitution, or statute, and
puts his own righteousness in its place. There was once a judge in New
England who sometimes had to administer bad laws. In these cases, he
told the jury, "Such is the law, common or enacted; such are the
precedents; such the opinions of Judge This and Judge That; but justice
demands another thing. I am bound by my oath as judge to expound to you
the law as it is; you are bound by oath as jurors to do justice under
it; that is your official business here to-day." Such a man works well
with poor tools; with good ones he would work much better. By the action
of such men, aided by public opinion which they now follow and now
direct, without any change of legislation, there is a continual progress
of justice in the establishments of a nation. Bad statutes are dropped
or corrected, constitutions silently ameliorated, all institutions made
better. Thus wicked laws become obsolete. There is a law in England
compelling all men to attend church. Nobody enforces it.

Put a bad man to administer the establishments, one who does not aim at
the purpose of society, nor feel bound to keep the higher law of God,
the best institutions, constitutions, statutes, become ineffectual,
because the man puts out the good thereof, and puts in his own evil.
The best establishments will be perverted to the worst of purposes. Rome
had all the machinery of a commonwealth; with Cæsar at the head it
became a despotism. In 1798, France had the establishments of a
republic; with Napoleon for first consul, you know what it became: it
soon was made an empire, and the Constitution was trodden under foot. In
1851, France has the institutions of a democracy; with Louis Napoleon as
chief, you see what is the worth of the provisions for public justice.
What was the Constitution of England good for under the thumb of Charles
I. and James II.? What was the value of the common law, of the trial by
jury, of Magna Charta, "such a fellow as will have no sovereign," with a
George Jeffries for Judge, a James II. for king, and such juries as
corrupt sheriffs brought together? They were only a mockery. What were
the charters of New England against a wicked king and a corrupt cabinet?
Connecticut went out of the court and into the Charter Oak for
self-preservation. What were all the institutions of Christianity when
Alexander VI. dishonored the seat even of the Pope?

Put a saint, who feels his duty to keep the law of God, in office, even
bad rules will work well. But put a man who recognizes no law of God,
not into a jail, but in a great office; give him courts and courtiers,
fleets and armies, nay, only newspapers and "union committees" to serve
him, you see what will be done. The resolute determination of the
people to obey the law of God, the righteousness of their
establishments, will be of small avail, frustrated by the wickedness of
the men in power. The English Parliament once sent a fleet to aid the
Huguenots at Rochelle. King Charles I. gave the admiral secret orders to
surrender his ships to the enemy he was sent to oppose! The purpose of
all human life may be as foully betrayed by wicked men in a high place.
In a monarchy, the king is answerable for it with his neck; in a
republic there is the same danger; but, where all seems to proceed from
the people, it may be more difficult to do justice to a wicked officer.
So much for the third safeguard, also derivative from the first.

To make a good house, you want good materials,--solid stone, sound
bricks, sound timber; a good plan, and also good builders. So, as
safeguards of society, to achieve its purpose, you want good
material,--a righteous people who will be faithful to their own
conscience, and obey God and reverence the law of nature; a good
plan,--righteous establishments, institutions, constitutions, statutes
conformable to the laws of God; and you want good builders,--righteous
officers to represent the eternal justice of the Father. You want this
threefold righteousness.

How are we provided with these three safeguards just now? Have we this
Righteousness in the People?--which is the first thing. Perhaps there is
no nation with a higher reverence for justice, and more desire to keep
the law of God; at least we have been told so, often enough. I think the
nation never had more of it than now; never so much. But here are whole
classes of men who practically seem to have no reverence for God's law;
who declare there is no such thing; whose conduct is most shamefully
unrighteous in all political matters. They seek to make us believe there
is no law above the caprice of man. Of such I will speak by and by.

It is plain there is not righteousness enough in the people to hinder us
from doing what we know is contrary to the law of God. Thus, we keep one
sixth part of the people in a state of slavery. This we do in violation
of our own axiom, declared to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, endowed by their Creator with the unalienable right to life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We have here three millions of
slaves: if things go on as now, there will be twelve millions before the
century ends. We need not say we cannot help it. Slavery in America is
as much our work as democracy, as free schools, as the Protestant form
of religion. At the Declaration, we might have made the slaves free; at
the time of the Confederation; at the formation of the Constitution. But
no! there was not righteousness enough in the people to resist the
temptation of eating the bread which others earn. American slavery has
always been completely in the power of the American people. We may
abolish it any time we will. We might have restricted it to the old
States, which had it before, and so have kept it out of Kentucky,
Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and all that mighty
realm west of the great river. No! we took pains to extend it there. We
fought with Mexico to carry slavery into the "Halls of the Montezumas,"
whence a half-barbarous people drove it away. We long to seize on Cuba,
and yet other lands, to plant there our "American institution." We are
indignant when Austria unjustly seizes an American in Hungary, and hales
him to prison; but have nothing to say when slave States systematically
confine the colored freemen of the North, or when Georgia offers a large
reward for the head of a citizen of Boston. We talk of the "pauper labor
of Europe." It is pauper labor, very much of it. I burn with indignation
at the men who keep it so. But it is not slave labor. Paupers spin
cotton at Manchester, and at Glasgow, say the whigs. Who raises cotton
at South Carolina and Mississippi? The spoil of the slave is in our
houses. We are a republic, but the only nation of the Christian world
whose fields are tilled by chattel slaves. To such a degree has
covetousness blinded the eyes of the whole nation. In saying all this,
I will not say that we are less righteous than other nations. No other
people has had the same temptation. It has been too great for America.
Slavery is loved as well in Boston as in New Orleans. The love of
liberty is strong with us; but it is liberty for ourselves we love, not
for our brother man whom we can oppress and enthrall. This vice is not
confined to the South. I look on some of the clergymen of the North as
only chaplains of the slave-driver.

