3&ji .:: : . EfHr ■... : - ■ ■ LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 00001737715 * v %*. • ' n A o » VV ,A V ** *V 9 >J^L'. *> .-. '**o« :- >bv c ..* 0° % ' )* ^ r ^ >0^ "oK (: %&+ " C^^r» .4 *P -7*. o . . « s p 4: *ov* ** 0° *°-v 4 o * V *V •www; ,**v 4 o V » ' • J »< * » H o ° ^ T» "t» A> *^* O , ° " • » V} vV . l « „ 0> » ** TIIE CITIZEN AND THE COMMONWEALTH. A DISCOURSE DELIVERED IN THE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH HOLLISTON, MASS., DAY OF THE ANNUAL STATE FAST, APRIL 10, 1851 BY J. T. TUCKER, PASTOR OF THE CHURCH. First pure, then peaceable, gentle. — James 3 : 17. HOLLISTON : PUBLISHED AND FOB SALE BY PARKER & PLIMPTON 185 1. If there should seem to be a want of modesty in the publication of this pam- phlet, the Author would suggest, in extenuation, that, having given expression to his sentiments upon a topic just now furnishing matter of much exciting conversation and discussion in the community, he felt it to be no more than due to himself to place these opinions beyond the liability of misconstruction and misrepresentation. The Discourse is, therefore, given as spoken. It is sent out " upon its perilous way" not without a hope, moreover, that to not a few, it will commend itself as a word of "soberness and truth,"— a quickener of right feelings, and a strengthener of right resolves. DISCOURSE. Job 32. 10. — " I also will show mine opinion. In difficult crises of public affairs, it is commonly expected that those, whose sentiments are regarded as a kind of public property, will define, with some formality, their position. When this might be supposed to be already understood, by not infrequent general allusions to exciting questions, and inci- dental discussions of their bearings, this demand, it would seem, might be considered as sufficiently met. Nevertheless, such more concise notices of prominent, social and national concerns are found not altogether to suffice. Accordingly, though, since the passage of those legislative acts at the Capital of this Republic, which have stirred so profoundly the indignation of our land, this pulpit has repeatedly uttered its voice not indistinctly upon this subject and others collateral thereto: yet, as I have not devoted an entire discourse to these matters, I have thought it advisable so to do, in con- nection with the return of this Anniversary of Humiliation. Fasting, and Prayer. Understand me not, however, as inti- mating that, what I am now to say would not, in my regard, be wholly appropriate to any day on which God is worshipped and his truth is uttered. I have no excessive scrupulosity concerning the enforcement, at any time, of senti- ments which look to the regulation of human affairs, upon any scale, by the rule of Christ's Gospel of equity and love. To be sure, I have not reached that point of liberalism, avowed by a contemporary, which is ready to take a text from the telegraph. Hut Christian doctrine upon things earthly as 4 well as heavenly, as sanctioned by the inspiration of these revelations of God, may find ever and everywhere its fitting home. Being very desirous to address, in this discussion, the sober considerateness of those who may hear me, to carry your convictions of what is right, rather than to arouse merely your indignation, which is a far easier task, I have purposely deferred the undertaking now in hand, until time enough should have elapsed to enable us all to survey and canvass an exceedingly perplexed and irritating theme, with a calm, a discriminating, a judicious intelligence. Passing, then, these preliminaries, I purpose now to show more at length, my opinion and its reasons, respecting our relations as citizens to laws and law-makers, as this question has been freshly started upon us by the recent slave-legislation of Congress, and its unfortunate results in our own near vicinity. I commence with a position which I shall assume to need no defense — that God is of right the Supreme Law-giver over all orders of accountable beings. Consequently no inferior legislation can innocently conflict with his will, where this is clearly, explicitly announced. A second truth I hold in this connection to be, that Civil Government is a divinely authorized institution ; that civil law carries with it, in its legitimate sphere and operations, a divine sanction ; that civil officers, under the like limitations, are God's ministers of control to protect and to punish. This is placing the social organization on a widely different basis from the doctrine so popular with many, that a community associated under civil government is only the product of the free relinquishment by its members of certain rights and privi- leges of an independent state of existence, in consideration of certain other advantages accruing from this corporate relation- ship. The fact is, that no such giving-up of individual preten- sions, and contracting together for mutual defense and well- being, is traceable in the development of man's history. It is all a chimera of a particular school of political theorists. The institutions of the Commonwealth, under some form of recognized law and government, are as original and necessary a part of human wants as