Let us look a little at our duty under this statute. If a man falls into the water and is in danger of drowning, it is the natural duty of the bystanders to aid in pulling him out, even at the risk of wetting their garments. We should think a man a coward who could swim, and would not save a drowning girl for fear of spoiling his coat. He would be indictable at common law. If a troop of wolves or tigers were about to seize a man, and devour him, and you and I could help him, it would be our duty to do so, even to peril our own limbs and life for that purpose. If a man undertakes to murder or steal a man, it is the duty of the bystanders to help their brother, who is in peril, against wrong from the two-legged man, as much as against the four-legged beast. But suppose the invader who seizes the man is an officer of the United States, has a commission in his pocket, a warrant for his deed in his hand, and seizes as a slave a man who has done nothing to alienate his natural rights--does that give him any more natural right to enslave a man than he had before? Can any piece of parchment make right wrong, and wrong right?
The fugitive has been a slave before: does the wrong you committed yesterday, give you a natural right to commit wrong afresh and continually? Because you enslaved this man"s father, have you a natural right to enslave his child? The same right you would have to murder a man because you butchered his father first. The right to murder is as much transmissible by inheritance as the right to enslave! It is plain to me that it is the natural duty of citizens to rescue every fugitive slave from the hands of the marshal who essays to return him to bondage; to do it peaceably if they can, forcibly if they must, but by all means to do it. Will you stand by and see your countrymen, your fellow-citizens of Boston, sent off to slavery by some commissioner?
Shall I see my own parishioners taken from under my eyes and carried back to bondage, by a man whose const.i.tutional business it is to work wickedness by statute? Shall I never lift an arm to protect him? When I consent to that, you may call me a hireling shepherd, an infidel, a wolf in sheep"s clothing, even a defender of slave-catching if you will; and I will confess I was a poor dumb dog, barking always at the moon, but silent as the moon when the murderer came near.
I am not a man who loves violence. I respect the sacredness of human life. But this I say, solemnly, that I will do all in my power to rescue any fugitive slave from the hands of any officer who attempts to return him to bondage. I will resist him as gently as I know how, but with such strength as I can command; I will ring the bells, and alarm the town; I will serve as head, as foot, or as hand to any body of serious and earnest men, who will go with me, with no weapons but their hands, in this work. I will do it as readily as I would lift a man out of the water, or pluck him from the teeth of a wolf, or s.n.a.t.c.h him from the hands of a murderer. What is a fine of a thousand dollars, and jailing for six months, to the liberty of a man? My money perish with me, if it stand between me and the eternal law of G.o.d. I trust there are manly men enough in this house to secure the freedom of every fugitive slave in Boston, without breaking a limb or rending a garment.
One thing more I think is very plain, that the fugitive has the same natural right to defend himself against the slave-catcher, or his const.i.tutional tool, that he has against a murderer or a wolf. The man who attacks me to reduce me to slavery, in that moment of attack alienates his right to life, and if I were the fugitive, and could escape in no other way, I would kill him with as little compunction as I would drive a mosquito from my face. It is high time this was said. What gra.s.shoppers we are before the statute of men! what Goliaths against the law of G.o.d! What capitalist heeds your statute of usury when he can get illegal interest? How many banks are content with six _per cent._ when money is scarce? Did you never hear of a merchant evading the duties of the custom-house? When a man"s liberty is concerned, we must keep the law, must we? betray the wanderer, and expose the outcast?[13]
In the same manner the natural duty of a man overrides all the special obligations which a man takes on himself as a magistrate by his official oath. Our theory of office is this: The man is sunk in the magistrate; he is _un homme couvert_; his individual manhood is covered up and extinguished by his official cap; he is no longer a man, but a mere president, general, governor, representative, sheriff, juror, or constable; he is absolved from all allegiance to G.o.d"s law of the universe when it conflicts with man"s law of the land; his official business as a magistrate supersedes his natural duty as a man. In virtue of this theory, President Polk, and his coadjutors in Congress and out of it, with malice aforethought and intent to rob and to kill, did officially invade Mexico, and therein "slay, kill, and murder" some thousands of men, as well Americans as Mexicans. This is thought right because he did it officially. But the fact that he and they were magistrates, doing official business, did not make the killing any the less a wrong than if he and they had been private men, with General Lopez and not General Taylor to head or back them. The official killing of a man who has not alienated his right to life, is just as much a violation of the law of G.o.d, and the natural duty of a man, as the unofficial killing of such a person. Because you and I and some other foolish people put a man in a high office, and get him to take an oath, does that, all at once, invest him with a natural right to kill anybody he sees fit; to kill an innocent Mexican? All his natural rights he had before, and it would be difficult to ascertain where the people could find the right to authorize him to do a wrong. A man does not escape from the jurisdiction of natural law and the dominion of G.o.d by enlisting in the army, or by taking the oath of the President; for justice, the law paramount of the universe, extends over armies and nations.