Look at the next safeguard of society. Setting aside the institution of
slavery, and the statutes relating thereto, I think we have the most
righteous Establishments in the world. By no means perfect, they produce
the greatest variety of action in the individuals, the greatest unity of
action in society, and afford an opportunity to achieve the purpose of
social and individual life. Here is the great institution of democracy,
the government of all, by all, and for all, resting on the American
idea, that all men have natural rights which only the possessor can
alienate; that all are equal in their rights; that it is the business of
government to preserve them all for each man. Under this great
institution of a free State, there naturally come the church, the
school, the press,--all free. In politics, and all depending thereon, we
are coming to recognize this principle, that restraint is only to be
exercised for the good of all, the restrainer and the restrained.

Let me single out two excellent institutions, not wholly American,--The
contrivance for making laws, and that for executing them. To make laws,
the people choose the best men they can find and confide in, and set
them to this work. They aim to take all the good of past times, of the
present times, and add to it their private contribution of justice. Each
State Legislature is a little political academy for the advancement of
jural science and art. They get the wisest and most humane men to aid
them. Then after much elaboration the law is made. If it works well in
one State it is soon tried in others; if not, it is repealed and ceases
to be. The experience of mankind has discovered no better way than this
of popular legislation, for organizing the ideal justice of the people
into permanent forms. If there is a man of moral and political genius in
the community, he can easily be made available to the public. The
experiment of popular legislation has been eminently successful in
America.

Then, still further, we have Officers chosen by the people for a limited
time, to enforce the laws when made,--the Executive; others to expound
them,--the Judiciary. It is the official business of certain officers to
punish the man who violates the laws. In due and prescribed form, they
arrest the man charged with the offence. Now, two things are desirable:
one to protect society, in all its members, from injury by any one
acting against its just laws; the other is, to protect the man
complained of from being hurt by government when there is no law
against him, or when he has not done the deed alleged, or from an unjust
punishment, even if it be legal. In despotic countries, little is
thought of this latter; and it goes hard with a man whom the government
complains of, even if there is no positive statute against the crime
charged on him, or when he is innocent of the deed alleged. Nothing can
screen him from the lawful punishment, though that be never so unjust.
The statute and its administration are a rule without mercy. But in
liberal governments a contrivance has been devised to accomplish both
these purposes,--the just desire of society to execute its laws; the
just desire of the individual to have justice done. That is the trial by
a jury of twelve men, not officers of the government, but men taken for
this purpose alone from the bosom of the community, with all their human
sympathies and sense of responsibility to God about them. The jury are
to answer in one word "Guilty" or "Not guilty." But it is plain they are
to determine three things: first, Did the prisoner do the deed alleged,
and as alleged? next, if so, Is there a legal and constitutional statute
forbidding it, and decreeing punishment therefor? and then, if so, Shall
the prisoner for that deed suffer the punishment denounced by that
law?[34]

Human statutes partake of human imperfections. See the checks against
sudden, passionate, or unjust legislation. We choose legislators, and
divide them into two branches, a Senate and a House of Representatives,
each to aid and check the other. If a bill pass one house, and seem
unjust to the other, it is set aside. If both approve of it, a third
person has still a qualified negative; and, if it seems unjust to him,
he sets it aside. If it passes this threefold ordeal, it becomes a
statute of the land. See the checks in the execution of the laws which
relate to offences. Before they can be brought against any man, in any
matter beyond a trifle, a jury of his peers indict him for the offence.
Then, before he can be punished, twelve men of his peers must say with
one accord, "You shall inflict the penalties of the statute upon this
man."

This trial by jury has long been regarded as one of the most important
of the secondary safeguards of society. It has served to defend the
community against bad citizens, and the citizens against an evil
establishment,--bad institutions, bad constitutions, bad statutes;
against evil officers, bad rulers, bad judges, bad sheriffs. If the
community has much to fear from bad citizens, here is the offensive
armor, and the jury do not bear the sword in vain. If its citizens have
much to fear from a wicked government, oppressive, grasping, tyrannical,
desirous of pretending law where there is none, declaring "ship-money"
and other enormities constitutional, or pressing a legal statute beyond
justice, making it treason to tell of the wickedness of officers,--here
is the defensive armor, and the jury do not bear in vain the shield of
the citizen. Sometimes the citizens have more to fear from the
government than from all other foes. Louis XIV. was a great robber, and
plundered and murdered more of his subjects than all the other alleged
felons in the sixteen millions of Frenchmen. The honest burghers of
Paris had more to fear from the monarch in the Tuileries than from the
murderer in the Faubourg St. Antoine, or the cut-purse in the Rue St.
Jacob. Charles I. was a more dangerous enemy to our fathers in England
and America than all the other thieves and murderers in the realm. What
were all the Indians in New England, for peril to its Christian
citizens, compared to Charles II. and his wicked brother? What was a
foot-pad to Henry VIII.? He plundered a province, while the robber only
picked a pocket.

The trial by jury has done manly service. It was one of the first
bulwarks of human society, then barbarous and feeble, thrown up by the
Germanic tribe which loved order, but loved justice too. It is a line of
circumvallation against the loose, unorganized wickedness of the private
ruffian; a line of contravallation also against the organized wickedness
of the public government. It began before there were any regular courts
or written laws; and, ever since, it has done great service when
corrupt men in high places called a little offence "treason"; when
corrupt judges sought to crush down the people underneath oppressive
laws to advance themselves; and when corrupt witnesses were ready to
"enlarge" their testimony so as to "dispatch" the men accused; yea, to
swear black was black, and then, when the case seemed to require it,
swear white was black. Any man who reads the history of England under
the worst of kings, the worst of ministers, the worst of judges, and
with the worst of witnesses, and compares it with other nations, will
see the value of the trial by jury as a safeguard of the people. The
bloody Mary had to punish the jurors for their verdict of acquittal,
before she could accomplish her purposes of shame. George III., wishing
to collect a revenue in the American colonies, without their consent or
any constitutional law, found the jury an obstacle he could not pass
over. Attorneys might try John Hancock for smuggling in his "sloop
Liberty:" no jury would convict. The tea, a vehicle of unjust taxation,
went floating out of Boston Bay in a most illegal style. No attempt was
made to try the offenders; the magistrates knew there was a jury who
would not convict men for resisting a wicked law. Men must be taken
"over seas for trial" by a jury of their enemies, before the wicked laws
of a wicked ministry could be brought upon the heads of the resolute men
of America.

