Part 17

I. The false idea is set on foot, that the people are morally bound to obey any law which is made until it is repealed. General Haynau wrote a letter, not long ago, to the subalterns in the Austrian army, and thus quoth he: "You are bound to obey the law. It is none of your business whether the law is constitutional or not; that is our affair." So went it with our officers here. We are told that there is "no such thing as a higher law," "no rule of conduct better than that enacted by the law of the land." Conscience is only to tell you to keep the statutes. Religion consists in "fearing God and serving the king." You are told that religion bids you to "fear God and keep the commandments," no matter what these commandments may be. No matter whether it be King Ahab, or King Peter the Cruel: you are told,--"Mr. Republican, what right have you to question the constitutionality or justice of any thing? Your business is to keep the law." Religion is a very excellent thing, quotes Mr. Webster, except when it interferes in politics; then it makes men mad.

It is instructive to see the different relations which religion has sustained to law, at different periods of the world's history. At some other time I may dwell more at length upon this; now I will say but one word. At the beginning, religion takes precedence of law. Before there is any human government, man bows himself to the Source of law, and accepts his rule of conduct from his God. By and by, some more definite rule is needed, and wise men make human laws; but they pretend to derive these from a divine source. All the primitive lawgivers, Moses, Minos, Zaleucus, Numa, and the rest, speak in the name of God. For a long time, law comes up to religion for aid and counsel. At length law and religion, both imperfect, are well established in society, religion being the elder sister; both act as guardians of mankind. Institution after institution rises up, all of them baptized by religion and confirmed by law, taking the sacrament from the hands of each. At length it comes to pass that law seeks to turn religion out of doors. Politicians, intoxicated with ambition, giddy with power, and sometimes also drunk with strong drink, make a statute which outrages all the dictates of humanity, and then insist that it is the duty of sober men to renounce religion for the sake of keeping the wicked statute of the politicians. All tyrants have done so!

In the North, the majority of men think that the law of man is subordinate to religion--the statutes of man beneath the law of God; that as ethics, personal morals, are amenable to conscience, so politics, national morals, are amenable to the same conscience; and that religion has much to do with national as with individual life. Depend upon it, that idea is the safeguard of the State and of the law. It will preserve it, purify it, and keep it; but it will scourge every wicked law out of the temple of justice with iron whips, if need be. Depend upon it, when we lose our hold of that idea, all hope of order is gone. But there is no danger; we are pretty well persuaded, that the law of God is a little greater than the statute of an accidental president unintentionally chosen for four years. When we think otherwise, we may count our case hopeless, and give up all.

But with the controlling class of men it is not so. They tell us that we must keep any law, constitutional or not, legal or not, just or unjust: first, that we must submit passively, and let the government execute it; next, we must actively obey it, and with alacrity when called upon to execute it ourselves. This doctrine is the theory advanced in most of the newspapers of Boston. It is preached in some of the pulpits, though, thank God! not in all.

This doctrine appears in the charge of the Judge of the Circuit Court to the grand jury.[27] I believe that judge to be a good and excellent and honorable man; I never heard a word to the contrary, and I am glad to think that it is so.[28] I have to deal only with his opinions; not with his theoretic doctrines of law, of which latter I profess to know nothing; but with the theoretic doctrines of morality he lays down. Of morality I do profess to know something.

He says some excellent things in his charge, which I am glad were said. He is modest in some places, and moderate in others. He does not think that a dozen black men taking a fugitive out of court are guilty of "levying war," and therefore should be hanged, drawn, and quartered, if you can catch them. All honor to his justice. He does not say, as the Secretary of State, that we must suppress discussion and stop agitation. He says we may agitate as much as we have a mind to; may not only speak against a law, but may declaim against it, which is to speak strongly. I thank the judge for this respect for the Constitution. But with regard to the higher and lower law, he has some peculiar opinions. He supposes a case: that the people ask him, "Which shall we obey, the law of man or the law of God?" He says, "I answer, obey both. The incompatibility which the question assumes does not exist."

So, then, here is a great general rule, that between the "law of man" and the "will of God" there is no incompatibility, and we must "obey both." Now let us see how this rule will work.

If I am rightly informed, King Ahab made a law that all the Hebrews should serve Baal, and it was the will of God that they should serve the Lord.--According to this rule of the judge, they must "obey both." But if they served Baal, they could not serve the Lord. In such a case, "what is to be done?"--We are told that Elijah gathered the prophets together; "and he came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye? If the Lord be God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him." Our modern prophet says, "Obey both. The incompatibility which the question assumes does not exist." Such is the difference between Judge Elijah and Judge Peleg.

