This withdrawing from government is pharisaical—"Shall we, 'weak, sinful men,'" one says, "perhaps even more sinful than the slaveholder, cry out, No Union with Slaveholders?" Such a course is wanting in brotherly kindness.
ANSWER. Because we refuse to aid a wrong-doer in his sin, we by no means proclaim, or assume, that we think our whole character better than his. It is neither pharisaical to have opinions, nor presumptuous to guide our lives by them. If I have joined with others in doing wrong, is it either presumptuous or unkind, when my eyes are opened, to refuse to go any further with them in their career of guilt? Does love to the thief require me to help him in stealing? Yet this is all we refuse to do. We will extend to the slaveholder all the courtesy he will allow. If he is hungry, we will feed him; if he is in want, both hands shall be stretched out for his aid. We will give him full credit for all the good that he does, and our deep sympathy in all the temptations under whose strength he falls. But to help him in his sin, to remain partners with him in the slave-trade, is more than he has a right to ask. He would be a strange preacher who should set out to reform his circle by joining in all their sins! It is a principle similar to that which the tipsy Duke of Norfolk acted on, when seeing a drunken friend in the gutter, he cried out, "My dear fellow, I can't help you out, but I'll do better, I'll lie down by your side."
OBJECTION XII.
But consider, the abstaining from all share in Government will leave bad men to have everything their own way—admit Texas—extend slavery, &c. &c.
ANSWER. That is no matter of mine. God, the great conservative power of the Universe, when he established the right, saw to it that it should always be the safest and best. He never laid upon a poor finite worm the staggering load of following out into infinity the complex results of his actions. We may rest on the bosom of Infinite Wisdom, confident that it is enough for us to do justice, he will see to it that happiness results.
OBJECTION XIII.
But the same conscientious objection against promising your support to government, ought to lead you to avoid actually giving your support to it by paying taxes or sueing in the courts.
ANSWER. This is what logicians call a reductio ad absurdum: an attempt to prove our principle unsound by showing that, fairly carried out, it leads to an absurdity. But granting all it asks, it does not saddle us with any absurdity at all. It is perfectly possible to live without petitioning, sueing, or holding stocks. Thousands in this country have lived, died, and been buried, without doing either. And does it load us with any absurdity to prove that we shall be obliged to do from principle, what the majority of our fellow-citizens do from choice? We lawyers may think it is an absurdity to say a man can't sue, for, like the Apostle at Ephesus, it touches our "craft," but that don't go far to prove it. Then, as to taxes, doubtless many cases might be imagined, when every one would allow it to be our duty to resist the slightest taxation, did Christianity allow it, with "war to the hilt." If such cases may ever arise, why may not this be one?
Until I become an Irishman, no one will ever convince me that I ought to vote, by proving that I ought not to pay taxes! Suppose all these difficulties do really encompass us, it will not be the first time that the doing of one moral duty has revealed a dozen others which we never thought of. The child has climbed the hill over his native village, which he thought the end of the world, and lo! there are mountains beyond! He won't remedy the matter by creeping back to his cradle and disbelieving in mountains!
But then, is there any such inconsistency in non-voters sueing and paying taxes?