an not be yielded without sinning
against God, then our duty as individuals is quietly to submit to the
infliction of the penalty attached to disobedience; and that the right
of resistance or of revolution rests only in the body of people for
whose benefit government is instituted.

The application of these principles to the case of the fugitive slave
law is so obvious, as hardly to justify remark. The great body of the
people regard that law as consistent with the constitution of the
country and the law of God. Their duty, therefore, in the premises,
whether they think it wise or unwise, is perfectly plain. Those who take
the opposite view of the law, having in the great majority of cases,
nothing to do with enforcing it, are in no measure responsible for it.
Their duty is limited to the use of peaceable and constitutional means
to get it repealed. A large part of the people of this country thought
the acquisition of Louisiana; the admission of Texas into the Union by a
simple resolution; the late Mexican war; were either unjust or
unconstitutional, but there was no resistance to these measures. None
was made, and none would have been justifiable. So in the present case,
as the people generally are not called upon either to do, or to forbear
from doing, any thing their conscience forbids, all resistance to the
operation of this law on their part must be without excuse. With regard
to the executive officers, whose province it is to carry the law into
effect, though some of them may disapprove of it as unwise, harsh, or
oppressive, still they are bound to execute it, unless they believe the
specific act which they are called upon to perform involves personal
criminality, and then their duty is the resignation of their office, and
not resistance to the law. There is the most obvious difference between
an officer being called upon, for example, to execute a decision of a
court, which in his private opinion he thinks unjust, and his being
called upon to blaspheme, or commit murder. The latter involves personal
guilt, the former does not. He is not the judge of the equity or
propriety of the decision which he is required to carry into effect. It
is evident that the wheels of society would be stopped, if every officer
of the government, and every minister of justice should feel that he is
authorized to sit in judgment on the wisdom or righteousness of any law
he was called upon to execute. He is responsible for his own acts, a