It is of great importance to keep this institution pure; to preserve its
spirit, with such expansion as the advance of mankind requires.
Otherwise, the laws may be good, the constitutions good, institutions
good, the disposition of the people good; but, with a wicked minister in
the cabinet, a wicked judge on the bench, a wicked attorney at the bar,
and a wicked witness to forswear himself on the stand,--and all these
can easily be had; you can purchase your wicked witnesses; nay,
sometimes one will volunteer and "enlarge his testimony,"--a man's life
and liberty are not safe for a moment. The administration may grasp any
man at will. The minister represents the government; the judge, the
attorney, all represent the government. It has often happened that all
these had something to gain by punishing unjustly some noble man who
opposed their tyranny, and they used their official power to pervert
justice and ruin the State, that they might exalt themselves. The jury
does not represent the government, but "the country;" that is, the
justice, the humanity, the mercy of mankind. This is its great value.

Have we the third safeguard, Righteous Officers? I believe no nation
ever started with nobler officers than we chose at first. But I think
there has been some little change from Washington down through the
Tylers and the Polks to the present administration. John Adams, in
coming to the presidency, found his son in a high office, and asked his
predecessor if it were fit for the President to retain his own son in
office. Washington replied, It would be wrong for you to appoint him;
but I hope he will not be discharged from office, and so the country be
deprived of his valuable services, merely "because he is your son!" What
a satire is this on the conduct of men in power at this day! We have had
three "second General Washingtons" in the presidential chair since 1829;
two new ones are now getting ready, "standing like greyhounds in the
slips, straining upon the start," for that bad eminence. These three
past and two future "Washingtons" have never displayed any very
remarkable family likeness to the original--who left no descendant--in
this particular.[35] I pass over the general conduct of our executive
and judicial officers, which does not seem to differ much from that of
similar functionaries in England, in France, in Italy, Austria, Turkey,
and Spain. But I must speak of some special things in the conduct of
some of these persons,--things which ought to be looked at on such a
day as this, and in the light of religion. Attempts have lately been
made in this city to destroy the juror's power to protect the citizen
from the injustice of government,--attempts to break down this safeguard
of individual liberty. We have seen a judge charge the grand jury, that,
in case of conflict between the law of God and the statutes made by men,
the people must "obey both." Then we have seen an attempt made by the
government to get a partial jury, who should not represent the country,
but should have prejudices against the prisoner at the bar. We have seen
a man selected as foreman of the jury who had previously, and before
witnesses, declared that all the persons engaged in the case which was
to come before him, "ought to be hung." We have seen a man expelled from
the jury, after he had taken the juror's oath, because he declared that
he had "a general sympathy with the down-trodden and oppressed here and
everywhere," and so did not seem likely to "dispatch" the prisoner, as
the government desired. This is not all: the judge questions the jurors
before their oath, and refuses to allow any one to be impanelled who
doubts the constitutionality of the fugitive slave law. Even this is not
the end: he charges the jury thus selected, packed, picked, and
winnowed, that they are to take the law as he lays it down; that they
are only judges of the fact, he exclusively of the law; and, if they
find that the prisoner did the deed alleged, then they must return him
"Guilty" of the offence charged.

I am no lawyer: I shall not speak here with reference to usages and
precedents of the past, only with an eye to the consequences for the
future. If the court can thus select a jury to suit itself, mere
creatures of its own, what is the use of a jury to try the fact? See the
consequences of this decision, that no man shall serve as juror who
doubts the constitutionality of a law, and that the jurors are not
judges of the law itself, as well as the fact. Let me suppose some cases
which may happen. The Constitution of the United States provides that
Congress shall not prohibit the free exercise of religion. Suppose that
Congress should pass a law to punish any man with death who should pray
to the "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." The government wishes to punish an
obnoxious orthodox minister for violating this "form of law." It is
clearly unjust; but the judge charges the grand jury they are to "obey
both" the laws of God and the statutes of men. The grand jury indict the
man. He is brought for trial. The law is obviously unconstitutional; but
the judge expels from the jury all who think the law is
unconstitutional. He selects the personal enemies of the accused, and
finds twelve men foolish enough or wicked enough to believe it is
constitutional to do what the Constitution declares must not be done;
and then proceeds to trial, selecting for foreman the man who has said,
"All men that thus pray ought to be hung!" What is the value of your
Constitution? The jury might convict, the judge sentence, the President
issue his warrant, and the man be hanged in twenty-four hours, for doing
a deed which the Constitution itself allows, and Christendom daily
practises, and the convictions of two hundred million men require!

It is alleged the jury must not judge of the law, but only of the fact.
See the consequences of this principle in several cases. The Secretary
of State has declared the rescuing of Shadrach was "treason," and, of
course, punishable with death. Suppose the court had charged the jury,
that to rescue a man out of the hands of an incompetent officer--an
offence which in Boston has sometimes been punished with a fine of five
dollars--was "levying war" against the United States, and they were only
to find if the prisoner did the deed; and, if so, return a verdict of
guilty. Suppose the jury are wicked enough to accept his charge, where
is the protection of the citizen? The government may say, to smuggle
goods into Boston harbor is "levying war" and hang a man for treason who
brings on shore an ounce of camphor in his pocket without paying duties!
Is not the jury, in such a case, to judge what the law makes
treason?--to decide for itself?

