Then there is a third class who will do wrong, unless they are kept from it by punishment or the fear thereof. They do not see the law of God, or will not keep it if they do. The court-house helps them; so does the jail, keeping them from actual crime while there, deterring while out of it. Take away the outward restraints, their seeming virtue falls to pieces like a barrel without its hoops. These are knaves. I think this class of men will continually diminish with the advance of mankind; that the saints will grow common, and the knaves get scarce. Good establishments promote this end; those of New England, especially the schools, help forward this good work, to convert the knaves to common men, to transfigure the common men to saints. Bad establishments, like many in Austria, Ireland, and South Carolina, produce the opposite effect: they hinder the development of what is high and noble in man, and call out what is mean and low; for human laws are often instruments to debauch a nation.
If a nation desires to keep the law of God, good establishments will help the work; if it have none such, it must make them before it can be at peace. They are as needful as coats and gowns for the body. Sometimes the consciousness of the people is far in advance of its establishments, and there must be a revolution to restore the equilibrium. It is so at Rome, in Austria and Prussia. All these countries are on the brink of revolution, and are only kept down by the bayonet. It was so here seventy-five years ago, and our fathers went through fire and blood to get the establishments they desired. They took of the righteousness in the people, and made therefrom institutions, constitutions, and statutes. So much for the second and derivative safeguard.
The third is Righteousness in the Public Officers, good men to administer the establishments, manage the institutions, expound and enforce the constitutions and execute the statutes, and so represent the righteousness of the people. In the hands of such men as see the purpose of social and individual life, and feel their duty to keep the integrity of their conscience and obey the law of God, even bad establishments are made to work well, and serve the purpose of human life; because the man puts out the evil of the institution, constitution, or statute, and puts his own righteousness in its place. There was once a judge in New England who sometimes had to administer bad laws. In these cases, he told the jury, "Such is the law, common or enacted; such are the precedents; such the opinions of Judge This and Judge That; but justice demands another thing. I am bound by my oath as judge to expound to you the law as it is; you are bound by oath as jurors to do justice under it; that is your official business here to-day." Such a man works well with poor tools; with good ones he would work much better. By the action of such men, aided by public opinion which they now follow and now direct, without any change of legislation, there is a continual progress of justice in the establishments of a nation. Bad statutes are dropped or corrected, constitutions silently ameliorated, all institutions made better. Thus wicked laws become obsolete. There is a law in England compelling all men to attend church. Nobody enforces it.
Put a bad man to administer the establishments, one who does not aim at the purpose of society, nor feel bound to keep the higher law of God, the best institutions, constitutions, statutes, become ineffectual, because the man puts out the good thereof, and puts in his own evil. The best establishments will be perverted to the worst of purposes. Rome had all the machinery of a commonwealth; with Cæsar at the head it became a despotism. In 1798, France had the establishments of a republic; with Napoleon for first consul, you know what it became: it soon was made an empire, and the Constitution was trodden under foot. In 1851, France has the institutions of a democracy; with Louis Napoleon as chief, you see what is the worth of the provisions for public justice. What was the Constitution of England good for under the thumb of Charles I. and James II.? What was the value of the common law, of the trial by jury, of Magna Charta, "such a fellow as will have no sovereign," with a George Jeffries for Judge, a James II. for king, and such juries as corrupt sheriffs brought together? They were only a mockery. What were the charters of New England against a wicked king and a corrupt cabinet? Connecticut went out of the court and into the Charter Oak for self-preservation. What were all the institutions of Christianity when Alexander VI. dishonored the seat even of the Pope?
Put a saint, who feels his duty to keep the law of God, in office, even bad rules will work well. But put a man who recognizes no law of God, not into a jail, but in a great office; give him courts and courtiers, fleets and armies, nay, only newspapers and "union committees" to serve him, you see what will be done. The resolute determination of the people to obey the law of God, the righteousness of their establishments, will be of small avail, frustrated by the wickedness of the men in power. The English Parliament once sent a fleet to aid the Huguenots at Rochelle. King Charles I. gave the admiral secret orders to surrender his ships to the enemy he was sent to oppose! The purpose of all human life may be as foully betrayed by wicked men in a high place. In a monarchy, the king is answerable for it with his neck; in a republic there is the same danger; but, where all seems to proceed from the people, it may be more difficult to do justice to a wicked officer. So much for the third safeguard, also derivative from the first.
To make a good house, you want good materials,—solid stone, sound bricks, sound timber; a good plan, and also good builders. So, as safeguards of society, to achieve its purpose, you want good material,—a righteous people who will be faithful to their own conscience, and obey God and reverence the law of nature; a good plan,—righteous establishments, institutions, constitutions, statutes conformable to the laws of God; and you want good builders,—righteous officers to represent the eternal justice of the Father. You want this threefold righteousness.
How are we provided with these three safeguards just now? Have we this Righteousness in the People?—which is the first thing. Perhaps there is no nation with a higher reverence for justice, and more desire to keep the law of God; at least we have been told so, often enough. I think the nation never had more of it than now; never so much. But here are whole classes of men who practically seem to have no reverence for God's law; who declare there is no such thing; whose conduct is most shamefully unrighteous in all political matters. They seek to make us believe there is no law above the caprice of man. Of such I will speak by and by.
It is plain there is not righteousness enough in the people to hinder us from doing what we know is contrary to the law of God. Thus, we keep one sixth part of the people in a state of slavery. This we do in violation of our own axiom, declared to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with the unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We have here three millions of slaves: if things go on as now, there will be twelve millions before the century ends. We need not say we cannot help it. Slavery in America is as much our work as democracy, as free schools, as the Protestant form of religion. At the Declaration, we might have made the slaves free; at the time of the Confederation; at the formation of the Constitution. But no! there was not righteousness enough in the people to resist the temptation of eating the bread which others earn. American slavery has always been completely in the power of the American people. We may abolish it any time we will. We might have restricted it to the old States, which had it before, and so have kept it out of Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and all that mighty realm west of the great river. No! we took pains to extend it there. We fought with Mexico to carry slavery into the "Halls of the Montezumas," whence a half-barbarous people drove it away. We long to seize on Cuba, and yet other lands, to plant there our "American institution." We are indignant when Austria unjustly seizes an American in Hungary, and hales him to prison; but have nothing to say when slave States systematically confine the colored freemen of the North, or when Georgia offers a large reward for the head of a citizen of Boston. We talk of the "pauper labor of Europe." It is pauper labor, very much of it. I burn with indignation at the men who keep it so. But it is not slave labor. Paupers spin cotton at Manchester, and at Glasgow, say the whigs. Who raises cotton at South Carolina and Mississippi? The spoil of the slave is in our houses. We are a republic, but the only nation of the Christian world whose fields are tilled by chattel slaves. To such a degree has covetousness blinded the eyes of the whole nation. In saying all this, I will not say that we are less righteous than other nations. No other people has had the same temptation. It has been too great for America. Slavery is loved as well in Boston as in New Orleans. The love of liberty is strong with us; but it is liberty for ourselves we love, not for our brother man whom we can oppress and enthrall. This vice is not confined to the South. I look on some of the clergymen of the North as only chaplains of the slave-driver.