induction, and only get an outside knowledge thereof, as objects of
thought. In the same way we might study the facts of man's moral nature,
and arrive at rules of conduct, and get a merely outside acquaintance
with the moral law as something wholly external. The law might appear
curious, useful, even beautiful, moral gravitation as wonderful as
material attraction. But no sense of duty would attach us to it. In
addition to the purely intellectual powers, we have a faculty whose
special function it is to discover the rules for a man's moral conduct.
This is Conscience, called also by many names. As the mind has for its
object absolute truth, so conscience has for its object absolute
justice. Conscience enables us not merely to learn the right by
experiment and induction, but intuitively, and in advance of experiment;
so, in addition to the experimental way, whereby we learn justice from
the facts of human history, we have a transcendental way, and learn it
from the facts of human nature, from immediate consciousness.
It is the function of conscience to discover to men the moral law of
God. It will not do this with infallible certainty, for, at its best
estate, neither conscience nor any other faculty of man is absolutely
perfect, so as never to mistake. Absolute perfection belongs only to the
faculties of God. But conscience, like each other faculty, is relatively
perfect,--is adequate to the purpose God meant it for. It is often
immature in the young, who have not had time for the growth and ripening
of the faculty, and in the old, who have checked and hindered its
development. Here it is feeble from neglect, there from abuse. It may
give an imperfect answer to the question, What is absolutely right?
Now, though the conscience of a man lacks the absolute perfection of
that of God, in all that relates to my dealing with men, it is still the
last standard of appeal. I will hear what my friends have to say, what
public opinion has to offer, what the best men can advise me to, then I
am to ask my own conscience, and follow its decision; not that of my
next friend, the public, or the best of men. I will not say that my
conscience will always disclose to me the absolutely right, according to
the conscience of God, but it will disclose the relatively right, what
is my conviction of right to-day, with all the light I can get on the
matter; and as all I can know of the absolute right, is my conviction
thereof, so I must be true to that conviction. Then I am faithful to my
own conscience, and faithful to my God. If I do the best thing I can
know to-day, and to-morrow find a better one and do that, I am not to be
blamed, nor to be called a sinner against God, because not so just
to-day as I shall be to-morrow. I am to do God's will soon as I know it,
not before, and to take all possible pains to find it out; but am not to
blame for acting childish when a child, nor to be ashamed of it when
grown up to be a man. Such is the function of conscience.
* * * * *
Having determined what is absolutely right, by the conscience of God, or
at least relatively right, according to my conscience to-day, then it
becomes my duty to keep it. I owe it to God to obey His law, or what I
deem his law; that is my duty. It may be uncomfortable to keep it,
unpopular, contrary to my present desires, to my passions, to my
immediate interests; it may conflict with my plans in life; that makes
no difference. I owe entire allegiance to my God. It is a duty to keep
His law, a personal duty, my duty as a man. I owe it to myself, for I am
to keep the integrity of my own consciousness; I owe it to my brother,
and to my God. Nothing can absolve me from this duty, neither the fact
that it is uncomfortable or unpopular, nor that it conflicts with my
desires, my passions, my immediate interests, and my plans in life. Such
is the place of conscience amongst other faculties of my nature.
* * * * *
I believe all this is perfectly plain, but now see what it leads to. In
the complicated relations of human life, various rules for the moral
conduct of men have been devised, some of them in the form of statute
laws, some in the form of customs, and, in virtue of these rules,
certain artificial demands are made of men, which have no foundation in
the moral nature of man; these demands are thought to represent duties.
We have the same word to describe what I ought to do as subject to the
law of God, and what is demanded of me by custom, or the statute. We
call each a duty. Hence comes no small confusion: the conventional and
official obligation is thought to rest on the same foundation as the
natural and personal duty. As the natural duty is at first sight a
little vague, and not written out in the law-book, or defined by custom,
while the conventional obligation is well understood, men think that in
case of any collision between the two, the natural duty must give way to
the official obligation.
