e fathers of the Republic, or
the sayings and doings of Mr. Seward in regard to it, are the more
worthy of the Dark Ages, it is not for him alone to determine.

"The law of nature," says he, "disavows such compacts; the law of
nature, written on the hearts and consciences of freemen, repudiates
them." If this be so, then it certainly follows that in founding States
no such compacts should be formed. For, as Mr. Seward says, "when we are
founding States, all these laws must be brought to the standard of the
laws of God, and must be tried by that standard, and must stand or fall
by it." This is true, we repeat; but the Senator who uttered this truth
was _not_ founding States or forming a constitution. He was living and
acting under a constitution already formed, and one which he had taken
an oath to support. If, in the construction of this instrument, our
fathers really followed "as precedents the abuses of tyrants and
robbers," then the course of the Senator in question was plain: _he
should have suffered martyrdom rather than take an oath to support it_.
For the law of nature, it is clear, permits no man first to take an oath
to support such compacts, and then repudiate them. If they are at war
with his conscience, then, in the name of all that is sacred, let him
repudiate them, but, by all means, without having first placed himself
under the necessity of repudiating, at the same time, the obligation of
his oath.

There is a question among casuists, whether an oath extorted by force
can bind a man to act in opposition to his conscience. But this was not
Mr. Seward's case. His oath was not extorted. If he had refused to take
it, he would have lost nothing _except an office_.

"There was deep philosophy," says he, "in the confession of an eminent
English judge. When he had condemned a young woman to death, under the
late sanguinary code of his country, for her first theft, she fell down
dead at his feet. 'I seem to myself,' said he, 'to have been pronouncing
sentence, not against the prisoner, but against the law itself.'" Ay,
there was something better than "deep philosophy" in that English judge;
there was stern integrity; for, though he felt the law to be hard and
cruel, yet, having taken an oath to support it, he hardly felt himself
at liberty to dispense with the obligation of his oath. We commend his
example to the Senator from New York.

But who is this Senator, or any other politician of the present day,
that