PART SECOND. OUR RELATION TO OUR COUNTRY, AND THE MORAL DUTIES THENCE ARISING; THAT IS, THE DUTIES OF PATRIOTISM. IT has sometimes been said, that "a Christian is of no country," that he ought to esteem all countries alike, and to have no attachment to one country more than to another; * but this sen timent will not bear examination when submitted to the test of Scripture, any more than when brought to the bar of reason. The Hebrew Scriptures abound with the most enthusiastic and even exclusive sentiments of attachment, on the part of the authors, for their native land. † In the New Testament, this enthusiasm and exclusiveness of attachment to country are not seen; still the sentiment and the duty of patriotism are fully recognised. Our Saviour instructed his disciples to render unto Cæsar all things which Cæsar might rightfully claim; that is, he instructed them to comply with all the lawful ordinances of civil government. While predicting the destruction of Jerusalem for its sins, he still accompanied his prediction with the most pathetic lamentations. The benefits of his personal ministry, too, were confined to his own countrymen, || and those, who were commissioned to preach his Gospel, were enjoined to make it known first to the Jews and then to the Gentiles. T St. Paul was especially commissioned to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles; still he recognises his obligation to make it known first of all to his countrymen. ** We are instructed "to make supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings for kings, and all that are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty."* This implies a cheerful and cordial submission to the government under which we live, as distinct from that of any other country. The truth is, Christianity adapts itself to human institutions and to the relations of human life as it finds them, and seeks to meliorate and improve all of them. † Christianity has made obedience to civil government imperatively binding on the conscience, and there is no duty in regard to which it speaks in more decisive terms. "Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake; whether it be to the king, as supreme; or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evil-doers, and for the praise of them that do well. For so is the will of God, that with welldoing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men; as free and not using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness, but as the servants of God." In Romans xiii. 1-7, St. Paul enjoins obedience in terms yet more imperative. Still, authoritatively as these passages speak, they do not inculcate the unlimited obedience, much less the servile spirit, which has sometimes been ascribed to them. § They make civil obedience a branch of Christian duty, instead of a mere submission to superior force. The doctrine contained in them is applicable both to individuals and to associations of individuals, combined to accomplish any particular object. Every individual owes prompt and cheerful obedience to the lawful authority of his country. But he owes no obedience to civil government, in any instance in which the consequence must be a violation of his duty to God. Nor does he owe compliance in any instance or degree, in which authority has not been given to the magistrate, by the State, to require it. These limitations require no illustration. But there is a great difference between an individual refusing to comply with an ordinance of government, and an association of individuals united to overthrow the existing government of a country by a revolution, and to establish another. It is in consequence of the overwhelming evils of anarchy and revolution, that the duty of civil obedience has been prescribed in so strong language. Still no attempt is made to fix limits to an obedience, to which, from the nature of the case, no well marked limits can be assigned. All Christian duties are treated alike, in this respect, in the New Testament. Thus the duty of husbands and wives, of parents and children, of masters and servants, are all prescribed, but no attempt is made to assign the exact limits of these duties. The right of revolution, or making forcible resistance to civil government, cannot be ascertained by any precise boundaries; it commences at the point where civil obedience ceases to be a virtue. What this point is, those who undertake a revolution must of necessity judge for themselves, upon a view of all the circumstances and under the weight of the most solemn responsibility to God, their country, and mankind. In undertaking to make forcible resistance to government, "the end should be seen from the beginning ;" and to bear present evils while they are tolerable, is preferable to rushing into a revolution, where the evils are certain and very great, and the good in prospect must always be, in a considerable degree, problematical. "The speculative line of demarcation, where obedience ought to end, and resistance must begin, is," says Mr. Burke, "faint, obscure, and not easily definable. It is not a single act, or a single event, which determines it. Governments must be abused and deranged, indeed, before it can be thought of; and the prospect of the future must be as bad as the experience of the past. When things are in that lamentable condition, the nature of the disease is to indicate the remedy, to those whom nature has qualified to administer, in extremities, this critical, ambiguous, bitter potion, to a distempered state. Times, and occasions, and provocations will teach their own lessons. The wise will determine from the gravity of the case, the irritable, from sensibility to oppression, the high-minded, from disdain and indignation at abused power in unworthy hands, the brave and bold, from the love of honorable danger, in a generous cause; but, with or without right, a revolution will be the very last resource of the thinking and the good." * Our Declaration of Independence has marked the right and duty of resistance with as much definiteness as seems practicable."Prudence will dictate," it says, "that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; but, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them (a people) under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security." Is it not one of the characteristics of the present day, to rush into revolutions with too little regard to the circumstances and consequences?† The duties of patriotism may be ranged under seven divisions. I. The moral duties of rulers of every grade. II. Duties of citizens or subjects towards the civil magistrate. III. The duty of exercising the elective franchise with integrity and discretion. IV. The duty of cultivating a patriotic spirit and the patriotic virtues. V. The duty of citizens to keep themselves well informed respecting public men and public measures. VI. The duty of aiding in the defence of the country, and in the administration of justice by serving on juries, giving testimony on oath, &c. VII. Moral duties of the United States, viewed as communities, towards each other. CHAPTER I. MORAL DUTIES OF RULERS OF EVERY GRADE. It is not within the province of ethics, to discuss the constitutional, legal, or other official duties of public officers of any particular grade; and, in doing so, the author would be going out of his way; but the moral duties of them all are so similar, that they * Burke's Works, Vol. V. p. 73. London, 1803. may be treated under the same division. Nor is it within the author's province to do more than advert to the personal qualifications, physical, intellectual, or moral, which the various public officers may rightfully be expected to bring to the discharge of the duties of their respective offices. His concern is with their special moral duties, arising from the stations which they fill. The public officers particlarly referred to, comprise the President of the United States, and the chief executive officers by whom he is aided in the discharge of his high duties, the members of both houses of Congress, the governors of the several states and territories, the members of the state and territorial legislatures, the judges of the national and state courts, the officers of the army and navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states. All these various officers make up a mighty host; and, however different may be the spheres of their official duty, still they all occupy a common ground and sustain a common relation to their country, from which spring moral duties of the most important kind. Their power of influencing the public happiness is great, in proportion as their stations are elevated; and their influence for good or for evil is felt through all the ramifications of society. The greatest evil by which a free government is beset and endangered is, the excessive prevalence and extreme virulence of faction and party spirit. This source of public danger is great and threatening in proportion to the freedom of the government of a country and the consequent fewness of the restraints of law. Faction and party spirit have, in truth, been the bane of all free governments. No one can read of the intrigues, machinations, and exterminating violence of faction in the republics of ancient Greece, each party, as it gained the ascendency, alternately wreaking its vengeance on the other, without being filled with aversion and disgust. The history of the Roman commonwealth and of the Italian republics of the middle ages, are too well fraught with instruction of the same melancholy kind. But we need not go back to ancient times, to be instructed in the evils of faction and party violence. The sanguinary scenes of the French Revolution, originating in, and consummated by, the madness of party and faction, have furnished a lesson to all |