Let us see how this rule will work in other cases; how you can make a compromise between two opposite doctrines. The king of Egypt commanded the Hebrew nurses, "When you do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, if it be a son ye shall kill him." I suppose it is plain to the Judge of the Circuit Court that this kind of murder, killing the new-born infants, is against "the will of God;" but it is a matter of record that it was according to "the law of man." Suppose the Hebrew nurses had come to ask Judge Sprague for his advice. He must have said, "Obey both!" His rule is a universal one.

Another decree was once made as it is said, in the Old Testament, that no man should ask any petition of any God for thirty days, save of the king, on penalty of being cast into the den of lions. Suppose Daniel--I mean the old Daniel, the prophet--should have asked him, What is to be done? Should he pray to Darius or pray to God? "Obey both!" would be the answer. But he cannot, for he is forbid to pray to God. We know what Daniel did do.

The elders and scribes of Jerusalem commanded the Christians not to speak or to teach at all in the name of Jesus; but Peter and John asked those functionaries, "Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye." Our judge must have said, There is no "incompatibility;" "obey both!" What "a comfortable Scripture" this would have been to poor John Bunyan! What a great ethical doctrine to St. Paul! He did not know such Christianity as that. Before this time a certain man had said, "No man can serve two masters." But there was one person who made the attempt, and he also is eminent in history. Here was "the will of God," to do to others as you would have others do to you: "Love thy neighbor as thyself." Here is the record of "the law of man:" "Now both the chief priests and the Pharisees had given a commandment, that, if any man knew where he [Jesus] were, he should show it that they might take him." Judas, it seems, determined to "obey both,"--"the law of man" and "the will of God."--So he sat with Jesus at the Last Supper, dipped his hand in the same dish, and took a morsel from the hand of Christ, given him in token of love. All this he did to obey "the will of God." Then he went and informed the Commissioner or Marshal where Jesus was. This he did to obey "the law of man." Then he came back, and found Christ,--the agony all over, the bloody sweat wiped off from his brow, presently to bleed again,--the Angel of Strength there with him to comfort him. He was arousing his sleeping disciples for the last time, and was telling them, "Pray, lest ye enter into temptation."--Judas came and gave him a kiss. To the eleven it seemed the friendly kiss, obeying "the will of God." To the Marshal it also seemed a friendly kiss,--obeying "the law of man." So, in the same act, he obeys "the law of God" and "the will of man," and there is no "incompatibility!"

Of old it was said, "Thou canst not serve God and mammon." He that said it, has been thought to know something of morals,--something of religion.

Till the fugitive slave law was passed, we did not know what a great saint Iscariot was. I think there ought to be a chapel for him, and a day set apart in the calendar. Let him have his chapel in the navy-yard at Washington. He has got a priest there already. And for a day in the calendar--set apart for all time the seventh of March!

Let us look at some other things in that Judge's address to the grand jury. "Unjust and oppressive laws may indeed be passed by human government. But if infinite and inscrutable Wisdom permits political society ... to establish such laws, may not the same Wisdom permit and require individuals ... to obey them?" Ask the prophets in such a case, if they would have felt themselves permitted and required to obey them! Ask the men who were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection; who had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment; who were stoned and sawn asunder; who were slain with the sword; who wandered about in sheep-skins and goat-skins, destitute, afflicted, and tormented, of whom the world was not worthy! Ask the apostles, who thanked God they were counted worthy to suffer shame in the name of Christ! Ask Paul, who was eight times publicly beaten, thrice shipwrecked; and in perils of waters, of robbers, of the heathen, of false brethren--that worst of all peril! Nay, ask Christ; let the Crucified reply,--whether, when a wicked law is made, and we are commanded to keep it, God means we should! Ask the men who, with their ocean-wearied feet, consecrated the rock of Plymouth forever! Ask the patriots of the Revolution! What do they say? I will not give the answer. Even the martyred Jesuits say No. Who is it that says Yes? Judas and the Judge. Let them go--each "to his own place." Let me say no more of them.

This attempt to keep the people down by false doctrine, is no new thing. But to say that there is no law higher than what the State can make, is practical atheism. It is not a denial of God in his person; that is only speculative atheism. It is a denial of the functions and attributes of God; that is real atheism. If there is no God to make a law for me, then there is no God for me.

The law of the land is so sacred, it must override the law of God, must it? Let us see if all the laws of the United States are kept everywhere. Let a black man go to South Carolina in a ship, and we shall see. Let the British minister complain that South Carolina puts British subjects in jail, for the color of their skin. Mr. Secretary Clayton tells him, We cannot execute the laws of the United States in South Carolina. Why not? Because the people of South Carolina will not allow it!

