he manufacture Bible? No, the
Hon. Peleg Sprague had sufficiently done that a year before. He took a
shorter cut--he denied there was any morality but Legality. "I take it
to be perfectly clear," said this young man in all the moral
enthusiasm of his youth, "that the Standard of Morality by which
Courts of Justice are to be guided is that which the law prescribes.
Your Honors' Opinion as Men or as Moralists has no bearing on the
question. Your Honors are to declare what the Law deems moral or
immoral."

Gentlemen, that needs no comment; this trial is comment enough. But
according to that rule no law is immoral. It was "not immoral" in 1410
to hang and burn thirty-nine men in one day for reading the Bible in
English; the Catholic Inquisition in Spain was "not immoral;" the
butchery of Martyrs was all right soon as lawful! There is no Higher
Law!

It was "not immoral" for the servants of King Pharaoh to drown all the
new-born Hebrew boys; nor for Herod's butchers to murder the Innocents
at Bethlehem. Nay, all the atrocities of the Saint Bartholomew
Massacres, Gentlemen, they were "not immoral," for "the Standard of
Morality" is "that which the law prescribes." So any legislature that
can frame an act, any tyrant who can issue a decree, any court which
can deliver an "opinion," can at once nullify the legislation of the
Universe and "dissolve the union" of Man and God: "Religion has
nothing to do with politics; there it makes men mad." Is that the
doctrine of Young Massachusetts? Hearken then to the Old. In 1765 her
House of Representatives unanimously resolved that "there are certain
essential Rights ... which are founded on the Law of God and Nature,
and are the Common Rights of Mankind, and that the inhabitants of this
Province are unalienably entitled to these essential Rights in common
with all men, and _that no law of Society ... can divest them of these
Rights_." No "Standard of Morality" but Law! A thousand years before
Jesus of Nazareth taught his Beatitudes of Humanity, the old Hebrews
knew better. Hearken to a Psalm nearly three thousand years old.

Among the assemblies of the great,
A Greater Ruler takes his seat;
The God of Heaven, as Judge, surveys
Those Gods on earth, and all their ways.
Why will ye, then, frame wicked laws?
Or why support the unrighteous cause?
When will ye once defend the poor,
That sinners vex the Saints no more?
Arise, oh Lord, and let