A little while ago a murderer was hanged in Boston, by the Sheriff of Suffolk county, at the command of the Governor and Council of Ma.s.sachusetts, by the aid of certain persons called grand and pet.i.t jurors, all of them acting in their official capacity, and doing the official business they had sworn to do. If it be a wrong thing to hang a man, or to take his life except in self-defence, and while in imminent peril, then it is not any less a wrong because men do it in their official character, in compliance with their oath. I am speaking of absolute wrong, not merely what is wrong relatively to the man"s own judgment, for I doubt not that all those officers were entirely conscientious in what they did, and therefore no blame rests on them.
But if a man believes it wrong to take human life deliberately, except in the cases named, then I do not see how, with a good conscience, he can be partaker in the death of any man, notwithstanding his official oath.
Let me suppose a case which may happen here, and before long. A woman flies from South Carolina to Ma.s.sachusetts to escape from bondage. Mr.
Greatheart aids her in her escape, harbors and conceals her, and is brought to trial for it. The punishment is a fine of one thousand dollars and imprisonment for six months. I am drawn to serve as a juror, and pa.s.s upon this offence. I may refuse to serve, and be punished for that, leaving men with no scruples to take my place, or I may take the juror"s oath to give a verdict according to the law and the testimony.
The law is plain, let us suppose, and the testimony conclusive.
Greatheart himself confesses that he did the deed alleged, saving one ready to perish. The judge charges, that if the jurors are satisfied of that fact, then they must return that he is guilty. This is a nice matter. Here are two questions. The one, put to me in my official capacity as juror, is this: "Did Greatheart aid the woman?" The other, put to me in my natural character as man, is this: "Will you help punish Greatheart with fine and imprisonment for helping a woman obtain her unalienable rights?" I am to answer both. If I have extinguished my manhood by my juror"s oath, then I shall do my official business and find Greatheart guilty, and I shall seem to be a true man; but if I value my manhood, I shall answer after my natural duty to love a man and not hate him, to do him justice, not injustice, to allow him the natural rights he has not alienated, and shall say "Not guilty." Then foolish men, blinded by the dust of courts, may call me forsworn and a liar; but I think human nature will justify the verdict.[14]
In cases of this kind, when justice is on one side and the court on the other, it seems to me a conscientious man must either refuse to serve as a juror, or else return a verdict at variance with the facts and what courts declare to be his official business as juror; but the eyes of some men have been so long blinded by what the court declares is the law, and by its notion of the juror"s function, that they will help inflict such a punishment on their brother, and the judge decree the sentence, in a case where the arrest, the verdict and the sentence are the only wrong in which the prisoner is concerned. It seems to me it is time this matter should be understood, and that it should be known that no official oath can take a man out of the jurisdiction of G.o.d"s natural law of the universe.
A case may be brought before a commissioner or judge of the United States, to determine whether Daniel is a slave, and therefore to be surrendered up. His official business, sanctioned by his oath, enforced by the law of the land, demands the surrender; his natural duty, sanctioned by his conscience, enforced by absolute justice, forbids the surrender. What shall he do? There is no serving of G.o.d and Mammon both.
He may abandon his commission and refuse to remain thus halting between two opposites. But if he keeps his office, I see not how he can renounce his nature and send back a fugitive slave, and do as great a wrong as to make a free man a slave!