For clearness' sake, the natural and personal obligation to keep the law
of God as my conscience declares it, I will call Duty; the conventional
and official obligation to comply with some custom, keep some statute,
or serve some special interest, I will call Business. Here then are two
things--my natural and personal duty, my conventional and official
business. Which of the two shall give way to the other,--personal duty
or official business? Let it be remembered that I am a man first of all,
and all else that I am is but a modification of my manhood, which makes
me a clergyman, a fisherman, or a statesman; but the clergy, the fish,
and the State, are not to strip me of my manhood. They are valuable in
so far as they serve my manhood, not as it serves them. My official
business as clergyman, fisherman, or statesman, is always beneath my
personal duty as man. In case of any conflict between the two, the
natural duty ought to prevail and carry the day before the official
business; for the natural duty represents the permanent law of God, the
absolute right, justice, the balance-point of all interests; while the
official business represents only the transient conventions of men, some
partial interest; and besides the man who owes the personal duty, is
immortal, while the officer who performs the official business, is but
for a time. At death, the man is to be tried by the justice of God, for
the deeds done, and character attained, for his natural duty, but he
does not enter the next life as a clergyman, with his surplice and
prayer-book, or a fisherman, with his angles and net, nor yet as a
statesman, with his franking privilege, and title of honorable and
member of Congress. The officer dies, of a vote or a fever. The man
lives forever. From the relation between a man and his occupation, it is
plain, in general, that all conventional and official business is to be
overruled by natural personal duty. This is the great circle, drawn by
God, and discovered by conscience, which girdles my sphere, including
all the smaller circles, and itself included by none of them. The law of
God has eminent domain everywhere, over the private passions of Oliver
and Charles, the special interests of Carthage and of Rome, over all
customs, all official business, all precedents, all human statutes, all
treaties between Judas and Pilate, or England and France, over all the
conventional affairs of one man or of mankind. My own conscience is to
declare that law for me, yours for you, and is before all private
passions, or public interests, the decision of majorities, and a world
full of precedents. You may resign your office, and escape its
obligations, forsake your country, and owe it no allegiance, but you
cannot move out of the dominions of God, nor escape where conscience has
not eminent domain.
See some examples of a conflict between the personal duty and the
official business. A man may be a clergyman, and it may be his official
business to expound and defend the creed which is set up for him by his
employers, his bishop, his association, or his parish, to defend and
hold it good against all comers; it may be, also, in a certain solemn
sort, to please the audience, who come to be soothed, caressed, and
comforted,--to represent the average of religion in his society, and so
to bless popular virtues and ban unpopular vices, but never to shake off
or even jostle with one of his fingers the load of sin, beloved and
popular, which crushes his hearers down till they are bowed together and
can in nowise lift themselves up; unpopular excellence he is to call
fanaticism, if not infidelity. But his natural duty as a man, standing
in this position, overrides his official business, and commands him to
tell men of the false things in their creed, of great truths not in it;
commands him to inform his audience with new virtue, to represent all of
religion he can attain, to undo the heavy burdens of popular sin,
private or national, and let the men oppressed therewith go free.
Excellence, popular or odious, he is to commend by its own name, to
stimulate men to all nobleness of character and life, whether it please
or offend. This is his duty, however uncomfortable, unpopular, against
his desires, and conflicting with his immediate interests and plans of
life. Which shall he do? His official business, and pimp and pander to
the public lust, with base compliance serving the popular idols, which
here are Money and Respectability, or shall he serve his God? That is
the question. If the man considers himself substantially a man, and
accidentally a clergyman, he will perform his natural duty; if he counts
the priesthood his substance, and manhood an accident of that, he will
do only his official business.
