I cannot too often recommend it to the serious consideration of all men,
who think civil society to be within the province of moral jurisdiction,
that if we owe to it any duty, it is not subject to our will. Duties are
not voluntary. Duty and will are even contradictory terms. Now, though
civil society might be at first a voluntary act (which in many cases
it undoubtedly was), its continuance is under a permanent, standing
covenant, co-existing with the society; and it attaches upon every
individual of that society, without any formal act of his own. This is
warranted by the general practice, arising out of the general sense of
mankind. Men without their choice derive benefits from that association;
without their choice they are subjected to duties in consequence of
these benefits; and without their choice they enter into a virtual
obligation as binding as any that is actual. Look through the whole
of life and the whole system of duties. Much the strongest moral
obligations are such as were never the results of our option. I allow,
that if no supreme ruler exists, wise to form, and potent to enforce,
the moral law, there is no sanction to any contract, virtual or even
actual, against the will of prevalent power. On that hypothesis, let any
set of men be strong enough to set their duties at defiance, and they
cease to be duties any longer. We have but this one appeal against
irresistible power--
"Si genus humanum et mortalia temnitis arma,
At sperate Deos memores fandi atque nefandi."
Taking it for granted that I do not write to the disciples of the
Parisian philosophy, I may assume, that the awful Author of our being
is the Author of our place in the order of existence; and that, having
disposed and marshalled us by a divine tactic, not according to
our will, but according to his, he has, in and by that disposition,
virtually subjected us to act the part which belongs to the place
assigned us. We have obligations to mankind at large, which are not in
consequence of any special voluntary pact. They arise from the relation
of man to man, and the relation of man to God, which relations are not
matters of choice. On the contrary, the force of all the pacts which
we enter into with any particular person, or number of persons, amongst
mankind, depends upon those prior obligations. In some cases the
subordinate relations are voluntary, in others they are necessary--but
the duties are all compulsive. When we marry, the choice is voluntary,
but the duties are not matter of choice. They are dictated by the nature
of the situation. Dark and inscrutable are the ways by which we come
into the world. The instincts which give rise to this mysterious process
of nature are not of our making. But out of physical causes, unknown
to us, perhaps unknowable, arise moral duties, which, as we are able
perfectly to comprehend, we are bound indispensably to perform. Parents
may not be consenting to their moral relation; but consenting or not,
they are bound to a long train of burthensome duties towards those with
whom they have never made a convention of any sort. Children are not
consenting to their relation, but their relation, without their actual
consent, binds them to its duties; or rather it implies their consent,
because the presumed consent of every rational creature is in unison
with the predisposed order of things. Men come in that manner into a
community with the social state of their parents, endowed with all the
benefits, loaded with all the duties, of their situation. If the social
ties and ligaments, spun out of those physical relations which are the
elements of the commonwealth, in most cases begin, and alway continue,
independently of our will, so, without any stipulation on our own part,
are we bound by that relation called our country, which comprehends
(as it has been well said) "all the charities of all." Nor are we left
without powerful instincts to make this duty as dear and grateful to
us, as it is awful and coercive. It consists, in a great measure, in the
ancient order into which we are born. We may have the same geographical
situation, but another country; as we may have the same country in
another soil. The place that determines our duty to our country is a
social, civil relation.