A Defence of Virginia / And Through Her, of the South, in Recent and Pending Contests Against the Sectional Party

by Robert Lewis Dabney

But its advocates urge that it does give the correct origin of government, because they can point to specific rights, which must have been natural in the individual, but which we now find vested in the government. The instance they most cite, is that of self-defence. We accept it, and assert that it confirms our view. For, if the right of self-defence means privilege of forcible resistance to violence at the time it is offered, we utterly deny that it has been surrendered by the individual, or can be justly limited one iota by government. If it means the savage privilege of retaliation after the collision has passed away, which claims to make the angry defendant accuser, judge, jury, and executioner in his own case, we utterly deny that nature ever gave such right to any man. "Vengeance is mine: I will repay, saith the Lord." Another instance alleged, is when the citizen is restrained by society from certain acts, moral per se: as selling his corn out of the country when there is dearth. Yet the good citizen obeys. The answer is, that if the restriction is not unjust, it is because there exists among the citizens such danger of suffering for corn, that the sending it out of the country would be a breach of the natural law of love and equity. Natural rights may change with circumstances, a simple truth often strangely forgotten on this subject.

Now, it is from this vicious theory of human rights, that abolitionism sucks its whole life. The whole argument is but this: no restraint of government on man's will can be righteous, which is forcible and involuntary, because the obligation of all just government originates in the option of the individuals governed, who are by nature sovereign. Before we indicate the relationship of this conclusion with its disorganizing brood of kindred, we must pause to meet a question which arises. It is this: if this pet hypothesis is relinquished, on what basis shall we defend free government? Let us see if a better foundation for its blessings cannot be found.

Political and ethical philosophers have been perpetually victims to the notion, that because theirs are natural sciences, as distinguished from revealed or theological, therefore they must banish from them all reference to God, his nature, his acts, and his will, and our relations to it. The true inference should be, only, that they must abstain from the introduction of those peculiar revealed facts, which belong to man as an object of redemption and subject of the Church of Christ. If we are not atheists, the facts that God is, that our being proceeds from his act, that we are his property, are as truly natural as man and his attributes are. They should therefore be embraced as a part of the facts of the case, to be treated just as all other natural facts, save that these are the most rudimental of all. For, how can that treatment be truly scientific, which proceeds upon a partial induction of the facts of the case, leaving out the most primary? It is this illusion which has led so many moralists to attempt the discussion of the nature and origin of moral distinctions, without introducing a Creator, or a divine will. Whereas, a true science accepts God as the first fact in ethics; his attributes as the primary standard of the moral distinction; his will as the fountain of moral obligation. What wretched impotency and confusion has not this omission caused in ethical discussions!

In like manner, this impotent and infidel theory of government sets out, (as was consistent with its atheistic inventors,) without reference to the fact that man's existence, nature, and rights originated in the personal will of a Creator, without reference to original moral distinctions, or to original responsibilities to God, or to the moral quality of God's will towards man. It quietly ignores the fact that man's will, if he is the creature of an intelligent and moral personal Creator, never could, by any possibility, be his proper rule of acting. It passes over, in the insane pride of human perfectionism, the great fact that man is also a naturally depraved creature. It falsely supposes a state of nature, in which man's will made his right: whereas no being, save an eternal and self-existent God, has a right to exist in that state for one instant. But all these are facts of nature, belonging to the case, ascertainable by experience and reason. If, then, we would have a correct theory of natural rights, all of them must be embraced in our view. And the proper account of the matter is simply this: Inasmuch as man did not make himself, he enters existence the subject of God. This subjection is not only of force, but also of moral right. Moral distinctions are original, being eternally expressed in God's perfections, and sovereignly revealed to the creature in his preceptive will; which is, to man, the practical source and rule of obligation. This moral obligation is therefore as native as man is. The rudimental relations to his God and his fellows imposed on man are binding on him ab initio; not at all by force of any assent of his will, but merely by the rightful force of God's will: man's virtue is to conform his will freely to God's. This will also defines his rights; by which we mean those things which other creatures are morally obliged to allow him to have and to do. Man, we repeat, enters existence with these moral relations resting upon him. And among them, are his social relations to his fellows; as is shown by the fact that he has a social nature. Now civil government is nothing more than the organization of a part of these social relations. God's will and providence, then, as truly as his word, has placed man naturally under civil government. It is as natural as man is. Again: the rule of action imposed by just government is the moral rule. That is to say, an equitable government enjoins on its members or subjects the doing of those things which are morally right, and the refraining from those things which are morally wrong.