Suppose the Const.i.tution had been altered, and Congress had made a law, making it the business of the United States" commissioners to enslave and sell at public outcry all the red-haired men in the nation, and forbid us to aid and abet their escape, to harbor and conceal them under the same penalties just now mentioned; do you think any commissioner would be justified before G.o.d by his oath in kidnapping the red-haired men, or any person in punishing such as harbored or concealed them, such as forcibly took the victims out of the hand of officials who would work mischief by statute? Will the color of a hair make right wrong, and wrong right?
Suppose a man has sworn to keep the Const.i.tution of the United States, and the Const.i.tution is found to be wrong in certain particulars: then his oath is not morally binding, for before his oath, by his very existence, he is morally bound to keep the law of G.o.d as fast as he learns it. No oath can absolve him from his natural allegiance to G.o.d.
Yet I see not how a man can knowingly, and with a good conscience, swear to keep what he deems wrong to keep, and will not keep, and does not intend to keep.
It seems to me very strange that men so misunderstand the rights of conscience and their obligations to obey their country. Not long ago, an eminent man taunted one of his opponents, telling him he had better adhere to the "higher law." The newspapers echoed the sneer, as if there were no law higher than the Const.i.tution. Latterly, the democratic party, even more completely than the whig party, seems to have forgotten that there is any law higher than the Const.i.tution, any rights above vested rights.[15]
An eminent theologian of New England, who has. .h.i.therto done good and great service in his profession, grinding off the barb of Calvinism, wrote a book in defence of slave-catching, on "Conscience and the Const.i.tution," a book which not only sins against the sense of the righteous in being wicked, but against the worldliness of the world in being weak,--and he puts the official business of keeping "a compact"
far before the natural duty of keeping a conscience void of offence, and serving G.o.d. But suppose forty thieves a.s.semble on Fire Island, and make a compact to rob every vessel wrecked on their coast, and reduce the survivors to bondage. Suppose I am born amongst that brotherhood of pirates, am I morally bound to keep that compact, or to perform any function which grows out of it? Nay, I am morally bound to violate the compact, to keep the pirates from their plunder and their prey. Instead of forty thieves on Fire Island, suppose twenty millions of men in the United States make a compact to enslave every sixth man--the dark men--am I morally bound to heed that compact, or to perform any function which grows out of it? Nay, I am morally bound to violate the compact, in every way that is just and wise. The very men who make such a compact are morally discharged from it as soon as they see it is wrong. The forty Jews who bound themselves by wicked oath to kill Paul before they broke their fast,--were they morally bound to keep their word? Nay, morally bound to break it.
I will tell you a portion of the story of a fugitive slave whom I have known. I will call his name Joseph, though he was in worse than Egyptian bondage. He was "owned" by a notorious gambler, and once ran away, but was retaken. His master proceeded to punish him for that crime, took him to a chamber, locked the door, and lighted a fire; he then beat the slave severely. After that he put the branding-iron in the fire, took a knife,--I am not telling of what took place in Algiers, but in Alabama,--and proceeded to cut off the ears of his victim! The owner"s wife, alarmed at the shrieks of the sufferer, beat down the door with a sledge-hammer, and prevented that catastrophe. Afterwards, two slaves of this gambler, for stealing their master"s sheep, were beaten so that they died of the stripes. The "Minister" came to the funeral, told the others that those were wicked slaves, who deserved their fate; that they would never "rise" in the general resurrection, and were not fit to be buried! Accordingly their bodies were thrown into a hole and left there.
Joseph ran away again; he came to Boston; was sheltered by a man whose charity never fails; he has been in my house, and often has worshipped here with us. Shall I take that man and deliver him up?--do it "with alacrity?" Shall I suffer that gambler to carry his prey from this city?
Will you allow it--though all the laws and const.i.tutions of men give the commandment? G.o.d do so unto us if we suffer it.[16]
This we need continually to remember: that nothing in the world without is so sacred as the Eternal Law of G.o.d; of the world within nothing is more venerable than our own conscience, the permanent, everlasting oracle of G.o.d. The Urim and Thummim were but Jewish or Egyptian toys on the breast-plate of the Hebrew priest; the Delphic oracle was only a subtle cheat, but this is the true Shekinah and presence of G.o.d in your heart: as this
----"p.r.o.nounces lastly on each deed, Of so much fame in heaven expect your meed."