I may be a merchant, and my official business may be to buy, and sell,
and get gain; I may see that the traffic in ardent spirits is the
readiest way to accomplish this. So it becomes my official business to
make rum, sell rum, and by all means to induce men to drink it. But
presently I see that the common use of it makes the thriving unthrifty,
the rich less wealthy, the poor miserable, the sound sick, and the sane
mad; that it brings hundreds to the jail, thousands to the almshouse,
and millions to poverty and shame, producing an amount of suffering,
wretchedness, and sin, beyond the power of man to picture or conceive.
Then my natural duty as man is very clear, very imperative. Shall I
sacrifice my manhood to money?--the integrity of my consciousness to my
gains by rum-selling? That is the question. And my answer will depend on
the fact, whether I am more a man or more a rum-seller. Suppose I
compromise the matter, and draw a line somewhere between my natural duty
as man, and my official business as rum-seller, and for every three
cents that I make by iniquity, give one cent to the American Tract
Society, or the Board for Foreign Missions, or the Unitarian
Association, or the excellent Society for promoting the Gospel among the
Indians (and others) in North America. That does not help the matter;
business is not satisfied, though I draw the line never so near to
money; nor conscience, unless the line comes up to my duty.
I am a citizen, and the State says, "You must obey all the statutes made
by the proper authorities; that is your official business!" Suppose
there is a statute adverse to the natural law of God, and the
convictions of my own conscience, and I plead that fact in abatement of
my obligation to keep the statute, the State says, "Obey it, none the
less, or we will hang you. Religion is an excellent thing in every
matter except politics; there it seems to make men mad." Shall I keep
the commandment of men, or the law of my God?
A statute was once enacted by King Pharaoh for the destruction of the
Israelites in Egypt; it was made the official business of all citizens
to aid in their destruction: "Pharaoh charged all his people saying,
Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter
ye shall save alive." It was the official business of every Egyptian who
found a Hebrew boy to throw him into the Nile,--if he refused, he
offended against the peace and dignity of the kingdom of Egypt, and the
form of law in such case made and provided. But if he obeyed, he
murdered a man. Which should he obey, the Lord Pharaoh, or the Lord God?
That was the question. I make no doubt that the priests of Osiris, Orus,
Apis, Isis, and the judges, and the justices of the peace and quorum,
and the members of Congress of that time said, "Keep the king's
commandment, oh ye that worship the crocodile and fear the cat, or ye
shall not sleep in a whole skin any longer!" So said every thing that
loveth and maketh a lie.
King Charles II. made a statute some one hundred and ninety years ago,
to punish with death the remnant of the nine-and-fifty judges who had
brought his father's head to the block, teaching kings "that they also
had a joint in their necks." He called on all his subjects to aid in the
capture of these judges. It was made their official business as citizens
to do so; a reward was offered for the apprehension of some of them
"alive or dead;" punishment hung over the head of any who should harbor
or conceal them. Three of these regicides, who had adjudged a king for
his felony, came to New England. Many Americans knew where they were,
and thought the condemnation of Charles I. was the best thing these
judges ever did. With that conviction ought they to have delivered up
these fugitives, or afforded them shelter? In time of peril, when
officers of the English government were on the lookout for some of these
men, a clergyman in the town where one of them was concealed, preached,
it is said, on the text "Bewray not him that wandereth," an occasional
sermon, and put the duty of a man far before the business of a citizen.
When Sir Edmund Andros was at New Haven looking after one of the judges,
and attended public worship in the same meeting-house with the
fugitive, the congregation sung an awful hymn in his very ears.[12]
Would the men of Connecticut have done right, bewraying him that
wandered, and exposing the outcast, to give up the man who had defended
the liberties of the world and the rights of mankind against a
tyrant,--give him up because a wanton king, and his loose men and loose
women, made such a commandment? One of the regicides dwelt in peace
eight-and-twenty years in New England, a monument of the virtue of the
people.