We trace civil government, then, not to any social contract, or other human expediency, but to the will and providence of God, and to original moral obligation. If asked, whence the obligation to obey the civil magistrate who, personally, is but our fellow, we answer, from God's will, which is the source and measure of duty. Man's will is wayward and depraved. Hence practical authority to enforce this rule of right upon him must be lodged in some hands; and since God does not rule statedly by miracle, it must be in human hands. Civil government is God's ordinance, and its obligations are those of original moral right. The advantage and convenience resulting illustrate and confirm, but do not originate, the obligation. This is the theory of government plainly taught by St. Paul (Rom. xiii. 1 to 7) and St. Peter (1 Ep. ii. 13 to 18.) For we are here told that the civil magistrate is God's minister, to uphold right and repress wrong; that obedience to him in this is not only of moral, but religious obligation; and that he who resists this function disobeys God.

What, then, is man's natural liberty? We answer, that it is only privilege to do whatever he has a moral right to do. Freedom to do whatever a man wills, is not a liberty, either natural or civil, but an unnatural license, a natural iniquity; man's will being naturally depraved. What then is man's civil liberty? We reply, that under an equitable government, it is the same—the privilege to do whatever he has a moral right to do. No government is perfectly equitable: none are wholly unjust. Some withhold more, some fewer, of the citizen's moral rights. None withhold them all. Hence, under the most despotic government there are some rights left, and so, some liberty. A perfectly just government would be one which would allot to each citizen freedom to do all the things which he had a moral right to do, and nothing else. Such a government would not restrain the natural liberty of any citizen in any respect; each man's civil liberty would be identical with his natural. Government does not originate rights, neither can it justly take them away. But practically, it confirms, instead of impairing, our natural liberty; because it secures us in the exercise of it.

But the friends of liberal government may feel a lurking suspicion of this plain statement; because it is on a theory of pretended 'divine right' that the arguments for legitimacy, passive obedience, and despotism repose. Let us, then, pause to inquire whether the true scheme looks in that direction. And we ask first: Whether it is not much more likely that tyrannical conclusions will be drawn from those principles which ignore God, the great standard of right, and original moral distinctions, which are the basis of all rights, and so of all liberty—from principles which make man's might his natural right; rather than from our principles, which solidly found man's rights in eternal moral distinctions, and in the will of a just and benevolent God, the common Father, before whom rulers and ruled are equal? And when we turn to the history of opinion, we see that while Locke illogically deduced from this theory of the social contract a scheme of liberal government, his greater master, Hobbes, inferred that the most complete despotism was the most consistent. And both the French and the Yankee Jacobins, deriving from it an impious deification of the will of the mob which happens to be the larger, as the supreme law, have reduced their theory to practice in the most violent, ruthless, and mischievous oppressions ever perpetrated on civilized communities. Let the tree be judged by its fruits.

