e itself by force of law,
which ultimately is force of physical coercion. If the religious
liberty of the individual has been at last won, as we hope forever, it
is sufficiently notorious that the propensity of majorities to control
the freedom of minorities, in matters of disputed right and wrong,
still exists, as certain and as tyrannical as ever was the will of
Philip II. that there should be no heretic within his dominion. Many
cannot so much as comprehend the thought of the English Bishop, that
it was better to see England free than England sober.

In matters internal to a state, the bare existence of a law imposes an
obligation upon the individual citizen, whatever his personal
conviction of its rightfulness or its wisdom. Yet is such obligation
not absolute. The primary duty, attested alike by the law and the
gospel, is submission. The presumption is in favor of the law; and if
there lie against it just cause for accusation, on the score either of
justice or of expediency, the interests of the Commonwealth and the
precepts of religion alike demand that opposition shall be conducted
according to the methods, and within the limits, which the law of the
land itself prescribes. But it may be--it has been, and yet again may
be--that the law, however regular in its enactment, and therefore
unquestionable on the score of formal authority, either outrages
fundamental political right, or violates the moral dictates of the
individual conscience. Of the former may be cited as an instance the
Stamp Act, perfectly regular as regarded statutory validity, which
kindled the flame of revolution in America. Of the second, the
Fugitive Slave Law, within the memory of many yet living, is a
conspicuous illustration. Under such conditions, the moral right of
resistance is conceded--nay, is affirmed and emphasized--by the moral
consciousness of the races from which the most part of the American
people have their origin, and to which, almost wholly, we owe our
political and religious traditions. Such resistance may be passive,
accepting meekly the penalty for disobedience, as the martyr who for
conscience' sake refused the political requirement of sacrificing to
the image of the Caesar; or it may be active and violent, as when our
forefathers repelled taxation without representation, or when men and
women, of a generation not yet wholly passed away, refused to violate
their consciences by acquiescing in the return of a slave to his
bon