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378 DOUGLASS' MONTHLY. DECEMBER 1860 [[line]] [[3 columns]] [[column 1]] and assisting them to discern the things that are right, and to conform to them because they are right. Much less can we believe that those rulers were ordained of God, who prescribe to their subjects or fellow citizens what they know to be not right, and then go about to compel them to obey such enactments, however it may violate their consciences to do so, or outrage their feelings.-- To compel any man to do wrong is to compel him to set his own moral nature at naught, which is to do himself the greatest harm. If the subject or the citizen consents to this he sins ; he sets God at defiance ; he chooses to serve Baal, or Moloch, or Mammon instead. Unless there be an authority higher than that of the Most High, an authority capable of making wrong right, there can be, as Jesus said, no commandments greater than these, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,' and 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' Surely no commandments less than these, most certainly no enactments of men that contravene these fundamental laws of God, can have a just claim to our obedience. Nevertheless it has been assumed by many, and since September, 1850, it has been stoutly maintained by some, from whom we should have expected better things, that a law of the land, although it be contrary to the two great commandments of Christ, although it requires of us most unrighteous and cruel acts toward our neighbors, ought to be obeyed, because it is a law, and because, if we do not obey it, the authority of our rulers will be stricken down, and our civil fabric fall to pieces. Now, it seems to us that all this is predicated upon a very false assumption as to the true nature and the province of law, an erroneous view of the source of governmental powers, and of the extent of each individual's obligations to the State or Kingdom, in which he may happen to live. Mistakes on these points are unpardonable in the prominent men of our country, because the truth on these points was seen so clearly and declared so emphatically by the founders of our political institutions. Those renowned men, who eighty four years ago, dared to renounce their allegiance to the British Crown, and to establish new governments for their several States, and for the Confederacy, did so in virtue of 'the self-evident truths that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.' Men were not made that they may be the subjects of an oppressive political compact called a Republic, any more than they were made to be the creatures of a despot. Men were not made for governments, but governments were made for men. In light of the Declaration of Independence all may see, and with its most weighty sanction we may confidently affirm, that all attempts to make a law which would violate the unalienable rights of man, must be morally abortive, and all attempts to enforce such a statute may be denounced as oppressive, cruel. If an individual king should do this he would be branded as a tyrant, and the character of the act would not be any better, because done by a majority. It matters not how large the majority may be in its favor, if the enactment be designed and adapted to deprive one man of his unalienable rights, it cannot become a legitimate law. Men would be guilty before God who should assist to enforce it, nay, if they would not endeavor to prevent its being enforced. An unrighteous, cruel enactment can derive no lawfulness from the consent of the governed. Those whom it may be intended to favor had no right to give their consent to it. If they should, their consent would be morally invalid, because men have no more authority to alienate their own inalienable rights, than others have to take those rights away. A man could no more be justified in voluntarily surrendering his liberty at the command of a tyrant, or a tyrannical majority, [[/column 1]] [[column 2]] than he would be justified in taking away his own life in obedience to a mandate from the same quarter. The rights to life, liberty and happiness are the most sacred gifts of our Creator. We may not wantonly trample them under our own feet, nor cast these most precious pearls before swine. No. They are trusts for which we are accountable, for in the proper exercise of them alone can we develope the nature with which we are endowed, and become what God made us to be. We must, we do condemn utterly, we denounce as fearfully false the doctrine, that we ought sometimes, even now, to obey man rather than God, a cruel enactment of the government of our country rather than the eternal, righteous, merciful law of the Sovereign Ruler of the Universe. This is a doctrine that would throw distrust over the moral government of the world, and lead men directly to [[italics]]Atheism[[/italics]] It is a doctrine that casts reproach upon the noble army of martyrs, both political and religious, whose blood has been the seed of the highest improvements in church and state. It would condemn the prophets of the Old Testament, the Apostles of the New, and Jesus Christ himself. All these set at naught the commandments of Princes, Governors, Kings, because they required that which was wrong, contrary to the will of God. This doctrine, insisted on by so many of the prominent statesmen of our country, and maintained by so many of our religious teachers, 'divines,' doctors of divinity ; this doctrine contradicts not only the Bible and our Declaration of Independence, but the fundamental principles of human legislation and civil government, as they are laid down by those who are the acknowledged masters of this subject. Lord Coke declares that 'the common law doth control acts of Parliament, [[italics]]and adjudge them void[[/italics]], when they are against common right and reason.' Sir William Blackstone laid down the same principles even more broadly, and recurs to it repeatedly. 