In other words, when a sixth of the population of a nation
which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a
whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and
subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for
honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more
urgent is the fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but
ours is the invading army.
Paley, a common authority with many on moral questions, in his
chapter on the "Duty of Submission to Civil Government," resolves
all civil obligation into expediency; and he proceeds to say that
"so long as the interest of the whole society requires it, that is, so
long as the established government cannot be resisted or changed
without public inconveniency, it is the will of God... that the
established government be obeyed- and no longer. This principle
being admitted, the justice of every particular case of resistance
is reduced to a computation of the quantity of the danger and
grievance on the one side, and of the probability and expense of
redressing it on the other." Of this, he says, every man shall judge
for himself.
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