But it is said, your theory results in good men leaving government
to the dishonest and wicked.
ANSWER. Well, if to sustain government we must sacrifice honesty,
government could not be in a more appropriate place, than in the
hands of dishonest men.
But it by no means follows, that if I go out of government, I leave
nothing but dishonest men behind. An act may be sin to me, which
another may sincerely think right--and if so, let him do it, till he
changes his mind. I leave government in the hands of those whom I do
not think as clear-sighted as myself, but not necessarily in the
hands of the dishonest. Whether it be so in this country now, is not,
at present, the question, but whether it would be so necessarily, in
all cases. The real question is, what is the duty of those who
presume to think that God has given them clearer views of duty than
the bulk of those among whom they live?
Don't think us conceited in supposing ourselves a little more
enlightened than our neighbors. It is no great thing after all to be a
little better than a lynching--mobocratic--slaveholding--debt
repudiating community.
What then is the duty of such men? Doubtless to do all they can to
extend to others the light they enjoy.
Will they best do so by compromising their principles? by letting
their political life give the lie to their life of reform? Who will
have the most influence, he whose life is consistent, or he who says
one thing to-day, and swears another thing to-morrow--who looks one
way and rows another? My object is to let men _understand me_, and I
submit that the body of the Roman people understood better, and felt
more earnestly, the struggle between the people and the princes,
when the little band of democrats _left the city_ and encamped on
_Mons Sacer, outside_, than while they remained mixed up and
voting with their masters, shoulder to shoulder. _Dissolution_ is
our _Mons Sacer_--God grant that it may become equally famous in the
world's history as the spot where the right triumphed.
It is foolish to suppose that the position of such men, divested of
the glare of official distinction, has no weight with the people. If
it were so, I am still bound to remember that I was not sent into
the world _to have influence_, but to do my duty according to my own
conscience. But it is not so. People do know an honest man when they
see him. (I allow that this is so rare an event now-a-days, as
almost to justify one in supposing they might have forgotten how he
looked.) They will give a man credit, when his life is one manly
testimony to the truthfulness of his lips. Even Liberty party, blind
as she is, has light enough to see that "Consistency is the jewel,
the everything of such a cause as ours." The position of a non-voter,
in a land where the ballot is so much idolized, kindles in every
beholder's bosom something of the warm sympathy which waits on the
persecuted, carries with it all the weight of a disinterested
testimony to truth, and pricks each voter's conscience with an
uneasy doubt, whether after all voting _is_ right. There is
constantly a Mordecai in the gate.
I admit that we should strive to have a _political_ influence--for
with politics is bound up much of the welfare of the people. But
this objection supposes that the ballot box is the _only_ means of
political influence. Now it is a good thing that every man should
have the right to vote. But it is by no means necessary that every
man should actually vote, in order to influence his times. We by no
means necessarily desert our social duty when we refuse to take
office, or to confer it. Lafayette did better service to the cause
of French liberty when he retired to Lagrange and refused to
acknowledge Napoleon, than he could have done had he stood, for years,
at the tyrant's right hand. From the silence of that chamber there
went forth a voice--from the darkness of that retreat there burst
forth a light; feeble indeed at first, like the struggling beams of
the morning, but destined like them to brighten into perfect day.
This objection, that we non-voters shall lose all our influence,
confounds the broad distinction between _influence_ and _power_.
_Influence_ every honest man must and will have, in exact
proportion to his honesty and ability. God always annexes influence
to worth. The world, however unwilling, can never get free from the
influence of such a man. This influence the possession of office
cannot give, nor the want of it take away. For the exercise of such
influence as this, man is responsible. _Power_ we buy of our fellow
men at a certain price. Before making the bargain it is our duty to
see that we do not pay "too dear for our whistle." He who buys it at
the price of truth and honor, buys only weakness--and sins beside.
Of those who go to the utmost verge of honesty in order to reach the
seats of worldly power, and barter a pure conscience for a weighty
name, it may be well said with old Fuller, "They need to have steady
heads who can dive into these gulfs of policy, and come out with a
safe conscience."