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self from a prescribed form of worship. He who thought that form less acceptable to the Supreme Being than another, ought to absent himself notwithstanding the law. So, when in the present day, a Christian thinks the profession of arms, or the payment of preachers whom he disapproves, is wrong, he ought, notwithstanding any laws, to decline to pay the money or to bear the arms.

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Illegal commands do not appear to carry any obligation to obedience. Thus, when the Apostles had been beaten openly and uncondemned, being Romans,” they did not regard the directions of the magistracy to leave the prison, but asserted their right to legal justice, by making the magistrates "come themselves and fetch them out." When Charles I, made his demands of supplies upon his own illegal authority, I should have thought myself at liberty to refuse to pay them. This were not a disobedience to government. Government was broken. One of its constituent parts refused to impose the tax, and one imposed it. I might, indeed, have held myself in doubt whether Charles constituted the government or not. If the people had thought it best to choose him alone for their ruler, he constituted the government, and his demand would have been legal; for a law is but the voice of that governing power whom the people prefer. As it was, the people did not choose such a government; the demand was illegal, and might therefore be refused.

CHAPTER IV.

POLITICAL INFLUENCE.

Effects of influence—Incongruity of public notions—Patronage -Dependency on the mother country.

THE system of governing by influence appears to be a substitute for the government of force-an intermediate step between awing by the sword and directing by reason and virtue. When the general character of political measures is such, that reason and virtue do not sufficiently support them to recommend them, on their own merits, to the public approbation-these measures must be rejected, or they must be supported by foreign means; and when, by the political institutions of a people, force is necessarily excluded, nothing remains but to have recourse to some species of influence. There is another ground upon which influence becomes, in a certain sense, necessary-which is, that there is so much imperfection of virtue in the majority of legislators—they are so much guided by interested or ambitious or party motives, that for a measure to be recommended by its own excellence, is sometimes not sufficient to procure their concurrence; and thus it happens that influence is resorted to, not merely because public measures are deficient in purity, but because there is a deficiency of uprightness in public

men.

The degree of this influence, which may be required to give stability to an executive body, (and therefore to a constitution,) will vary with the character of its own policy. The more widely that policy deviates from rectitude, the greater will be the demand for influence to induce concurrence in its measures. The degree of influence that is actually exerted by a government, is therefore no despicable criterion of the excellence of its practice.

But let it be constantly borne in mind, that when we thus speak of the "necessity" for influence to support governments, we speak only of governments as they are, and of nations as they are. There is no necessity

for influence to support good government over a good people. All influence but that which addresses itself to the judgment, is wrong-wrong in morals, and therefore indefensible upon whatever plea.

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"All influence but that which addresses itself to the judgment, is wrong." Of the moral offence which this influence implies, many are guilty who oppose governments, as well as those who support them, or as governments themselves. It is evidently not a whit more virtuous to exert influence in opposing governments than in supporting them: nor, indeed, is it so virtuous. To what is a man influenced? Obviously, to do that which, without the influence, he would not do;-that is to say, he is induced to violate his judgment at the request or at the will of other men. It can need no argument to show that this is vicious. In truth, it is vicious in a very high degree; for to conform our conduct to our own sober judgment, is one of the first dictates of the moral law and the viciousness is so much the greater, because the express purpose for which a man is appointed to legislate, is that the community may have the benefit of his uninfluenced judgment. Breach of trust is added to the sacrifice of individual integrity. A nation can gain nothing by the knowledge or experience of a million of "influenced" legislators. It is curious, that the submission to influence which men often practise as legislators, they would abhor as judges. What should we say of a judge or a juryman who accepted a place or a promise as a bribe for an unjust sentence? We should prosecute the juryman and address the parliament for a removal of the judge. Is it then of so much less consequence in what manner affairs of state are conducted

than the affairs of individuals, that that which would be disgraceful in one case, is reputable in another? No account can be given of this strange incongruity of public notions, than that custom has in one case blinded our eyes, and in the other has taught us to see. Let the legislator who would abhor to accept a purse to bribe him to write ignoramus upon a true bill, apply the principle upon which his abhorrence is founded to his political conduct. When our moral principles are consistent these incongruities will cease. When uniform truth takes the place of vulgar practice and opinion, these incongruities will become wonderful for their absurdity; and men will scarcely believe that their fathers, who could see so clearly, saw so ill. The same sort of stigma which now attaches to Lord Bacon, will attach to multitudes who pass for honorable persons in the present day.

do;

A man may lawfully, no doubt, take a more active part in political measures, in compliance with the wishes of another, than he might otherwise incline to but to support the measures of an opposition or an administration, because they are their measures, can never be lawful.—Nor can it ever be lawful to magnify the advantages or to expatiate upon the mischiefs of a measure, beyond his secret estimate of its demerits or its merits. That legislator is viciously influenced, who says or who does any thing which he would think it not proper to say or do if he were an independent

man.

But it will be said, Since influence is inseparable from the possession of patronage, and since patronage must be vested somewhere, what is to be done? or how are the evils of influence to be done away?- a question which, like many other questions in political morality, is attended with accidental rather than essential difficulties. Patronage, in a virtuous state of mankind,

would be small.

There would be none in the church

and little in the state. Men would take the over-sight of the Christian flock, not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind. If the ready mind existed, the influence of patronage would be needless: and, as a needless thing, it would be done away.

And as to the state, when we consider how much of patronage in all nations results from the vicious condition of mankind -especially for military and naval appointments-it will appear that much of this class of patronage is accidental also. Take away that wickedness and violence in which hostile measures originate, and fleets and armies would no longer be needed; and with their dissolution there would be a prodigious diminution of patronage and of influence. So, if we continue the enquiry, how far any given source of influence arising from patronage is necessary to the institution of civil government, we shall find, at last, that the necessary portion is very small. We are little accustomed to consider how simple a thing civil government is—nor what an unnumbered multiplicity of offices and sources of patronage would be cut off, if it existed in its simple and rightful state.

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