There was once a law making it felony without benefit of clergy to read
the Bible in the English language. Suppose the government, wishing to
make away with an obnoxious man, should get him indicted next term for
this offence, and the judge should declare that the old law is still in
force. Is the jury not to judge whether we live under the bloody Mary,
or the constitution of Massachusetts?--whether what was once law is so
now? If not, then the laws of King Darius or King Pharaoh may be revived
whenever Judge Hategood sees fit, and Faithful must hang for it.[36]

Suppose the judge makes a law himself, declaring that, if any one speaks
against the justice of the court, he shall be whipped with forty stripes
save one, and gets a man indicted under it and brought to trial--is the
jury not to judge if there be such a law? Then we might as well give up
all legislation, and leave all to the "discretion of the court."

A judge of the United States Court was once displaced on account of
mental imbecility. Was Judge Simpleton to determine what was law, what
not, for a jury of intelligent men?

Another judge, not long ago, in Boston, in his place in court, gave an
opinion in a most important affair, and was drunk when he gave it. I do
not mean he was horizontally drunk, but only so that his friends feared
"he would break down in court, and expose himself." Was the opinion of a
drunken judge to be taken for law by sober men?

Suppose the judge is not a simpleton nor a drunkard, but is only an
ordinary lawyer and a political partisan, and appointed to his office
because he is a fawning sycophant, and will interpret the law to suit
the ambition of the government--a thing that has happened in this city.
Is he to lay down the law for the jurors who aim only to live in
honorable morality, to hurt no one, and give every man his due?

Suppose the attorneys at the bar know the law better than the attorney
on the bench,--a thing that daily happens,--are not the jurors to
decide for themselves?

I have chosen fictitious cases to try the principle. Extreme cases make
shipwreck of a wicked law, but are favoring winds to bring every just
statute into its happy harbor at the last. Will you say we are not
likely to suffer from such usurpation? You know what we have suffered
within three months past. God only knows what is to come. But no man is
ever to seek for a stick if he wishes to beat a dog, or for a cross if
he would murder his Saviour. The only way to preserve liberty is by
eternal vigilance: we must be jealous of every president, every
minister, every judge, every officer, from a king to the meanest
commissioner he appoints to kidnap men. You have seen the attempts made
to sap and undermine one of the most valuable safeguards of our social
welfare,--seen that it excited very little attention; and I wish to warn
you of the danger of a false principle. I have waited for this day to
speak on this theme. Executive tyranny, with soldiers at its command,
must needs be open in its deeds of shame. It may waste the money of the
public which cleaves to the suspected hands of its officers: it is not
so easy to get the necks of those it hates; for we have no star-chamber
of democracy, and here the executive has not many soldiers at command,
must ask before it can get them. It did ask, and got "No" for answer.
Legislative tyranny must needs be public, and is easily seen. But
judicial tyranny is secret, subtle, unseen in its action; and all
experience shows it is one of the most dangerous forms of tyranny. A
corrupt judge poisons the wells of human society.[37] Scroggs and
Jeffries are names deservedly hated by mankind, and there are some
American names likely to be added to them. The traditionary respect
entertained here for an office which has been graced by some of the
noblest men in the land, doubles our danger.

But an attack is made on another safeguard of society, yet more
important. We have been told that there is no law higher than a human
statute, no law of God above an act of the American Congress. You know
how this doctrine of the supremacy of the lower law has been taught in
the high places of the State, in the high places of the church, and in
the low places of the public press. You know with what sneers men have
been assailed who appealed to conscience, to religion, and said, "The
law of God is supreme; above all the enactments of mortal men." You have
been witness to attempts to howl down the justice of the Almighty. We
have had declamation and preaching against the law of God. It is said
the French Assembly, some fifty or sixty years ago, voted that there
should be no public worship of God; that there was no God to worship;
but it was left for politicians and preachers of America, in our time,
to declare that there is no law above the caprice of mortal men. Did the
French "philosophers" decree speculative atheism? the American "wise
men" put it in practice. They deny the function of God. "He has nothing
to do with mankind." This doctrine is one of the foulest ever taught,
and tends directly to debauch the conscience of the people. What if
there were no law higher than an act of Parliament? what would become of
the Parliament itself? There is such a thing conceivable as personal,
speculative atheism. I think it is a very rare thing. I have never known
an atheist: for, with all about us speaking of God; all within us
speaking of him; every telescope revealing the infinite Mind in nebulæ
resolved to groups of systems of suns; every microscope revealing the
infinite Father, yea, Mother of the world, in a drop of water, a grain
of perishing wood, or an atom of stone; every little pendulum revealing
his unchanging law on a small scale; and this whole group of solar
systems, in its slow and solemn swing through heavenly space, disclosing
the same law on a scale which only genius at first can comprehend,--it
is not easy to arrive at personal, speculative atheism. It would be a
dreadful thing, the stark denial of a God. To say there is no infinite
Mind in finite matter, no order in the universe, in providence only a
fate, no God for all, no Father for any, only an inextinguishable
nothing that fills the desert and illimitable ether of space and time,
the whence and whither of all that are,--such a belief is conceivable;
but I do not believe that there is a single atheist living on the whole
round world. There is no general danger of personal, speculative
atheism. When M. Lalande declared that he saw no God through his
telescope, though he meant not to deny the real God of nature, the world
rang with indignation at an astronomer undevout and mad. But practical,
political atheism has become a common thing in America, in New England.
This is not a denial of the essence of God and his being, but of his
function as Supreme Ruler of the church, of the State, of the people, of
the universe. Of that there is danger. The devil of ambition tempts the
great man to it; the devil of covetousness, the little man. Both strike
hands, and say, "There is no higher law;" and low men lift up their mean
foreheads in the pulpits of America and say, "It is the voice of a God,
and not of a man. There is no higher law." The greatest understanding of
this land, with haughty scorn, has lately said, "The North Mountain is
very high; the Blue Ridge, higher still; the Alleghanies higher than
either; and yet this 'higher law' ranges further than an eagle's flight
above the highest peaks of the Alleghanies."[38] The impious taunt was
received with "laughter" by men who have long acted on the maxim that
there is no law of God, and whose State is impoverished by the attempt
to tread His law under foot. I know men in America have looked so long
at political economy that they have forgotten political morality, and
seem to think politics only national housekeeping, and he the best ruler
who buys cheapest and sells dearest. But I confess I am amazed when
statesmen forget the lessons of those great men that have gone before
us, and built up the social state, whose "deep foundations have been
laid with prayer." What! is there no law above the North Mountain; above
the Blue Ridge; higher than the Alleghanies? Why, the old Hebrew poet
told us of One "which removeth the mountains, and they know not; which
overturneth them in his anger; which alone spreadeth out the heavens,
and treadeth upon the waves of the sea. Lo! he goeth by me, and I see
him not; he passeth on also, but I perceive him not." Yes, there is
One--his law "an eagle's flight above the Alleghanies"--who humbleth
himself to behold the things that are in heaven, whose strong hand
setteth fast the mountains; yea, One who hath weighed the mountains in
scales; before whom all nations are as a very little thing. Yes, Father
in heaven! before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst
formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting,
thou art God. Yea, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations.
Thy name alone is excellent; thy glory above the earth and heaven!

