If not being non-resistants, we concede to mankind the right to
frame Governments, which must, from the very nature of man, be more
or less evil, the right or duty to support them, when framed,
necessarily follows.
ANSWER. I do not think it follows at all. Mankind, that is, any
number of them, have a right to set up such forms of worship as they
see fit, but when they have done so, does it necessarily follow that
I am in duty bound to support any one of them, whether I approve it
or not? Government is precisely like any other voluntary association
of individuals--a temperance or anti-slavery society, a bank or
railroad corporation. I join it, or not, as duty dictates. If a
temperance society exists in the village where I am, that love for
my race which bids me seek its highest good, commands me to join it.
So if a Government is formed in the land where I live, the same
feeling bids me to support it, if I innocently can. This is the
whole length of my duty to Government. From the necessity of the case,
and that constitution of things which God has ordained, it follows
that in any specified district, the majority must rule--hence
results the duty of the minority to submit. But we must carefully
preserve the distinction between _submission_ and _obedience_
--between _submission_ and _support_. If the majority set up an
immoral Government, I obey those laws which seem to me good, because
they are good--and I submit to all the penalties which my
disobedience of the rest brings on me. This is alike the dictate of
common sense, and the command of Christianity. And it must be the
true doctrine, since any other obliges me to obey the majority if
they command me to commit murder, a rule which even the Tory
Blackstone has denied. Of course for me to do anything I deem wrong,
is the same, in quality, as to commit murder.