If I am consciously and continually false to this, it is of no avail that I seem loyal to all besides; I make the light that is in me darkness, and how great is that darkness! The centre of my manhood is gone, and I am rotten at my heart. Men may respect me, honor me, but I am not respectable, I am a base, dishonorable man, and like a tree, broad-branched, and leafed with green, but all its heart gnawed out by secret worms, at some slight touch one day, my rotten trunk will fall with horrid squelch, bringing my leafy honors to dishonored dust, and men will wonder that bark could hide such rottenness and ruin.
But if I am true to this Legate of G.o.d, holding his court within my soul, then my power to discover the just and right will enlarge continually; the axis of my little life will coincide with the life of the infinite G.o.d, His Conscience and my own be one. Then my character and my work will lie in the plane of his Almighty action; no other will in me, His infinite wisdom, justice, holiness, and love, will flow into me, a ceaseless tide, filling with life divine and new the little creeklets of my humble soul. I shall be one with G.o.d, feel His delight in me and mine in Him, and all my mortal life run o"er with life divine and bless mankind. Let men abhor me, yea, scourge and crucify, angels are at hand; yes, the Father is with me!
How we mistake. Men think if they can but get wickedness dignified into a statute, enrolled in the capitol, signed by the magistrates, and popular with the people, that all is secure. Then they rejoice, and at their "Thanksgiving dinner," say with the short-lived tyrant in the play, after he had slain the rightful heirs of England"s throne, and set his murderous hoof on justice at every step to power,--
"Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer" ...
and think that Sin sits fast and rides secure.[17] But no statute of men is ever fixed on man till it be first the absolute, the right, the law of G.o.d. All else lasts but its day, forever this, forever still the same. By "previous questions," men may stop debate, vote down minorities with hideous grin, but the still small voice of Justice will whisper in the human heart, will be trumpet-tongued in history to teach you that you cannot vote down G.o.d.
In your private character, if you would build securely, you must build on the natural law of G.o.d, inherent in your nature and in his; if the nation would build securely, it must build so. Out of their caprice, their selfishness, and their sin, may men make statutes, to last for a day, built up with joyous huzzas, and the chiming of a hundred guns, to come down with the curses of the mult.i.tude, and smitten by the thunder of G.o.d; but to build secure, you must build on the Justice of the Almighty. The beat.i.tudes of Jesus will outlast the codes of all the tyrants of the old world and the new. So I have seen gamblers hurry and huddle up their booths at a country muster, on the unsmoothed surface of a stubble-field, foundation good enough for such a structure, not a post plumb, to endure a single day of riot, drunkenness, and sin; but to build a pyramid which shall outlast empires, men lay bare the bosom of the primeval rock, and out of primeval rock they build thereon their well-joined work, outlasting Syria, Greece, Carthage, Rome, venerable to Time, and underneath its steadfast foot the earthquakes pa.s.s all harmlessly away.
All things conspire to overturn a wrong. Every advance of man is hostile to it. Reason is hostile; religion is its deadly foe; the new-born generation will a.s.sail it, and it must fall. Of old it was written, "Though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not prosper," and the world"s wide walls, from the remotest bounds of peopled s.p.a.ce, laugh out their loud and long "Amen!" Let Iniquity be never so old and respectable, get all the most eminent votes, have the newspapers on her side, guns fired at her success, it all avails nothing; for this is G.o.d"s world, not a devil"s, and His eternal word has gone forth that Right alone shall last forever and forever.
Oh, young man, now in the period of the pa.s.sions, reverence your Conscience. Defer that to no appet.i.te, to no pa.s.sion, to no foolish compliance with other men"s ways, to no unG.o.dly custom, even if become a law. Ask always "Is it right for me?" Be brave and self-denying for conscience" sake. Fear not to differ from men; keeping your modesty, keep your integrity also. Let not even your discretion consume your valor. Fear not to be scrupulously upright and pure; be afraid neither of men"s hate, nor even of their laugh and haughty scorn, but shudder at the thought of tampering with your sense of right, even in the smallest matters. The Flesh will come up with deceitful counsels--the Spirit teaching the commandments of G.o.d; give both their due. Be not the senses" slave, but the soul"s free man.