We repeat, that the glory and strength of the Christian theory of human government and liberty is this: that it founds man's rights on eternal moral distinctions. The liberty it grants each man is privilege of doing all those things which he, with his particular character and relations, is morally entitled to do. Privilege of doing all other things it retrenches; for what would this be but sin? Now the epitome of moral distinctions is, 'Love thy neighbour as thyself.' It is the same law expressed in the "Golden Rule." The meaning of this, as we saw, is, not that we must do to our fellow all that our caprice might desire, if our positions were inverted; but what we should believe ourselves morally entitled to require of him, in that case. Here, then, is the true basis of human equality. Men are all children of a common Father, brethren of the same race, each one entitled by the same right to his own appropriate share of well-being. Hence, by a single and conclusive step, as the foundation of civil government is moral, its proper object is the good of all, governors and governed. Government is not for the behoof of rulers, but of the ruled also. Subjects were not made for kings, but kings for subjects. Indeed, rulers are themselves subjects, owing allegiance to the universal law of right, and members of the brotherhood for whose common good this law reigns. In the sublime Words of Samuel Rutherford, Rex, Lex. Neither Scriptures nor providence give to rulers any of that paternal right over the people, of which the legitimatists prate. They neither have for their subjects the father's instinctive love, nor the father's natural superiority in virtue, experience, or powers. The Scriptural governments over Israel were none of them legitimatist; and that to which Paul, Peter, and Christ owned conscientious allegiance, the Empire of the Cæsars, was not hereditary, and was a recent novelty. Again: while it is God's ordinance that men shall live under governments, no one form of government is ordained. "The powers that be are ordained of God." The one which, in His providence, actually subsists, is the legitimate one to the individual conscience. Still less has God indicated the individuals who shall govern as His agents. There is no divine nomination of the particular person. Hence, as government is for the common good of all, the selection of these agents belongs to the common wisdom and rectitude of the whole. And it is in this sense, (and only this,) that the Christian holds that the power of rulers is delegated from the ruled. In the higher sense, it is delegated from God, who is our true, rightful, and literal despot. The despotism of perfect, infinite rectitude is the most perfect freedom.

Now it is clear, that the several rights of different individuals in the same society must differ exceedingly, because the persons differ indefinitely in powers, knowledge, virtue, and natural relations to each other. From that very law of love and equity, whence the moral equality of men was inferred, it must also follow, that one man is not morally entitled to pursue his natural well-being at the expense of that of other men, or of the society. Each one's right must be so pursued, as not to infringe others' rights. The well-being of all is inter-connected. Hence equity, yea, a true equality itself, demands a varied distribution of social privilege among the members, according to their different characters and relations. In other words, an equal government must confer very different degrees of power, and impose very different degrees of restraint, upon different classes of members. To attempt an identical and mechanical equality; to confer on those who are incompetent to use them, the same privileges granted to others who can and will use them rightfully, would be essential inequality; for it would clothe the incompetent and undeserving with power to injure the deserving and capable, without real benefit to themselves. Hence, the civic liberties of all classes in the same society ought not to be the same. Thus, of the adult members, half are females, inexorably separated by sex, strength, social relations, and natural duties. Hence different civic rights are properly given to the male, in some respects; not because it is right to empower him to consume upon the promotion of his natural well-being that of his sister, but because, on the whole, the well-being of both sexes is thus most promoted. Whether this result does follow, must be a question of fact, to be decided by experience, if not settled in advance by God's Word. There is in the society another class of members, the children, who are not only different from, but inferior to, the adults, in knowledge, strength, experience, and self-controul. Hence, it is equitable to withhold from them still other privileges of the full citizenship. Again: the amount of privileges properly conceded to the body of citizens of the first class, should vary in different commonwealths with their average character. If intelligence and virtue are, in the average, more developed, the restraints of government should be fewer; if less cultivated, more numerous. Different frames of government may be best for different communities.

Once more: If the society contains a class of adult members, so deficient in virtue and intelligence that they would only abuse the fuller privileges of other citizens to their own and others' detriment, it is just to withhold so many of these privileges, and to impose so much restraint, as may be necessary for the highest equity to the whole body, inclusive of this subject class. And how much restraint is just, must be determined by facts and experience. Any degree of it is righteous, which is necessary to the righteous end. This is so obvious, that even abolitionists admit it, when they lose sight for the moment of their hobby. Of this Dr. Francis Wayland, a prominent abolitionist, gives us a striking instance in his "Moral Science." (Boston, 1838, p. 351.) He says: "Whatever concessions on the part of the individual, and whatever powers on the part of society, are necessary to the existence of society, must, by the very fact of the existence of society, be taken for granted." On p. 356, he adds: "If it be asked which of these" (hereditary, mixed, or republican) "is the preferable form of government, the answer, I think, must be conditional. The best form of government for any people, is the best that its present social and moral condition renders practicable. A people may be so entirely surrendered to the influence of passion, and so feebly influenced by moral restraints, that a government which relied upon moral restraints could not exist for a day. In this case a subordinate and inferior principle yet remains,—the principle of fear: and the only resort is to a government of force, or a military despotism."