e controlled the same is precisely to deny all
control. There must, then, if there is government at all, be a power,
force, or will that governs, distinct from that which is governed. In
those governments in which it is held that the people govern, the
people governing do and must act in a diverse relation from the people
governed, or there is no real government.

Government is not only that which governs, but that which has the right
or authority to govern. Power without right is not government.
Governments have the right to use force at need, but might does not
make right, and not every power wielding the physical force of a nation
is to be regarded as its rightful government. Whatever resort to
physical force it may be obliged to make, either in defence of its
authority or of the rights of the nation, the government itself lies in
the moral order, and politics is simply a branch of ethics--that branch
which treats of the rights and duties of men in their public relations,
as distinguished from their rights and duties in their private
relations.

Government being not only that which governs, but that which has the
right to govern, obedience to it becomes a moral duty, not a mere
physical necessity. The right to govern and the duty to obey are
correlatives, and the one cannot exist or be conceived without the
other. Hence loyalty is not simply an amiable sentiment but a duty, a
moral virtue. Treason is not merely a difference in political opinion
with the governing authority, but a crime against the sovereign, and a
moral wrong, therefore a sin against God, the Founder of the moral Law.
Treason, if committed in other Countries, unhappily, has been more
frequently termed by our countrymen Patriotism and loaded with honor
than branded as a crime, the greatest of crimes, as it is, that human
governments have authority to punish. The American people have been
chary of the word loyalty, perhaps because they regard it as the
correlative of royalty; but loyalty is rather the correlative of law,
and is, in its essence, love and devotion to the sovereign authority,
however constituted or wherever lodged. It is as necessary, as much a
duty, as much a virtue in republics as in monarchies; and nobler
examples of the most devoted loyalty are not found in the world's
history than were exhibited in the ancient Greek and Roman republics,
or than have been exhibited by both men and women in the young republic
of the United S