'The law of nature,' he says, 'being coeval with mankind, and dictated by God himself, is, of course, superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times. No human law are of any validity if contrary to this, and such of them as are valid, derive all their force, and all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this original.' * * * 'If any human law should allow or enjoin us to commit murder, we are bound to transgress that human law, or else we must offend both the natural and the divine laws.' Again, this great legal authority says :-- 'Those rights which God and nature have established, and are therefore called natural rights, such as are life and liberty, need not the aid of human law to be more effectually invested in men than they are ; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by the municipal laws to be inviolable. On the contrary, no human legislature has power to abridge or destroy them, unless the man shall himself commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture.' Lord Bacon says, 'As the common law is more worthy than the statute law, so the law of nature is more worthy than them both.' Lord Brougham also says :-- 'There is a law, above all human enactments, written by the finger of God on the heart of man.' Chief Justice Parsons, of Massachusetts, one of the brightest lights of legal science in our country, used often to say, 'Gentlemen, what is right, what is right, for that is law, or we must make it so.' The same great principal is also laid down distinctly, and often appealed to, in the writings of our own Chancellor Kent, than whom we have no higher authority on the theory, or the practical application of Law. Indeed, it is a maxim with the writers on Law generally, 'that nothing can sanction or legalize injustice ; that no law, subversive of natural right, has any binding obligation.'-- Even the authors of the Code Napoleon have said 'that no legislator can escape that invisible [[/column 2]] [[column 3]] power, that silent judgment of the people, which tends to correct the mistakes of arbitrary legislation, and to defend the people from the law, and the lawgiver from himself.' At a tribunal, where a true man is presiding, a conclusive argument proving that the law which had been violated was itself subversive of natural right, unjust, contrary to the moral constitution of man -- I have not a doubt, that a conclusive argument to this effect would draw from the Judge a charge to the Jury, that they must find the accused not guilty of crime, because the law was one that ought not to be obeyed. What decision ever given, has been more applauded than that of the Vermont Judge, who, in the case of a man brought before him, and claimed as a slave, having heard all the testimony the claimant could adduce, said :-- 'Nothing can satisfy me that this man is the property of another man, nothing less than a bill of sale from the Almighty.' But, say the abettors of the 'Fugitive Slave Bill,' the demands which this enactment makes on us, are in pursuance of the compromises of the Constitution. Then, we reply, it was a compromise which ought never to have been made. It could not have been binding even upon those who made it, unless men have power to abrogate the law of God. Much less could any obligation to conform to such a requirement have been transmitted to their posterity. Here we may be told that a few years later in 1793, Congress enacted a law expressly designed to carry out that part of the Constitution said to have been intended to ensure the recovery of fugitives from slavery ; and it is added, the provisions of that bill were almost as abhorrent to humanity as those of the bill of 1850. What does all this prove? Taken in connection with the history of the last fifty-seven years, it proves that such a law cannot, as it ought not to, be enforced. The enactment of 1793, all know, had become a dead letter. Yes, the advocates of this Mason and Webster Bill rejoin, 'because the statute of 1793 had become inoperative, it was necessary to enact the Law of 1850 with more stringent provisions ; and this law must be obeyed, or else the Union will certainly be dissolved .' -- All we can say in reply to this is, that, if indeed the union of these States cannot be preserved but by our consenting to do the great unrighteousness which this 'Bill of abomination' requires, then it is plain that our union is at an end ; on such a condition it ought not to be, it cannot be continued. 'Let justice be done though the heavens fall,' is an old maxim often quoted from the Latin, as embodying a great principle of morality.-- Surely, then, we may say, without being transcendental in our uprightness-- 'Let this great injustice not be done, though the Union falls.' Yet, again, though the upholders of this horrid Bill have the grace to allow that we may do all in our power to procure the repeal of what they call the Law, yet they insist that, until it is repealed, we are bound, and shall be compelled to obey it. 'Truly this is a queer way of getting an atrocious enactment repealed -- to keep on obeying it. Their reasoning is this:-- because an unjust law is enacted we must obey it as a law, and yet do all we can to repeal it because it is unjust and ought not to be a law. Seeing that iniquity is established by Statute, we must keep the statute until we can destroy it ; uphold it until it can be overthrown! Such beetle logic may be safely left to confute itself. Because the majority have resolved to sin, we must go with them, and keep on sinning to the end of the chapter, and then turn right about and sin no more, because we have at length succeeded in convincing the majority, that we are all miserable sinners, especially we who know better, and so have added the guilt of hypocrisy to the guilt of cruelty.' But, as this writer says, a still more conclusive answer may be drawn from history.-- Experience teaches us that obedience to an [[/column 3]]