Are the laws of Massachusetts kept in Boston, then? The usury law says, Thou shalt not take more than six per cent. on thy money. Is that kept? There are thirty-four millions of banking capital in Massachusetts, and I think that every dollar of this capital has broken this law within the past twelve months; and yet no complaint has been made. There are three or four hundred brothels in this city of Boston, and ten or twelve hundred shops for the sale of rum. All of them are illegal: some are as well known to the police as is this house; indeed, a great deal more frequented by some of them, than any house of God. Does anybody disturb them? No! I have a letter from an alderman who furnishes me with facts of this nature, who says, that "Some of the low places are prosecuted, some broken up." Last Saturday night, the very men who guarded Mr. Sims, I am told, were playing cards in his prison-house, contrary to the laws of Massachusetts. In Court Square, in front of the court-house, is a rum-shop, one of the most frequented in the city, open at all hours of the day, and, for aught I know, of the night too. I never passed when its "fire was quenched," and its "worm" dead. Is its owner prosecuted? How many laws of Massachusetts have been violated this very week, in this very city, by the slave-hunters here, by the very officers of the State? What is the meaning of this? Every law which favors the accumulation of money, must be kept; but those which prohibit the unjust accumulation of money by certain classes--they need not be kept.[29]

No doubt it would be a great pity to have the city government careful to keep the laws of the city,--to suppress rum-shops, and save the citizens from the almshouse, the jail, and the gallows. Such laws may be executed at Truro and Wellfleet; but it is quite needless for the officers of "The Athens of America," to attend to the temperance laws.[30]--What a pity for the magistrates of Boston to heed the laws of the State! No; it is the fugitive slave law that they must keep.

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II. A great deal of pains has been taken to impress the people with their "moral duty to obey the fugitive slave law." To carry it out, government needs base men; and that, my brothers, is a crop which never fails. Rye and wheat may get blasted many times in the course of years; the potato may rot; apples and peaches fail. But base men never fail. Put up your black pirate-flag in the market-place, offer "money and office," and they will come as other carrion-vultures to their prey. The olive, the fig, and the orange are limited in their range; even Indian corn and oats will not grow everywhere; but base men are indigenous all the world over, between the tropics, and under a polar sky. No bad scheme ever failed for lack of bad men to carry it out. Do you want to kill Baptists and Quakers in Boston? There are the men for you. To hang "witches" at Salem? There are hangmen in plenty on Gallows Hill. Would James the Second butcher his subjects? He found his "human" tools ready. Would Elizabeth murder the Puritans and Catholics? There was no lack of ruffians. Would bloody Mary burn the Protestants? There were more executioners than victims. Would the Spanish Inquisition torture and put to death the men for whom Christ died? She found priests and "gentlemen," ready for their office. Would Nero murder the Christians, and make a spectacle of their sufferings? Rome is full of scoundrels to do the deed, and teems with spectators rushing to the amphitheatre at the cry of "Christians to the Lions!" all finding a holiday in their brothers' agony. Would the high-priests crucify the Son of man? They found a commissioner to issue the mandate, a marshal to enforce it, a commissioner to try him by illegal process,--for the process against Christ was almost as unconstitutional as that against Sims,--they found a commissioner ready to condemn Christ, against his own conscience, soldiers ready to crucify him. Ay! and there was a Peter to deny him, and a Judas to betray, and now there is a judge with his legal ethics, to justify the betrayal! I promised not to speak of Judas or the judge again, but they will come up before me! It is true, that, if in Boston, some judicial monster should wish to seethe a man in a pot of scalding water, he would find another John Boilman in Boston, as Judge Jeffries found one in England, in 1686.

The churches of New England, and the North, have had their trials. In my time they have been tried in various ways. The temperance reformation tried them. They have had perils on account of slavery. The Mexican war tried them; the fugitive slave law has put them to the rack. But, never in my day, have the churches been so sorely tried, nor done so well as now. The very letter of the New Testament on the one side, and of the Old Testament on the other, both condemned the law; the spirit of them both was against all slavery.

There are two great sects in Christendom,--the churches of Christianity, and the churches of commerce. The churches of Christianity always do well: they think that religion is love to God, and love to man. But the churches of commerce, which know no higher law, what should they do? Some of the ministers of the churches of commerce were wholly silent. Why so? The poor ministers were very modest all at once. Now, modesty is a commendable virtue; but see how it works. Here is a man who has given his mind ten, twenty, or thirty years to the study of theology, and knows every Hebrew particle of the Old Testament, and every Greek particle of the New Testament, as well as he knows the Lord's Prayer; every great work on the subject of Christianity, from Nicodemus down to Norton. Let him come out and say that the Old Testament was written like other books; let him say that the miracles of the Old and New Testament are like the miracles of the Popish legends; then, ministers in their pulpits, who never studied theology or philosophy, or pretended to study, only to know, the historical development of religion in the world,--they will come down instantly upon our poor man, call his doctrines "false," and call him an "infidel," an "atheist." But let a rich parishioner, or a majority of the rich parishioners, be in favor of the fugitive slave law, and all at once the minister is very modest indeed. He says to his people, by silence or by speech, "I do not understand these things; but you, my people, who all your lives are engaged in making money and nothing else, and worship mammon and nothing else, you understand them a great deal better than I do. My modesty forbids me to speak. Let us pray!"[31]