No higher law for States than the poor statutes they enact!

    "Among the assemblies of the great
    A greater Ruler takes his seat;
    The God of heaven as Judge surveys
    These 'gods of earth' and all their ways:--
    'Why will you frame oppressive laws?
    Or why support the unrighteous cause?
    When will you once defend the poor,
    That foes may vex the saints no more?'
    They know not, Lord, nor will they know;
    Dark are the ways in which they go;
    Their name of 'earthly gods' is vain,
    For they shall fall and die like men."

It would be a great calamity for this nation to lose all of its mighty
riches, and have nothing left but the soil we stand on. But, in seven or
eight generations, it would all be restored again; for all the wealth of
America has been won in less time. We are not two hundred and fifty
years from Jamestown and Plymouth. It would be a great misfortune to
lose all the foremost families of the nation. But England lost hers in
the War of the Roses; France, in her Revolution. Nature bore great men
anew, and fresh families sprung up as noble as the old. But, if this
generation in America could believe that there was no law of God for you
and me to keep,--say the acts of Congress what they might say,--no law
to tame the ambition of men of mountain greatness, and curb the eagle's
flight of human tyranny, that would be a calamity which the nation would
never recover from. No! then religion would die out; affection fall
dead; conscience would perish; intellect give up the ghost, and be no
more. No law higher than human will! No watchmaker can make a long
pendulum vibrate so quick as a short. In this very body there is that
law. I wake and watch and will; my private caprice turns my hand, now
here, now there. But who controls my breath? Who bids this heart beat
all day long, and all the night, sleep I or wake? Whose subtle law holds
together these particles of flesh, of blood, and bone in marvellous
vitality? Who gives this eye its power to see, and opens wide the portal
of the ear? and who enchants, with most mysterious life, this wondrous
commonwealth of dust I call myself? It is the same Hand whose law is
"higher than the Blue Ridge," an "eagle's flight above the Alleghanies."
Who rules the State, and, out of a few stragglers that fled here to New
England for conscience sake, built up this mighty, wealthy State? Was
it Carver and Winthrop who did all this; Standish and Saltonstall? Was
it the cunning craftiness of mightiest men that consciously, well
knowing what they did, laid the foundations of our New England State and
our New England Church? Why, the boys at school know better. It was the
eternal God whose higher law the Pilgrim and the Puritan essayed to
keep, not knowing whereunto the thing would grow. Shall the fool say in
his heart there is no God? He cannot make a hair grow on his head but by
the eternal law of his Father in heaven. Will the politician say there
is no law of God for States? Ask the sorrowing world; let Austria and
Hungary make reply. Nay, ask the Southern States of America to show us
their rapid increase in riches, in civilization; to show us their
schools and their scholars, their literature, their science, and their
art! No law of God for States! It is writ on the iron leaf of destiny,
"Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a curse to any people." Let
the wicked hand of the South join with the Northern wicked hand,
iniquity shall not prosper. But the eye of the wicked shall fail; they
shall not escape; their hope shall be as giving up the ghost, because
their tongue and their doings are against the Lord, to provoke the eyes
of his glory. Their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall
go up as dust, if they cast away the law of the Lord, and despise the
word of the Holy One.

In America the people are strongly attached to the institutions,
constitutions, and statutes of the land. On the whole, they are just
establishments. If not, we made them ourselves, and can make them better
when we will. The execution of laws is also popular. Nowhere in the
world is there a people so orderly, so much attached to law, as the
people of these Northern States. But one law is an exception. The people
of the North hate the fugitive slave law, as they have never hated any
law since the stamp act. I know there are men in the Northern States who
like it,--who would have invented slavery, had it not existed long
before. But the mass of the Northern people hate this law, because it is
hostile to the purpose of all just human law, hostile to the purpose of
society, hostile to the purpose of individual life; because it is
hostile to the law of God,--bids the wrong, forbids the right. We
disobey that, for the same reason that we keep other laws: because we
reverence the law of God. Why should we keep that odious law which makes
us hated wherever justice is loved? Because we must sometimes do a
disagreeable deed to accomplish an agreeable purpose? The purpose of
that law is to enable three hundred thousand slaveholders to retake on
our soil the men they once stole on other soil! Most of the city
churches of the North seem to think that is a good thing. Very well: is
it worth while for fifteen million freemen to transgress the plainest
of natural laws, the most obvious instincts of the human heart, and the
plainest duties of Christianity, for that purpose? The price to pay is
the religious integrity of fifteen million men; the thing to buy is a
privilege for three hundred thousand slaveholders to use the North as a
hunting-field whereon to kidnap men at our cost. Judge you of that
bargain.

