aves, 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. But Paley appears never to have
contemplated those cases to which the rule of expediency does not apply,
in which a people, as well as an individual, must do justice, cost what
it may. If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must
restore it to him though I drown myself. This, according to Paley, would
be inconvenient. But he that would save his life, in such a case, shall
lose it. This people must cease to hold slaves, and to make war on
Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people.

In their practice, nations agree with Paley; but does any one think that
Massachusetts does exactly what is right at the present crisis?

"A drab of state, a cloth-o'-silver slut,
To have her train borne up, and her soul trail in the dirt."

Practically speaking, the opponents to a reform in Massachusetts are
not a hundred thousand politicians at the South, but a hundred thousand
merchants and farmers here, who are more interested in commerce and
agriculture than they are in humanity, and are not prepared to do
justice to the slave and to Mexico, cost what it may. I quarrel not with
far-off foes, but with those who, near at home, co-operate with, and
do the bidding of those far away, and without whom the latter would be
harmless. We are accustomed to say, that the mass of men are unprepared;
but improvement is slow, because the few are not materially wiser or
better than the