are those of the Family. It is not merely human ingenuity and skill which has been at work in setting up the forms of legislative and judicial power. There is more here, and from the beginning, has been, than simply the consenting of portions of our race to live with each other under common rules of conduct, rather than to live apart in savage isolation. Even the savage world, indeed, has its rude elements of subordination and control. In short, government by law enacted and administered by the accredited functionaries of the State, whatever be the name of that government, comes from ihe appointment of the Creator's will, and through the ordering of his Providence. It occupies here as high a level as does the Domestic relationship. The State is as indispensable to human welfare as is the Home. Neither can exist in its just development without the other. If anything further be needful to substantiate this position, hear the word of God : — " Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers : — the pow- ers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God. For, for this cause pay ye tribute also ; for they are God's ministers attending con- tinually upon this very thing." 1 So Christ himself met the claim of Caesar, in the matter of supporting civil government, making it a Christian duty to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, as well as unto God the things that are God's. 2 We mark, here, I say, the declared pleasure and providential arranging of Him, who is not the author of confusion but of order. Government, in the first stages of human society, was 'Rom.: 13. 2 Mat.: 17: 24 — 27. So the Fathers generally, and most commentators, ex- plain. 15ut, if this tribute was paid as a Hebrew Theocratic tax, as Trench on the Miracles, pp. 299-sq, and Neander, Life of Christ, p. 290, maintain, it docs not vary the force of the evidence which the passage furnishes to my position that it is a Christian obligation to support the national government whose pro- tection we enjoy. The Theocracy was a political no less than a religious establishment. only the expanding over a tribe of the family constitution, un- der the headship of the patriarch, in whom the father was easily merged into the chieftain. And from that simplest mode of law-making and law-executing, to the most complex of its succeeding types, we recognize the general principle of obedi- ence to the established authority of a land as meeting the scope of the Apostolic injunction — " Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work." ' In thus grounding the obligation of obedience to civil gov- ernment in something higher than a business contract between the several parties of the State, I have not forgotten my first affirmation — that God's legislation is paramount to all else ; neither have I taken an attitude at all contradictory thereto, by any fair interpretation of these premises. Contrariwise, I would bring the pre-eminent authority of God to bear directly upon this very point, and urge a reverence and a love for the institutions which watch over and guard our rights and welfare as citizens, because God has enjoined it. I would thus elevate the sentiment of patriotism from the low impulses of a narrow, selfish, jealous pride of country, into a deep and trusting devo- tion of soul to the privileges of public security and prosperity which God has made our birthright ; and which we cherish because in them we see and appreciate God's abounding good- ness ; — a patriotism which thus taking God within the circle of its motives, will be slow to carry its allegiance to human de- mands, however imposing, into any collision with claims of duty which are manifestly Divine. Here, as everywhere else, there can be no opposition between things which ought to be. " As surely as the mind is one, the truth to which the mind is preconfigured is one." 2 Duties exist in an universal harmony. This we must bear in thought, as we look now a little to this point of chief per- plexity — where are the limits, at which obedience to human statutes, in general commanded by God, becomes displeasing to 1 Tit.: 3—1 ; also, 1st Pet.: 2—13. 2 Harris' Prc-adamitc Earth, p. 10. Him, by reason of a conflict with his own contrary require- ments ? To such opposing attitudes there is a liability, because, though God has instituted human government, he has not seen fit to make its keepers infallible. The Christian Church is a yet more sacred institution of His own. But this, too, is not preserved from error and from wrong, by a continual exertion of miraculous agencies. These it would demand in either case, to assure an uninterrupted succession of perfect decisions. What, then, must decide these questions of alledged collision between God's will which is supreme, and the working of subordinate organizations, by Him authorized for beneficial purposes, yet left to the freedom of their own determinations ? I answer, without hesitation, that the same tribunal must take cognizance of these cases, to which, by the cardinal doc- trine of our Protestant Christianity, we claim to submit, with-. out appeal, the still holier interests of our personal, religious faith and practice. Open to abuse as may be this declaration, nevertheless a man's individual conscience, his internal sense of right and wrong, must settle for himself his conduct. 