But I must end this long discourse. The other day I spoke of the vices
of passion: great and terrible evils they wrought. They were as nothing
to the vices of calculation. Passion was the flesh, ambition the devil.
There are vices of democracy, vices of radicalism; very great vices they
are too. You may read of them in Hume and Alison. They are painted black
as night and bloody as battle in tory journals of England, and the more
vulgar tory journals of America. Democracy wrought terrible evils in
Britain in Cromwell's time; in France at her Revolution. But to the
vices, the crimes, the sins of aristocracy, of conservatism,--they are
what the fleeting lust of the youth is to the cool, hard, calculating,
and indomitable ambition of the grown man. Radicalism pillaged Governor
Hutchinson's house, threw some tea into the ocean; conservatism set up
its stamp act, and drove America into revolution. Radicalism helped
Shadrach out of court; conservatism enacted the fugitive slave bill.
Radicalism sets up a republic that is red for six months; conservatism
sets up a red monarchy covered with blood for hundreds of years. Judge
you from which we have the most to fear.

Such are the safeguards of society; such our condition. What shall we
do? Nobody would dare pretend to build a church except on righteousness;
that is, the rock of ages. Can you build a state on any other
foundation--that house upon the sand? What should you think of a
minister of the church who got his deacons together, and made a creed,
and said, "There is no higher law; no law of God. You, laymen, must take
our word for your guidance, and do just as we bid you, and violate the
plainest commands of conscience?" What would be atheism in a minister of
the church,--is that patriotism in a minister of the state? A bad law is
a most powerful instrument to demoralize and debauch the people. If it
is a law of their own making, it is all the worse. There is no real and
manly welfare for a man, without a sense of religious obligation to God;
none in a family, none in a church, none in a state. We want
righteousness in the people, in their establishments, in their officers.
I adjure you to reverence a government that is right, statutes that are
right, officers that are right; but to disobey every thing that is
wrong. I entreat you by your love for your country, by the memory of
your fathers, by your reverence for Jesus Christ, yea, by the deep and
holy love of God which Jesus taught, and you now feel.

FOOTNOTES:

[34] See note on Function of the Jury, above, p. 165.

[35] In these times of political corruption, when a postmaster in a
country village is turned out of office for voting for a representative
to Congress who exposed the wickedness of a prominent member of the
cabinet, it is pleasant to read such letters as those of Washington to
Benjamin Lincoln, March 11, 1789, and to Bushrod Washington, July 27,
1789, in Sparks's Writings of Washington, vol. ix. p. 477, _et seq._,
and x. p. 73, _et seq._

[36] In the Pilgrim's Progress, Bunyan gives a case which it is probable
was fictitious only in the names of the parties. Faithful was indicted
before Lord Hategood for a capital offence. Mr. Envy testified. Then the
judge asked him, Hast thou any more to say? Envy replied: "My Lord, I
could say much more, only I would not be tedious to the court. Yet, if
need be, when the other gentlemen have given in their evidence, rather
than any thing should be wanting that will dispatch him, I will enlarge
my testimony against him."

Lord Hategood stated the law--there were three statutes against the
prisoner: 1. The act of King Pharaoh, in 1 Exodus 22; 2. That of King
Nebuchadnezzar in 3 Daniel 6; and 3. That of King Darius in 6 Daniel 7.
The jury took "the law from the ruling of the court," and, having been
carefully packed, to judge from the names, and all just men expelled
from their number, they readily found such a verdict as the government
had previously determined upon.

The same thing, _mutatis mutandis_, has been attempted in America, in
Boston, and we may fear that in some instances it will succeed.

[37] Since the first publication of this sermon we have seen
eight-and-thirty men indicted for treason under the fugitive slave law,
because they resisted the attempt to kidnap one of their number, and
killed one of the kidnappers. This indictment was found at the
instigation of an officer of the government, who adds new infamy to the
name of the great first murderer.

[38] Speech at Capon Springs.

VIII.

THE POSITION AND DUTIES OF THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR.--AN ADDRESS DELIVERED
AT WATERVILLE, AUGUST 8, 1849.

Men of a superior culture get it at the cost of the whole community, and
therefore, at first owe for their education. They must pay back an
equivalent, or else remain debtors to mankind, debtors forever; that is,
beggars or thieves, such being the only class that are thus perpetually
in debt and a burden to the race.

It is true that every man, the rudest Prussian boor, as well as Von
Humboldt, is indebted to mankind for his culture, to their past history
and their existing institutions, to their daily toil. Taking the whole
culture into the account, the debt bears about the same ratio to the
receipt in all men. I speak not of genius, the inborn faculty which
costs mankind nothing, only of the education thereof, which the man
obtains. The Irishman who can only handle his spade, wear his garments,
talk his wild brogue, and bid his beads, has four or five hundred
generations of ancestors behind him, and is as long descended, and from
as old a stock, as the accomplished patrician scholar at Oxford and
Berlin. The Irishman depends on them all, and on the present generation
for his culture. But he has obtained his development with no special
outlay and cost of the human race. In getting that rude culture, he has
appropriated nothing to himself which is taken from another man's share.
He has paid as he went along, so he owes nothing in particular for his
education; and mankind has no claim on him as for value received. But
the Oxford graduate has been a long time at school and college; not
earning, but learning; living therefore at the cost of mankind, with an
obligation and an implied promise to pay back when he comes of age and
takes possession of his educated faculties. He therefore has not only
the general debt which he shares with all men, but an obligation quite
special and peculiar for his support while at study.

