tates. Loyalty is the highest, noblest, and most
generous of human virtues, and is the human element of that sublime
love or charity which the inspired Apostle tells us is the fulfilment
of the law. It has in it the principle of devotion, of self-sacrifice,
and is, of all human virtues, that which renders man the most Godlike.
There is nothing great, generous, good, or heroic of which a truly
loyal people are not capable, and nothing mean, base, cruel, brutal,
criminal, detestable, not to be expected of a really disloyal people.
Such a people no generous sentiment can move, no love can bind. It
mocks at duty, scorns virtue, tramples on all rights, and holds no
person, no thing, human or divine, sacred or inviolable. The assertion
of government as lying in the moral order, defines civil liberty, and
reconciles it with authority. Civil liberty is freedom to do whatever
one pleases that authority permits or does not forbid. Freedom to
follow in all things one's own will or inclination, without any civil
restraint, is license, not liberty. There is no lesion to liberty in
repressing license, nor in requiring obedience to the commands of the
authority that has the right to command. Tyranny or oppression is not
in being subjected to authority, but in being subjected to usurped
authority--to a power that has no right to command, or that commands
what exceeds its right or its authority. To say that it is contrary to
liberty to be forced to forego our own will or inclination in any case
whatever, is simply denying the right of all government, and falling
into no-governmentism. Liberty is violated only when we are required
to forego our own will or inclination by a power that has no right to
make the requisition; for we are bound to obedience as far as authority
has right to govern, and we can never have the right to disobey a
rightful command. The requisition, if made by rightful authority,
then, violates no right that we have or can have, and where there is no
violation of our rights there is no violation of our liberty. The
moral right of authority, which involves the moral duty of obedience,
presents, then, the ground on which liberty and authority may meet in
peace and operate to the same end.

This has no resemblance to the slavish doctrine of passive obedience,
and that the resistance to power can never be lawful. The tyrant may be
lawfully resisted, for the tyrant, by force of the word itself, is a
usurper, and