1 But mark this, as necessarily vital to the rectitude and safety of the decisions of conscience — that only as it is enlightened by God's revealed truth, and guided by God's Spirit, is it qualified to sit on this throne of judgment ; to say what is, or is not, accordant or hostile to the requirements of heaven. That is to say, there is nothing more deceptive than the promptings of this faculty in man, when left to the influences of depravity and spiritual ignorance r A perverted sincerity, a conscientious tenacity in error, is one of the most dangerous foes of society. A conscience warped by prejudice, inflamed 1 One of the finest, moral spectacles in the History of the Reformation, is the firmness with -which Luther held fast this main pillar of his work, when Munzcr and the Zwickaw Prophets were running this doctrine of "private judgment " into the most errant fanaticism. — See Sears' Luther, pp. 329. sq. "We find it quite impossible to abandon this ancient entrenchment of freedom and virtue, notwithstanding the late labors of learned jurists and leading editors to establish the supremacy of a state-conscience, and the duty of unconditional obedience to the rule of the majority, though expressed by law. 8 by animosity or partizan zeal, may drive forward the work of devils with eagerness. When, therefore, a seeming antago- nism breaks forth between the laws which men enact and those of God, conscience is not to be lightly, carelessly, passionately invoked to adjudicate the issue. While the principle is indis- putable — " We ought to obey God rather than man " — it may not be altogether certain, at a glance, whether what we regard as a conflict between the two is, indeed, such a conflict. This is the very thing to be discovered, not to be taken for granted. Do we appeal to conscience? Then, let not some mere im- pulse of excited feeling, some ebullition of anger or wilful predeliction, or even some prompting of deeply-moved sym- pathy, step into its holy seat. Do we appeal to conscience ? Then, let it be a conscience, not blindfolded and manacled by any wrong bias or alliance ; but one which takes God's statutes and the teachings of those whom God inspired for its authoritative instructions ; one which habitually strives, in all things, to make its decisions an echo of heaven's. When an individual is satisfied that he has sat in judgment on a claim of civil law in this temper ; that in a spirit of prayerful ness, not of passionateness or irreverence, he has sought truly to know God's pleasure, by a fair investigation and comparison of the sacred text, and by a proper use of other practicable means of right information ; if then he cannot endorse that statute, he must set it aside on his responsibility, and a fearfully solemn one it is, to God and to his country. And such a decision will command respect. But it is a spectacle far from deserving this tribute, when, upon any transient cause of excitement, men begin of a sudden to talk largely and loudly about what their consciences will, or will not allow them to do ; who, very possibly, may have given for a long time scarce any proof, to themselves or their neighbors, that they possessed any con- science at all. A violent manifestation of zeal for God's and the Bible's authority on the part of such persons is, to say the .least, rather an inconsistency. A fair offset to which, on the reverse extreme, we have in the excessive law-abidingness, just •jiow, of sections of our Republic, which at other times have paid as little respect to the decrees of Constitution and Congress, as the Leviathan that " esteemeth iron as straw and brass as rotten wood." It is competent, then, for conscience,— and I am now using the term in its popular sense as embracing our faculty of judging as well as feeling rightly, though strictly it ap- plies only to the latter, — -it is competent for conscience to pronounce upon and to discard, under the legitimate conditions of its exercise, enactments of civil government as contrary to the obedience due to a superior power. Clear cases of its jurisdiction were these — -when by the Babylonish court Daniel was forbidden to pray to God ; when, also, by the Jewish Council, the Apostles were forbidden to preach the Gospel of Christ. Manifest interferences like these with the Divine will are easily disposed of. But much the larger proportion of questions, involving this issue, which require our attention, are not resolvable by this simple and satisfactory process, though at first view they may so appear. To come to the topic which has given new and engrossing interest to these general truths, let us inquire, how the late law of our government for the re-capture of Fugitive Slaves bears upon our duty of allegiance to the authority of the nation of which we constitute a part ? The problem is practi- cally this, — -through the headlands and islands of God's, and our country's, and humanity's claims upon us, to find, not to make, a channel, which will take us. and any poor Fugitive we may happen to have on board, safely