This rule is general, and applies to the class of educated men with some
apparent exceptions, and a very few real ones. Some men are born of poor
but strong-bodied parents, and endowed with great abilities; they
inherit nothing except their share of the general civilization of
mankind, and the onward impulse which that has given. These men devote
themselves to study; and having behind them an ancestry of
broad-shouldered, hard-handed, stalwart, temperate men, and
deep-bosomed, red-armed and industrious mothers, they are able to do the
work of two or three men at the time. Such men work while they study;
they teach while they learn; they hew their own way through the wood by
superior strength and skill born in their bones, with an axe themselves
have chipped out from the stone, or forged of metal, or paid for with
the result of their first hewings. They are specially indebted to nobody
for their culture. They pay as they go, owing the academic ferryman
nothing for setting them over into the elysium of the scholar.

Only few men ever make this heroic and crucial experiment. None but poor
men's sons essay the trial. Nothing but poverty has whips sharp enough
to sting indolent men, even of genius, to such exertion of the manly
part. But even this proud race often runs into another debt: they run up
long scores with the body, which must one day be paid "with aching head
and squeamish heart-burnings." The credit on account of the hardy
fathers, is not without limit. It is soon exhausted; especially in a
land where the atmosphere, the institutions, and the youth of the people
all excite to premature and excessive prodigality of effort. The body
takes a mortgage on the spendthrift spirit, demands certain regular
periodic payments, and will one day foreclose for breach of condition,
impede the spirit's action in the premises, putting a very disagreeable
keeper there, and finally expel the prodigal mortgagor. So it often
happens, that a man, who in his youth scorned a pecuniary debt to
mankind, and would receive no favor even to buy culture with, has yet,
unconsciously and against his will, contracted debts which trouble him
in manhood, and impede his action all his life; with swollen feet and
blear eyes famous Griesbach pays for the austere heroism of his
penurious and needy youth. The rosy bud of genius, on the poor man's
tree, too often opens into a lean and ghastly flower. Could not Burns
tell us this?

With the rare exceptions just hinted at, any man of a superior culture
owes for it when obtained. Sometimes the debt is obvious: a farmer with
small means and a large family sends the most hopeful of his sons to
college. Look at the cost of the boy's culture. His hands are kept from
work that his mind may be free. He fares on daintier food, wears more
and more costly garments. Other members of the family must feed and
clothe him, earn his tuition-fees, buy his books, pay for his fuel and
room-rent. For this the father rises earlier than of old, yoking the
oxen a great while before day of a winter's morning, and toils till long
after dark of a winter's night, enduring cold and hardship. For this the
mother stints her frugal fare, her humble dress; for this the brothers
must forego sleep and pastime, must toil harder, late and early both;
for this the sisters must seek new modes of profitable work, must wear
their old finery long after it is finery no more. The spare wealth of
the family, stinted to spare it, is spent on this one youth. From the
father to the daughters, all lay their bones to extraordinary work for
him; the whole family is pinched in body that this one youth may go
brave and full. Even the family horse pays his tax to raise the
education fee.

Men see the hopeful scholar, graceful and accomplished, receiving his
academic honors, but they see not the hard-featured father standing
unheeded in the aisle, nor the older sister in an obscure corner of the
gallery, who had toiled in the factory for the favored brother, tending
his vineyard, her own not kept, who had perhaps learned the letters of
Greek to hear him recite the grammar at home. Father and sister know not
a word of the language in which his diploma is writ and delivered. At
what cost of the family tree is this one flower produced? How many
leaves, possible blossoms, yea, possible branches have been absorbed to
create this one flower, which shall perpetuate the kind, after being
beautiful and fragrant in its own season? Yet, while these leaves are
growing for the blossom's sake, and the life of the tree is directed
thither with special and urgent emphasis, the difference between branch
and blossom, leaf and petal, is getting more and more. By and by the two
cannot comprehend each other; the acorn has forgotten the leaf which
reared it, and thinks itself of another kin. Grotius, who speaks a host
of languages, talking with the learned of all countries, and of every
age, has forgot his mother tongue, and speech is at an end with her that
bore him. The son, accomplished with many a science, many an art, ceases
to understand the simple consciousness of his father and mother. They
are proud of him--that he has outgrown them; he ashamed of them when
they visit him amid his scholarly company. To them he is a philosopher;
they only clowns in his eyes. He learns to neglect, perhaps to despise
them, and forgets his obligation and his debt. Yet by their rudeness is
it that he is refined. His science and literary skill are purchased by
their ignorance and uncouthness of manner and of speech. Had the
educational cost been equally divided, all had still continued on a
level; he had known no Latin, but the whole family might have spoken
good English. For all the difference which education has made betwixt
him and his kinsfolk he is a debtor.

In New England you sometimes see extremes of social condition brought
together. The blue-frocked father, well advanced, but hale as an October
morning, jostles into Boston in a milk-cart, his red-cheeked
grand-daughter beside him, also coming for some useful daily work, while
the youngest son, cultured at the cost of that grand-daughter's sire and
by that father's toil, is already a famous man; perhaps also a proud
one, eloquent at the bar, or powerful in the pulpit, or mighty in the
senate. The family was not rich enough to educate all the children after
this costly sort; one becomes famous, the rest are neglected, obscure,
and perhaps ignorant; the cultivated son has little sympathy with them.
So the men that built up the cathedrals of Strasbourg and Milan slept in
mean hutches of mud and straw, dirty, cold, and wet; the finished tower
looks proudly down upon the lowly thatch, all heedless of the cost at
which itself arose.

