against that other's will, excepting for cause of immediate injury to himself, resulting from that other's act; it is equally inconsistent with a similar moral right of one people in regard to other people. Most of all, perhaps, it is inconsistent with the moral right of a majority of a people over the minority. When this happens, freedom in any one thing is but a pale simulacrum of the reality, and is recognized inconsistently with logic. "The settled moral convictions of a people,” if accepted as justification for aggressions upon the "settled moral convictions" of others, amply justified the Inquisition, the crusade against the Albigenses, as they have justified every despotism, every persecution, every breach of faith ever existent and committed. The one principle which utterly forbids all these things is the principle that any individual in any community, or any community in regard to others, has the right to pursue his own wishes, and judge of their righteousness, so long as those wishes do not directly, obviously, and unjustly interfere with those of his neighbour. The whole trend of "civilization," in so far as it has added to human happiness, has been but a development toward this point. In comparison to this all material improvements are slight; and all that the world has gained is dependent upon the observance of this principle. Let A first employ his "settled moral convictions" on curing his own ills. Be sure he will find enough to occupy him. When A, instead of so doing, sets his "settled moral convictions" to work on B's business, his motives are always suspect, -though he set his life on the stake, they are not the less suspect; they are more to be suspected; and justly so. In such case always, at least, in the case of nations,-one may find motives of animosity, or the desire for gain, in company with the moral ideas put forward as the reasons for aggression. Human nature, in bulk, does not sacrifice itself from unalloyed altruism. Even in individuals such fanaticism of virtue is doubtfully admirable. "L'immodération, vers le bien mesme, si elle ne m'offense, elle m'estonne, et me met en peine de la baptizer. Ny la mère de Pausanias, qui donna la première instruction, et porta la première pierre, à la mort de son fils: ny le dictateur Posthumius qui feit mourir le sien, que l'ardeur de jeunesse avoit heureusement poulsé sur les ennemis un peu avant son reng, ne me semble si juste, comme estrange; et n'ayme ny à conseiller ny à suyvre une vertu si sauvage et si chère." 49 * "Take up the white man's burden" was an old song in Plutarch's time: ". . . if they could not have quenched their unsatiable desire withal, they had an honest culler to have cloaked their ambitious desires, if it had beene but to have brought the barbarous people to a civill life." + To say this is not to inscribe upon one's shield the device: "Of all my mammy's chillun, I loves myself the best; It is not to deny the obligation of humanity. Two courses of action lay open to the anti-slavery States, had that action been truly and entirely "a great moral law" guided by the unselfishness of love; had not the selfishness of hate and greed been a strong ingredient of their motive. Either of these might fairly have been dignified with the praise appertaining to high and pure ideals, even by those who might have disputed their wisdom. First, they might, by cooperating with the antagonists of that institution in the Southern States, who were neither few nor weak, and shunning domineering, threatening antagonism (the effects of which are so vividly stated by Mr. Bagby and other Southern writers, and pointed out by Mr. Webster), in all probability, have brought slavery to an end long before that consummation was reached; and have so brought it to an end without the convulsion and griefs of war and the long train of Constitutional ills * Montaigne, on Moderation. "Life of Pompey," North's translations of the "Lives." Vide ante, p. III. therefrom arising to afflict themselves equally with the Southern States.50 Failing this, if, from a lack of understanding of the Constitution, they had considered slavery as a crime in which they were co-partners through that instrument, they might have themselves left that bond. But when they neither would do this nor allow the South to do so, when they insisted on their right to break their part of the bargain, insisting at the same time upon the duty of the South to go on paying the price stipulated for their observance of that bargain, the idea that such action can be called "a great moral idea" is surely a burlesque on morals, if honesty is an essential part of morality. When Mr. Buchanan told the non-slaveholding States that if slavery was a crime it was no more their crime than was the crime of slaveholding among the Brazilians, he so spoke in accordance with fact. When early Pennsylvania friends advocated the secession of the non-slaveholding States in order not to be concerned in the guilt of slavery; when Mr. Garrison spoke of the Constitution as a compact with death and a covenant with Hell, and advocated the same doctrine,-whatever their wisdom, they may fairly be said to have been actuated by a "great moral law." They did not "take up new philosophic grounds" but admitted the facts of the Constitution, and prepared to forego its advantages, to clear themselves of what they considered its sin. But, remembering how New England, by her bargain with Georgia and South Carolina, fastened slavery and the tariff for "protection" upon the United States, can it be denied that she forewent the bargain for which she prostituted herself, while retaining with a death grip the price of her dishonour? Judges of criminal courts are familiar with the practice of this "great moral law." In fact, the South in its doctrine of secession was but following the precedent of a well-known decision in a similar case of that celebrated governor who "put" the island of Barataria "on the map": "Andad mucho de enhoramala. Andad churrillera, desvergonzada y embaidora." Montesquieu had stated its principle of action to be the most eligible one: "Le quatrième acte de justice, qui doit être le plus fréquent, est la renonciation à l'alliance du peuple dont on a à se plaindre.” * Honest Sancho's decision, however, was reversed by the War; with it went the doctrine that "the people have a right to abolish their government when it is perverted to their injury." The principles "that compact is the vital principle of free Governments: a revolt against this principle leaves no choice but between anarchy and despotism," and "that each party (i. e., State) has the right to construe this compact for itself," have been superseded by "a majority should rule: a revolt against this principle leaves no choice but between anarchy and despotism," and a great moral law, that each individual of that majority is to construe the laws made by it for himself. *"Lettres Persanes," xcvi. APPENDICES APPENDIX I (Page 14) "COMMUNITIES possessed of sufficient knowledge to discriminate between liberty and slavery, have uniformly laboured to invest governments with a portion of power sufficient to secure social happiness, but insufficient for its destruction. The United States understood the discrimination, and in the formation of the federal government endeavoured, by limitations and prohibitions, to reserve and secure as many of their individual rights as might be retained without defeating the end of providing for their common interest. The two principles of a division or a concentration of power, are the adversaries contending for preference. Every government must be of one or the other description. An absolute supremacy in one, belongs to the concentrating principle, like an absolute supremacy in one man. Hence it has happened that an aristocratical or representative body of men, exercising supreme power, has been as tyrannical, or more so, than a single despot. The United States saw that any geographical interest, if invested with supremacy by the establishment of a consolidated national government, would oppress some other geographical interest; and made a new effort to avoid this natural malignity of a concentrated supreme power, though lodged in the representatives of the people. Accident sometimes directs us to valuable discoveries; but though, our division into states induced us to consider the hostile principles of power concentrated or divided, in a geographical light, yet our decision was rather the result of an improvement in political knowledge, matured by reflection and experience, than casual. The dis |