out upon the wide sea of religious and civil duty ; without striking our keel either on the reefs of treason to the State, or of rebellion against heaven. If it could be shown that God has forbidden the reclamation of a servant flying from his master, under all circumstances, as He has forbidden idolatry, profane swearing, or murder, then the case is decided beyond appeal ; and this late Congressional law must take its place alongside of the king of Babylon's edict against Jehovah's worship, which Daniel positively with- stood, even at the open door of the lion's den. While I have 10 no sympathy with this act of our legislators, I must neverthe- less say that I find no such direct countermand of it in the Bible as must compel a Christian man, under his loyalty to God, to wage an outright hostility against it. The only text, for which this explicitness of countermand is claimed, is in Deut: 23. 15. But this can hardly carry an unconditional restrictive authority upon all cases and at all times, since it is surely possible that the interpretation may be correct, by which the great majority of commentators restrict it specifically to the intercourse of the Hebrew tribes with their Pagan neigh- bors, — finding its local cause in the moral wrongfulness of remanding these escaped slaves to the superstitions and viciousness of heathenism. It is not necessary to my purpose to attempt to make good this exposition. If it very probably may be true, then this enactment by Moses cannot so cover the case of Fugitives under this law of ours, as to put the whole question of our treatment of it beyond dispute. The subject passes, consequently, out of the narrower cir- cle of positive Divine command — thou shalt, or shall not, do this individual thing — into the wide and much less easily surveyed field of inferential obligation. We are driven upon general principles, the difficulty of managing which is con- spicuously illustrated by the fact that they are sweeping our gravest and most conscientious writers to the most opposite and irreconcilable results. We eschew both extremes ; — on the one hand, that servile holding of the doctrine of obedience to civil government, that absorption of every human interest in zeal for " the Union," which accepts this ordinance of recapture as in- trinsically good or politically necessary, and demands that it lie unchallenged, undisturbed, beside the parent evil from which it has sprung ; and on the other side, we deprecate that spirit of antagonism which contents itself with nothing milder than leveling open and downright resistance thereto, even to the arming of both the fugitive and the citizen against the officer who may be charged with its enforcement. The true point of rest lies, doubtless, between these antipodes, perplexing, as it may be, to map down its exact parallel of latitude. 11 The Fugitive Slave Act has some peculiar features of odious inhumanity. Its specifications go beyond the ordinary offen- siveness of this vicious institution. It forces the slave-system more obnoxiously under our notice than before ; changes its arena from a far-off Southern region to our own doors, and assumes to claim our compelled participation in its mainten- ance. It is the relapsed stage, to its unfortunate victim, of a long and wasting distemper. All this is excessively provocative of regret and indignation among freemen. But aside from these superficial aggravations, I know not that its spirit is more intrinsically bad than is that of its progenitor, or that it would, if carried out fully, make the North more essentially a party to the " Southern institution," than the North has been since the organization of our federation. If it be branded as unconstitu- tional, and therefore a nullity, I suppose the sound doctrine to be that such a question has its proper issue in an examination and reversal by the Supreme Court of the nation, and not in nullification, either by a State or a citizen. The drift of these observations is this — that if, under our solemnly reiterated protests against slavery, we have consented to dwell loyally in this league of States thus long, being willing to wait the issue of events in hope of the termination of this great public wrong ; if its infecting bur Constitution itself, and much of our by-gone legislation, with its virus, has not been a reason to justify us in casting off the general government, in organizing means for withstanding its jurisdiction, I see not how such justification can be found in the adventitious aggravations of this special Bill. I am at a loss to discover how it is to sanction that positive disobedience to government which all the foregone violences of slavery have not been held to sanction. Am I wrong in suspecting that the state of feeling which is just now putting to so great a discount among us at the North, the value of the Union of these thirty Commonwealths, is assignable much more to some side-thrusts of exasperating bravado in this Act of Congress, than to any clearly defined advance in it of wrong principles, over and above that of its prototype, so long enthroned in authority as an original provision of our Constitution itself. 