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."