[44] Green. Principles of Political Obligation, p. 111. Cf. Ritchie, Natural Rights, p. 243.
V. THE DUTY OF THE STATE
The case seems clear. Passive resistance is rebellion, and it is entirely inconsistent with loyalty to any form of government. In relation to democratic government it is, moreover, on the part of members of the democracy, treachery of a peculiarly heinous type, since it is a betrayal of the sovereign community by those within its own ranks. If the sovereign community does (as it easily may) by the vote of its majority make enactments which seem to any one of its subjects to be morally wrong, that subject has two legitimate courses open to him. He may either obey under protest, and meantime use all lawful influence at his disposal to convince the majority of the error of their ways, and convert them to his way of thinking; or he may withdraw from the community and its territories altogether, and go to some other part of the wide world where the obnoxious enactment is not in force. What he may not do, is to remain within the community, enjoy all the advantages of its ordered life, exercise its franchises, receive the protection of its forces, claim the securities of its courts and the liberties of its constitution, and at the same time refuse to render it obedience.
If in his misguided perversity he adopts this last-named course, the duty of the State is plain. It is to call him to submission, or to withdraw its protection from him. The person who will not recognize the State's sovereignty, has no claim upon the services of the State. The first essential of a government is that it should govern. It should, of course, exercise the utmost care in issuing commands to avoid as far as possible the giving of offence to tender consciences; but when once its deliberate commands are issued, and so long as they remain unrepealed, it should enforce them with calm but inexorable determination. Nothing is more fatal to the very foundations of political society, than the spectacle of a government that can be defied with impunity.[45] That demoralizing spectacle has been seen far too often during recent years, and at the moment when the war broke out it had led us to the verge of national disaster. The war has brought us into closer touch with realities than we had been for many a long year before, and it has taught us how ruinous it is in fatuous complacency to "wait and see" whither disorder, disloyalty, and disobedience will conduct us. If, however, there are still in our midst ministers who tremble before rebellion, and do not know how to act in the presence of organized passive resistance, let me commend to them the worthy example of Edward I, who in 1296 was faced by a general refusal on the part of the clergy to pay taxes. He simply excluded them from the protection of the laws, and closed his courts to their pleas. A few weeks of well-merited outlawry brought to an end their ill-advised experiment in passive resistance.
FOOTNOTE:
[45] Maine (Popular Government, p. 64) emphasizes this point. "If," he says, "any government should be tempted to neglect, even for a moment, its function of compelling obedience to law—if a Democracy, for example, were to allow a portion of the multitude of which it consists to set some law at defiance which it happens to dislike—it would be guilty of a crime which hardly any other virtue could redeem, and which century upon century might fail to repair."