It is plain that this man owes for his education; it is plain whom he
owes. But all men of a superior culture, though born to wealth, get
their education in the same way, only there is this additional mischief
to complicate the matter: the burden of self-denial is not borne by the
man's own family, but by other fathers and mothers, other brothers and
sisters. They also pay the cost of his culture, bear the burden for no
special end, and have no personal or family joy in the success; they do
not even know the scholar they help to train. They who hewed the
topstone of society are far away when it is hoisted up with shouting.
Most of the youths now-a-days trained at Harvard College are the sons of
rich men, yet they also, not less, are educated at the public charge;
beneficiaries not of the "Hopkins' Fund," but of the whole community.
Society is not yet rich enough to afford so generous a culture to all
who ask, who deserve, or who would pay for it a hundred-fold. The
accomplished man who sits in his well-endowed scholarship at Oxford, or
rejoices to be "Master of Trinity," though he have the estate of the
Westminsters and Sutherlands behind him, is still the beneficiary of the
public, and owes for his schooling.

In the general way among the industrious classes of New England, a boy
earns his living after he is twelve years old. If he gets the superior
education of the scholar solely by the pecuniary aid of his father or
others, when he is twenty-five and enters on his profession, law,
medicine, or divinity, politics, school-keeping, or trade, he has not
earned his Latin grammar; has rendered no appreciable service to
mankind; others have worked that he might study, and taught that he
might learn. He has not paid the first cent towards his own schooling;
he is indebted for it to the whole community. The ox-driver in the
fields, the pavior in the city streets, the laborer on the railroad, the
lumberer in the woods, the girl in the factory, each has a claim on him.
If he despises these persons, or cuts himself off from sympathy with
them; if he refuses to perform his function for them after they have
done their possible to fit him for it; he is not only the perpetual and
ungrateful debtor, but is more guilty than the poor man's son who
forgets the family that sent him to college: for that family consciously
and willingly made the sacrifice, and got some satisfaction for it in
the visible success of their scheme, nay, are sometimes proud of the
pride which scorns them, while with the mass of men thus slighted there
is no return for their sacrifice. They did their part, faithfully did
it; their beneficiary forgets his function.

The democratic party in New England does not much favor the higher
seminaries of education. There has long been a suspicion against them in
the mass of the community, and among the friends of the public education
of the people a serious distrust. This is the philosophy of that
discontent: public money spent on the higher seminaries is so much taken
from the humbler schools, so much taken from the colleges of all for the
college of the few; men educated at such cost have not adequately repaid
the public for the sacrifice made on their account; men of superior
education have not been eminently the friends of mankind, they do not
eminently represent Truth, Justice, Philanthropy, and Piety; they do not
point men to lofty human life, and go thitherward in advance of mankind;
their superior education has narrowed their sympathies, instead of
widening; they use their opportunities against mankind, and not in its
behalf; think, write, legislate, and live not for the interest of
mankind, but only for a class; instead of eminent wisdom, justice,
piety, they have eminent cunning, selfishness, and want of faith. These
charges are matters of allegation; judge you if they be not also matters
of fact.

Now there is a common feeling amongst men that the scholar is their
debtor, and, in virtue of this, that they have a right to various
services from him. No honest man asks the aid of a farmer or a
blacksmith without intending to repay him in money; no assembly of
mechanics would ask another to come two hundred miles and give them a
month's work, or a day's work. Yet they will ask a scholar to do so.
What gratuitous services are demanded of the physician, of the minister,
of the man of science and letters in general! No poor man in Boston but
thinks he has a good claim on any doctor; no culprit in danger of
liberty or life but will ask the services of a lawyer, wholly without
recompense, to plead his cause. The poorest and most neglected class of
men look on every good clergyman as their missionary and minister and
friend; the better educated and more powerful he is, the juster and
greater do they feel their claim on him. A pirate in jail may command
the services of any Christian minister in the land. Most of the high
achievements in science, letters and art, have had no apparent pay. The
pay came beforehand: in general and from God, in the greater ability,
"the vision and the faculty divine," but in particular also and from
men, in the opportunity afforded them by others for the use and culture
thereof. Divinely and humanly they are well paid. Men feel that they
have this right to the services of the scholar, in part because they
dimly know that his superior education is purchased at the general cost.
Hence, too, they are proud of the few able and accomplished men, feeling
that all have a certain property therein, as having contributed their
mite to the accumulation, by their divine nature related to the men of
genius, by their human toil partners in the acquirements of the scholar.
This feeling is not confined to men who intellectually can appreciate
intellectual excellence. The little parish in the mountains, and the
great parish in the city, are alike proud of the able-headed and
accomplished scholar, who ministers to them; though neither the poor
clowns of the village nor the wealthy clowns of the metropolis could
enter into his consciousness and understand his favorite pursuits or
loftiest thought. Both would think it insulting to pay such a man in
full proportion to his work or their receipt. Nobody offers a salary to
the House of Lords: their lordship is their pay, and they must give
back, in the form of justice and sound government, an equivalent for all
they take in high social rank. They must pay for their nobility by being
noble lords.

How shall the scholar pay for his education? He is to give a service for
the service received. Thus the miller and the farmer pay one another,
each paying with service in his own kind. The scholar cannot pay back
bread for bread, and cloth for cloth. He must pay in the scholar's kind,
not the woodman's or the weaver's. He is to represent the higher modes
of human consciousness; his culture and opportunities of position fit
him for that. So he is not merely to go through the routine of his
profession, as minister, doctor, lawyer, merchant, schoolmaster,
politician, or maker of almanacs, and for his own advantage; he is also
to represent truth, justice, beauty, philanthropy, and religion--the
highest facts of human experience; he must be common, but not vulgar,
and, as a star, must dwell apart from the vulgarity of the selfish and
the low. He may win money without doing this, get fame and power, and
thereby seem to pay mankind for their advance to him, while he rides
upon their neck; but as he has not paid back the scholar's cost and in
the scholar's way, he is a debtor still, and owes for his past culture
and present position.

Such is the position of the scholar everywhere, and such his consequent
obligation. But in America there are some circumstances which make the
position and the duty still more important. Beside the natural