12 Yet must I vindicate the memory of those good men and true. Who framed that compact of these States, from any voluntary participation before the fact, in the subsequent and present ex- tension of the slave-system. In a dark and stormy time, when our ship of state was tossed upon a raging sea, they consented to the recognition of that institution which they loved not, with the expresed hope and belief in many contemporansous documents, that it would soon die out and close its own career, amid the counteracting influences of surrounding freedom. They designed only to give time to that to come to a natural dissolution, in which they thought they surely saw the germ of fatal disease. That what they thus laid out for a speedy burial has started up into a new and gigantic life, is chargeable to the moral and political unfaithfulness of men who have entered into the legislative trusts of the fathers of this Republic, whether Northern or Southern, without their thorough devotion to the interests of liberty and humanity : who have suffered the low spirit of trade, and finance, and political bargaining, and national ambition, to debauch their consciences, to purchase over their integrity, with many a gilded lure, to the establishing of this injustice on firmer and broader foundations. And here, where the Free States of our Union have always had the power of control, had they but acted in unison, are they to be justly charged with the chief responsibility of this swerving from truth and righteousness. This state of affairs, thus reaching its present matured enor- mity through the remissness of Northern public sentiment and action, a remissness as conspicuous in the enactment of this last law of recapture, as in any other claim of Slavery, is not, I therefore hold, a valid basis on which to work the lever of national disorganization. No man can conscientiously put his hand to that lever who has by his default, or partizan zeal, or any neglect of duty, aided in making legislators of men, who have in turn aided in the perpetuating and strengthening of Slavery on our soil. How many are wholly innocent upon this count ? I further maintain, that when tyranny is enforced upon a people by wholly extraneous power, the true decision 13 lies between submission and revolution. The latter is the just resort of a people when laws become so intolerable or so iniqui- tous, that to subvert an existing government is a less evil than to uphold it. And they who set forward upon the enterprise of breaking down the government under which they live, ought first to have carefully studied and wisely settled the preliminary inquiry — whether a revolution of the State, be the next duty ? Has it arrived at this amongst us, that it is really of no further use to work the problem whether Liberty and Union, in their widest extension, may not dwell together between these oceans? But, while this act of Congress is not a text from which to preach the overthrow of our government, it has its fitting uses. It may and should open the eyes of men to a clearer compre- hension of the true nature of the institution which has be- gotten it. It furnishes a new and powerful argument, by which to press in a firm yet temperate spirit, the abrogation as speedily as possible, of that whole system. Particularly should its offensive presence evoke an overwhelming demand for its revocation, and pledge every voter among us to the absolutely indispensable work of freeing our ballot-boxes, and our caucus-rooms of the names of men, as candidates for our legislators, who will either concoct or vote for such op- pressive laws, or absent themselves from their posts while others do it for them. If more of painstaking were expended in making honest and true men rulers, we should have far less of indignation to exhaust upon laws which set backward the progress of Christian reform. In connection with the views now exhibited, I wish to set forth prominently another position, without which they may carry to some a wrong impression. I have strongly advocated a respect for the authority and the functions of civil government, as a divinely sanctioned bond and guardian of society. I have also asserted God's paramount claims to obedience ; and the inviolability of individual conscience. But a further point I hold as harmonious with the preceding, and in fact made ne- cessary by them. When a law is enacted, as this, for example, under review, which conscience under its best enlightenment 14 repudiates as wrong, then is it a perfectly right, and lawful, and unharmful course of personal procedure, for every man to keep himself aloof from aiding its execution however summoned thereto. To take the stand of overt hostility to its enforcement by others, whether by bloody or bloodless means, is one thing, and, to my judgment, wholly a wrong thing. But to fall back upon my own choice of inaction in the prem- ises, is an entirely different thing. No stringency of com- mand should induce me to lift a finger or move a muscle to help that law to its accomplishment. Others must do as they please on their own responsibility. I have an equal right to do nothing, if to act is to abuse my inner light, and, if need be, to suffer the legal penalties. This