Some ministers have been silent; others have spoken out in favor of the lower law, and in derision of the higher law. Here is a famous minister, the very chief of his denomination, reported in the newspapers to have said that he would surrender his own mother to slavery rather than have the Union dissolved! I believe him this time. A few years ago, that minister printed, in the organ of his sect, that the existence of God was "not a certainty!" He did not mean to say that he doubted or disbelieved it, only that it was "not a certainty!" I should suppose that he had gone further in that direction, and thought the non-existence of God was "a certainty." But he is not quite original in this proposed sacrifice. He has been preceded and outbid by a Spanish Catholic. Here is the story in Senor de Castro's History of the Spanish Protestants, written this very year. I can tell the story shorter than it is there related. In 1581, there lived a man in Valladolid, who had two Protestant daughters, being himself a Catholic. The Inquisition was in full blast, and its fiery furnace heated seven times hotter than before. This man, according to the commandment of the priests and Pope, complained to the inquisitors against his daughters, who were summoned to appear before them. They were tried, and condemned to be burned alive, at his suggestion. He furnished the accusation, brought forward the evidence, and was the only witness in the case. That was not all. After this condemnation, he went round his own estates, and from selected trees cut down morsels of wood, and carried them to the city to use in burning his own daughters. He was allowed to do this, and of course the priest commended him for his piety and love of God! Thus, in 1581, in Valladolid, a father at noon-day, with wood from his own estate, on his own complaint and evidence, with his own hands, burned his two daughters alive; and the Catholic Church said, Well done! Now, in my opinion, the Hidalgo of Valladolid a little surpasses the Unitarian Doctor of Divinity. I do not know what "recompense of reward" the Spanish Hidalgo got for his deed; but the American divine, for his offer, has been put into "one of the priests' offices, that he might eat a piece of bread." He has been appointed, as the newspapers say, a Chaplain of the Navy at Washington. Verily he has his reward.

But there have been found men in Boston to go a little further. Last Thanksgiving Day, I said it would be difficult to find a magistrate in Boston to take the odium of sending a fugitive back to slavery. I believed, after all, men had some conscience, although they talked about its being a duty to deliver up a man to bondage. Pardon me, my country, that I rated you too high! Pardon me, town of Boston, that I thought your citizens all men! Pardon me, lawyers, that I thought you had been all born of mothers! Pardon me, ruffians, who kill for hire! I thought you had some animal mercy left, even in your bosom! Pardon me, United States' commissioners, marshals, and the like, I thought you all had some shame! Pardon me, my hearers, for such mistakes. One commissioner was found to furnish the warrant! Pardon me, I did not know he was a commissioner; if I had, I never would have said it!

Spirits of tyrants, I look down to you! Shade of Cain, you great first murderer, forgive me that I forgot your power, and did not remember that you were parent of so long a line! And you, my brethren, if hereafter I tell you that there is any limit of meanness or wickedness which a Yankee will not jump over, distrust me, and remind me of this day, and I will take it back!

Let us look at the public conduct of any commissioner who will send an innocent man from Boston into slavery. I would speak of all men charitably; for I know how easy it is to err, yea, to sin. I can look charitably on thieves, prowling about in darkness; on rumsellers, whom poverty compels to crime; on harlots, who do the deed of shame that holy woman's soul abhors and revolts at; I can pity the pirate, who scours the seas doing his fiendish crimes--he is tempted, made desperate by a gradual training in wickedness. The man, born at the South, owning slaves, who goes to Africa and sells adulterated rum in exchange for men to retail at Cuba,--I cannot understand the consciousness of such a man; yet I can admit that by birth and by breeding he has become so imbruted, he knows no better. Nay, even that he may perhaps justify his conduct to himself. I say I think his sin is not so dreadful as that of a commissioner in Boston who sends a man into slavery. A man commits a murder, inflamed by jealousy, goaded by desire of great gain, excited by fear, stung by malice, or poisoned by revenge, and it is a horrid thing. But to send a man into slavery is worse than to murder him. I should rather be slain than enslaved. To do this, inflamed by no jealousy, goaded by no desire of great gain,--only ten dollars!--excited by no fear, stung by no special malice, poisoned by no revenge,--I cannot comprehend that in any man, not even in a hyena. Beasts that raven for blood do not kill for killing's sake, but to feed their flesh. Forgive me, O ye wolves and hyenas! that I bring you into such company. I can only understand it in a devil!