CHAPTER IV.

POLITICAL DUTIES.

1. WE come now to the consideration of a class of duties of the most interesting and important character, called Political Duties. The duty of obedience to civil magistrates, and of conformity to the laws, and the correlative duty of legislators to make just and equal laws, and of magistrates to administer those laws with equity, are evidently founded upon the benefits which society derives from a settled government, and from just laws faithfully administered and submissively obeyed.

Hence, in all forensic codes of morals, when the government is administered in such a way as to produce more harm than good, or much less good than it might or ought to produce; when laws are enacted injurious to the public; when government, instead of contributing to the benefit of all, is made an instrument for elevating or enriching one or a few at the expense of the many, civil obedience is no longer esteemed a duty; in fact, it may become a duty to disobey, and even to rebel.

It is, however, a matter so nice and difficult to determine when that point is reached which makes rebellion, civil war, and the danger of anarchy preferable to further submission to a tyrannical government and unjust, or in other words, unequal laws, that all cases of disobedience and rebellion give rise

THEORY OF MORALS.

many quibbles unknown to the simplicity of rude
times.

POLI

15. Closely related to frauds are what are called unfair advantages; as when I take advantage of a man's ignorance or his necessities, to induce him to make a disadvantageous contract, sale, or purchase Upon this point, the mercantile and legal standard of e moral obligation is exceedingly low. Men who the would shrink from a positive fraud or a positive P false statement, do not feel themselves obliged to communicate information which would cut them off he from an advantageous bargain; or to pay a higher qual price, when, by concealing certain information in w their possession, they can compel or induce the ac-s ceptance of a lower one.

16. The doctrine of contracts, and the doctrine of frauds constitute two of the most important branches of legal learning, both of which have been very much complicated by the subtleties of scholastic lawyers, and by a profound ignorance, so universal among lawyers, of the real nature and foundation of moral distinctions.

cent

173

CHAPTER IV.

POLITICAL DUTIES.

1. WE come now to the consideration of a class duties of the most interesting and important charter, called Political Duties. The duty of obedice to civil magistrates, and of conformity to the ws, and the correlative duty of legislators to make st and equal laws, and of magistrates to administer hose laws with equity, are evidently founded upon he benefits which society derives from a settled government, and from just laws faithfully administered and submissively obeyed.

Hence, in all forensic codes of morals, when the government is administered in such a way as to produce more harm than good, or much less good than it might or ought to produce; when laws are enacted injurious to the public; when government, instead of contributing to the benefit of all, is made an instrument for elevating or enriching one or a few at the expense of the many, civil obedience is no longer esteemed a duty; in fact, it may become a duty to disobey, and even to rebel.

It is, however, a matter so nice and difficult to determine when that point is reached which makes rebellion, civil war, and the danger of anarchy preferable to further submission to a tyrannical government and unjust, or in other words, unequal laws, that all cases of diso

them objects of hatred, upon the ground that they are heathens, savages, destitute of the ordinary degree of humanity, and certain, if they are set free, to murder their masters; an inferior order of beings, made to be slaves, incapable of civilization, not able to take care of themselves, and, therefore, or for some other reasons, proper objects of hatred and contempt; it is only while malevolence is kept up by some such artifices, that slavery can continue to exist. Hence the great anxiety evinced by slaveholders and their friends to foster such prejudices and to diffuse them; and hence the destruction of these prejudices ought to be the chief object of those who aim at the abolition of slavery.

10. It appears, then, that while the respect which is paid to property in general originates in the sentiment of benevolence, slave property owes both its origin and its continuance to the sentiment of malevolence, a very essential distinction between these two kinds of property, a difference which puts them in decided opposition to each other.

11. All who have ceased to be influenced by those sentiments of malevolence towards the enslaved to which slavery owes its origin and its continuance, or to whom the slave-owners are not, for some reason or other, objects of peculiar sympathy, are apt to feel a high degree of commiseration for the enslaved, and a corresponding degree of indignation against the masters; a commiseration and an indignation, which reach, in general, the highest pitch, with those whose knowledge is confined to the simple fact, that the one party are slaves, and the other party masters;

but who, beyond that fact, have no personal or precise knowledge of either party. The degraded condition of the slaves, if it makes them objects of pity, is very apt, at the same time, to make them objects. of contempt; while the superior condition of the masters, their wealth, authority, leisure, education, and manners, often present them to us in a very agreeable light. Hence it happens that those who have a personal knowledge of masters and their slaves, not unfrequently expend all their benevolence upon the masters, while they regard the slaves with a malevolent contempt.

12. Slavery, though generally condemned by modern forensic moralists, has found numerous apologists and defenders among the mystics. They tell the slave that since God has seen fit to place him in that condition, it is his duty to be contented with his lot. Rebellion against his master, or any attempt to evade or to shake off the burdens imposed upon him, is neither more nor less than rebellion against God. The greater part of the Christian mystical doctors insist, and, critically speaking, with apparent reason, that the Christian scriptures, and especially the apostle Paul, give countenance to slavery; and it is held, or at least, till very lately, it has been held by the highest authorities among them, that there is no inconsistency between the characters of a saint and a slave-trader.