is a Christian position. I do not thus resist government, or bring it voluntarily into contempt. Law has two parts — precept and punishment. If I cannot honor it by compliance with the former, I must by sub- mitting to the exactions of the latter. It can go on and de- mand its retribution at my expense, not for an active resistance, but for a passive protest against its unrighteous movements ; while, by submitting thereto, I honor God and my religion, and the civil rule providentially extended over me. I neither thus deserve the name of a turbulent or a refractory citizen, nor do I thus impede, but vastly aid, the removal of all such statutes as good men cannot actively and cheerfully obey. In the best meaning of that phrase, this is a "masterly inac- tivity." There is yet another point which I must briefly touch — the bearing of this law upon our treatment of the Fugitive who may seek our succor. It cannot be questioned that we should extend to him all the offices of kindness and hospitality in our power- He is our brother-man. We recognize no mark of ownership on him, but God's. We are to take for granted that he is what he ought to be — a freeman. We are at liberty to meet whatever claims of sympathy he brings as a distressed and needy fellow-being, short of a collision with the duly certified jurisdiction of the government. In the absence of its fully and strictly proven title to interfere, we are under no 15 bonds to know anything prejudicial to the man who asks our charity, our friendly aid. If, however, the government demands him from our hospitality, it must, with its victim, take also all further responsibility of the case and its consequences. So, too, would we not counsel resistance in the Fugitive, hard as his lot may be. For him, even, it were better to retake that bitter cup of suffering, than to take the sword of vio- lence. Is it said that Government disowns him, and therefore he may fall back on his original rights of self-protection ? Government no more disowns him under this law which would recapture him as a Fugitive, than it did under that former law which made him a slave. The disowning, if anywhere, is at that prior stage. And if now he may level his weapon, and kill the officer who would rebind him to bondage, so might he as rightly have killed the master who held him before, or the auctioneer who sold him to that master. But surely ere we can reach this hostile attitude, we must go infinitely wide both from the spirit and precepts of Christianity. Nor will it justify this departure to show the same, or a far greater, divergence therefrom, on the part of the slave-system of our country, and this its worthy progeny. Much as it imposes a painful restraint on many feelings and impulses easily wrought into excitement, I nevertheless am constrained to appear before you as a counsellor of sub- mission and sufferance both on the part of the citizen and the oppressed, if the only alternative be this, or active antagonism to the execution of duly enacted law. No good cause can profit aught by mob-violence. The recent affray in our metropolis has liberated, perhaps, one sufferer ; but it has riveted to new tightness the fetters of thousands, and sprung into intcnseness a reactionary sentiment of morbid enthusiasm for tilings as they arc, directly prejudicial to the advance of general emancipation. Alas, that this cause has had so often reason to exclaim — "Deliver me from my friends ! " It can avail nothing by such demonstrations, only as God may over- rule them for ultimate success. But, as earnestly would I exhort to the steady, persevering appliance of every peaceful 16 instrumentality to rid our land of the whole system of slavery. There is labor here for all who can pray, — who can speak the truth in love, 1 — who can wield the influence of a Christian, of a citizen, in a land which has no earthly rulers but its own electors. May God restrain evil passions, and send down upon our people and our legislators the spirit of wisdom, of equity, and of love, to bring this complicated and mischievous busi- ness to safe and righteous issues. We need, in every section of this nation, His guidance and His grace. Our vessel of state, strained in every joint on this rocking sea, will founder in deep water, if Divine mercy brings her not to a safe harbor. Would to God, that this entire Republiccould humble itself in that deep humiliation and fasting of soul, which should beget a repentance of this and every sin. that needeth not to be repented of! Then should we keep an acceptable fast to the Lord, and his indignation should turn itself away from us. 1 Is this done, by assorting with one of our most venerable Divines, that " for a man to be a Fugitive Slave is prima facie proof that he is a badman :" or, on the other hand, by affirming, that "to retake a Fugitive to Southern bondage is to put him more hopelessly beyond the reach of Gospel Salvation, than if he were in the heart of Hindostan r" Can our Evangelical pulpits wield their proper power over this evil, while they give currency to such exaggerations ? 54 Nf * o. 0* *o -7^ A > ^ .1?^ ^0< '9,. *•.*•' ^° 'oV ^ - ++bv c VV BOOKBINDING H ,4 * v/// 7/J, * < •- *o.