Of old time the Roman statute commanded the Christians to sacrifice to
Jupiter; they deemed it the highest sin to do so, but it was their
official business as Roman citizens. Some of them were true to their
natural duty as men, and took the same cross Jesus had borne before
them; Peter and John had said at their outset to the
authorities--"Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto
you more than unto God, judge ye." The Emperor once made it the official
business of every citizen to deliver up the Christians. But God made it
no man's duty. Nay, it was each man's duty to help them. In such cases
what shall a man do? You know what we think of men who comply basely,
and save their life with the loss of their soul. You know how the
Christian world honors the saints and martyrs, who laid down their lives
for the sake of truth and right; a handful of their dust, which was
quieted of its trouble by the headsman's axe seventeen hundred years
ago, and is now gathered from the catacombs of Saint Agnes at Rome--why
it is enough to consecrate half of the Catholic churches in New England.
As I have stood among their graves, have handled the instruments with
which they tasted of bitter death, and crumbled their bones in my
hands,--I keep their relics still with reverend awe--I have thought
there was a little difference between their religion, and the pale
decency that haunts the churches of our time, and is afraid lest it lose
its dividends, or its respectability, or hurt its usefulness, which is
in no danger.
Do I speak of martyrs for conscience' sake? To-day is St. Maurice's day,
consecrated to him and the "Thebaean legion." Maurice appears to have
been a military tribune in the Christian legion, levied in the Thebais,
a part of Egypt. In the latter part of the third century this legion was
at Octodurum, near the little village of Martigni, in Valais, a Swiss
Canton, under the command of Maximian, the associate emperor, just then
named Herculeus, going to fight the Bagaudae. The legion was ordered to
sacrifice to the Gods after the heathen fashion. The soldiers refused;
every tenth man was hewn down by Maximian's command. They would not
submit, and so the whole legion, as the Catholic story tells us,
perished there on the 22d of September, fifteen hundred and fifty-three
years ago this day. Perhaps the account is not true; it is probable that
the number of martyrs is much exaggerated, for six thousand soldiers
would not stand still and be slaughtered without striking a blow. But
the fact that the Catholic church sets apart one day in the calendar to
honor this alleged heroism, shows the value men put on fidelity to
conscience in such cases.
Last winter a bill for the capture of fugitive slaves was introduced
into the Senate of the United States of America; the Senator who so ably
represented the opinions and wishes of the controlling men of this city,
proposed to support that bill, "with all its provisions to the fullest
extent;" that bill, with various alterations, some for the better,
others for the worse, has become a law--it received the vote of the
Representative from Boston, who was not sent there, I hope, for the
purpose of voting for it. That statute allows the slaveholder, or his
agent, to come here, and by summary process seize a fugitive slave, and,
without the formality of a trial by jury, to carry him back to eternal
bondage. The statute makes it the official business of certain
magistrates to aid in enslaving a man; it empowers them to call out
force enough to overcome any resistance which may be offered, to summon
the bystanders to aid in that work. It provides a punishment for any one
who shall aid and abet, directly or indirectly, and harbor or conceal
the man who is seeking to maintain his natural and unalienable right to
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. He may be fined a thousand
dollars, imprisoned six months, and be liable to a civil action for a
thousand dollars more!
This statute is not to be laid to the charge of the slaveholders of the
South alone; its most effective supporters are northern men; Boston is
more to be blamed for it than Charleston or Savannah, for nearly a
thousand persons of this city and neighborhood, most of them men of
influence through money if by no other means, addressed a letter of
thanks to the distinguished man who had volunteered to support that
infamous bill, telling him that he had "convinced the understanding and
touched the conscience of the nation." A man falls low when he consents
to be a slave, and is spurned for his lack of manhood; to consent to be
a catcher of fugitive slaves is to fall lower yet; but to consent to be
the defender of a slave-catcher--it is seldom that human nature is base
enough for that. But such examples are found in this city! This is now
the law of the land. It is the official business of judges,
commissioners and marshals, as magistrates, to execute the statute and
deliver a fugitive up to slavery; it is your official business and mine,
as citizens, when legally summoned, to aid in capturing the man. Does
the command make it any man's duty? The natural duty to keep the law of
God overrides the obligation to observe any human statute, and
continually commands us to love a man and not hate him, to do him
justice, and not injustice, to allow him his natural rights not
alienated by himself; yes, to defend him in them, not only by all means
legal, but by all means moral.
