every
beholder's bosom something of the warm sympathy which waits on the
persecuted, carries with it all the weight of a disinterested
testimony to truth, and pricks each voter's conscience with an
uneasy doubt, whether after all voting _is_ right. There is
constantly a Mordecai in the gate.

I admit that we should strive to have a _political_ influence--for
with politics is bound up much of the welfare of the people. But
this objection supposes that the ballot box is the _only_ means of
political influence. Now it is a good thing that every man should
have the right to vote. But it is by no means necessary that every
man should actually vote, in order to influence his times. We by no
means necessarily desert our social duty when we refuse to take
office, or to confer it. Lafayette did better service to the cause
of French liberty when he retired to Lagrange and refused to
acknowledge Napoleon, than he could have done had he stood, for years,
at the tyrant's right hand. From the silence of that chamber there
went forth a voice--from the darkness of that retreat there burst
forth a light; feeble indeed at first, like the struggling beams of
the morning, but destined like them to brighten into perfect day.

This objection, that we non-voters shall lose all our influence,
confounds the broad distinction between _influence_ and _power_.
_Influence_ every honest man must and will have, in exact
proportion to his honesty and ability. God always annexes influence
to worth. The world, however unwilling, can never get free from the
influence of such a man. This influence the possession of office
cannot give, nor the want of it take away. For the exercise of such
influence as this, man is responsible. _Power_ we buy of our fellow
men at a certain price. Before making the bargain it is our duty to
see that we do not pay "too dear for our whistle." He who buys it at
the price of truth and honor, buys only weakness--and sins beside.

Of those who go to the utmost verge of honesty in order to reach the
seats of worldly power, and barter a pure conscience for a weighty
name, it may be well said with old Fuller, "They need to have steady
heads who can dive into these gulfs of policy, and come out with a
safe conscience."

OBJECTION XI.

This withdrawing from government is pharisaical--"Shall we, 'weak,
sinful men,'" one says, "perhaps even more sinful than the
slaveholder, cry out, No Union with Slaveholders?" Such a course is