Oh brother man, who once wert young, in the period of ambition, or beyond it, if such a time there be, can you trust the selfishness, the caprice, the pa.s.sions, and the sin of men, before your own conscience, renounce the law of G.o.d for the customs of men? When your volcanic mountain has been capped with snow, Interest, subtler than all the pa.s.sions of the flesh, comes up to give her insidious counsel. "On our side," says she, "is the applause of men; feasting is with us; the wise and prudent are here also, yea, the ancient and honorable, men much older than thy father; and with gray hairs mottling thy once auburn head, wilt thou forsake official business, its solid praise, and certain gain, for the phantom of natural duty, renounce allegiance to warm human lies for the cold truth of G.o.d remote and far!" Say, "Get thee behind me," to such counsellors; "I will not stain my age by listening to your subterranean talk."
Oh, brother man, or old or young, how will you dare come up before your G.o.d and say: "Oh Lord, I heard, I heard thy voice in my soul, at times still and small, at times a trumpet talking with me of the Right, the Eternal Right, but I preferred the low counsels of the flesh; the commands of Interest I kept; I feared the rich man"s decorous rage; I trembled at the public roar, and I scorned alike my native duty and thy natural law. Lo, here is the talent Thou gavest me, my sense of right. I have used each other sense, this only have I hid; it is eaten up with rust, but thus I bring it back to Thee. Take what is thine!" Who would dare thus to sin against infinite Justice? Who would wish to sin against it when it is also infinite Love, and the law of right is but the highway on which the Almightiness of the Father comes out to meet his prodigal, a great way off, penitent and returning home, or unrepentant still, refusing to be comforted, and famishing on draff and husks, while there is bread of heavenly life enough and yet to spare, comes out to meet us, to take us home, and to bless us forever and forever?
FOOTNOTES:
[11] The terms _laws of the human spirit_, _spiritual laws_, &c., are sometimes used to denote exclusively those laws which man _must_ keep, not merely what he _ought_ to keep, laws in relation to which man has no more freedom than a ma.s.s of marble. The words are used above in a different sense.
[12]
Why dost thou, Tyrant, boast abroad thy wicked works to praise?
Dost thou not know there is a G.o.d, whose mercies last alwaies?
On mischiefe why sett"st thou thy minde, and wilt not walke upright?
Thou hast more l.u.s.t false tales to find, than bring the truth to light.
Thou dost delight in fraud and guile, in mischiefe, bloud and wrong.
Thy lips have learned the flattering stile, oh false deceitful tongue.
Therefore shall G.o.d for aye confound, and pluck thee from thy place; Thy seed root out from off the ground, and so shall thee deface.
The just, when they behold thy fall, with feare shall praise the Lord; And in reproach of thee withall, crie out with one accord:--
"Behold the man that woulde not take the Lord for his defence; But of his goods his G.o.d did make, and trust his corrupt sense.
But I, as olive, fresh and green, shall spring and spread abroad; For why? my trust all times hath been, upon the living G.o.d!
"For this therefore will I give praise to Thee with heart and voyce; I will set forth Thy name alwayes, wherein Thy saints rejoyce."
_Psalm lii. in Sternhold and Hopkins._
[13] It has been said that the fugitive slave law cannot be executed in Boston. Let us not be deceived. Who would have thought a year ago, that the Senator of Boston would make such a speech as that of last March, that so many of the leading citizens of Boston would write such a letter of approval, that such a bill could pa.s.s Congress, and a man be found in this city (Mr. Samuel A. Eliot) to vote for it and get no rebuke from the people! Yet a single man should not endure the shame alone, which belongs in general to the leading men of the city. The member for Boston faithfully represented the public opinion of his most eminent const.i.tuents, lay and clerical. Here is an account of what took place in New York since the delivery of the sermon.
[From the New York Tribune.]
"SLAVE CATCHING IN NEW YORK--FIRST CASE UNDER THE LAW.
"The following case, which occurred yesterday, is one of peculiar interest, from the fact of its being the first case under the new Fugitive Slave Law. It will be noticed that there is very little of the "law"s delay" here; the proceedings were as summary as an Arkansas court audience could desire.