Let us look a little at our duty under this statute. If a man falls into
the water and is in danger of drowning, it is the natural duty of the
bystanders to aid in pulling him out, even at the risk of wetting their
garments. We should think a man a coward who could swim, and would not
save a drowning girl for fear of spoiling his coat. He would be
indictable at common law. If a troop of wolves or tigers were about to
seize a man, and devour him, and you and I could help him, it would be
our duty to do so, even to peril our own limbs and life for that
purpose. If a man undertakes to murder or steal a man, it is the duty of
the bystanders to help their brother, who is in peril, against wrong
from the two-legged man, as much as against the four-legged beast. But
suppose the invader who seizes the man is an officer of the United
States, has a commission in his pocket, a warrant for his deed in his
hand, and seizes as a slave a man who has done nothing to alienate his
natural rights--does that give him any more natural right to enslave a
man than he had before? Can any piece of parchment make right wrong, and
wrong right?
The fugitive has been a slave before: does the wrong you committed
yesterday, give you a natural right to commit wrong afresh and
continually? Because you enslaved this man's father, have you a natural
right to enslave his child? The same right you would have to murder a
man because you butchered his father first. The right to murder is as
much transmissible by inheritance as the right to enslave! It is plain
to me that it is the natural duty of citizens to rescue every fugitive
slave from the hands of the marshal who essays to return him to bondage;
to do it peaceably if they can, forcibly if they must, but by all means
to do it. Will you stand by and see your countrymen, your
fellow-citizens of Boston, sent off to slavery by some commissioner?
Shall I see my own parishioners taken from under my eyes and carried
back to bondage, by a man whose constitutional business it is to work
wickedness by statute? Shall I never lift an arm to protect him? When I
consent to that, you may call me a hireling shepherd, an infidel, a wolf
in sheep's clothing, even a defender of slave-catching if you will; and
I will confess I was a poor dumb dog, barking always at the moon, but
silent as the moon when the murderer came near.
I am not a man who loves violence. I respect the sacredness of human
life. But this I say, solemnly, that I will do all in my power to rescue
any fugitive slave from the hands of any officer who attempts to return
him to bondage. I will resist him as gently as I know how, but with such
strength as I can command; I will ring the bells, and alarm the town; I
will serve as head, as foot, or as hand to any body of serious and
earnest men, who will go with me, with no weapons but their hands, in
this work. I will do it as readily as I would lift a man out of the
water, or pluck him from the teeth of a wolf, or snatch him from the
hands of a murderer. What is a fine of a thousand dollars, and jailing
for six months, to the liberty of a man? My money perish with me, if it
stand between me and the eternal law of God. I trust there are manly men
enough in this house to secure the freedom of every fugitive slave in
Boston, without breaking a limb or rending a garment.
One thing more I think is very plain, that the fugitive has the same
natural right to defend himself against the slave-catcher, or his
constitutional tool, that he has against a murderer or a wolf. The man
who attacks me to reduce me to slavery, in that moment of attack
alienates his right to life, and if I were the fugitive, and could
escape in no other way, I would kill him with as little compunction as I
would drive a mosquito from my face. It is high time this was said. What
grasshoppers we are before the statute of men! what Goliaths against
the law of God! What capitalist heeds your statute of usury when he can
get illegal interest? How many banks are content with six _per cent._
when money is scarce? Did you never hear of a merchant evading the
duties of the custom-house? When a man's liberty is concerned, we must
keep the law, must we? betray the wanderer, and expose the outcast?[13]