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Yet again; though the upholders of this horrid Bill have the grace to allow, that we may do all in our power to procure the repeal of what they call the Law, yet they insist that until it is repealed we are bound, and shall be compelled to obey it. Let us look at this position. I will show it to you in the clear light, which is thrown upon it by the author of an admirable pamphlet, entitled "The Higher Law,"[1] which I wish might be read by every man and woman in the land. "If you are to keep on obeying this unjust law, while working against it all the while, is it not plain to see that your example will contradict your precept? Your life give your principles the lie. What is the use of preaching up justice, of talking against an unjust law, when by your every act of obedience to it, justice receives a fatal stab? Truly it is a queer way of getting an atrocious law repealed, to keep on obeying it. Their reasoning is this: Because an unjust law is enacted we must obey it as a law, and do all we can to repeal it, because it is unjust. Seeing that iniquity is established by statute, we must keep the statute till we can destroy it; uphold it, till it can be overthrown! Such beetle logic may safely be left to confute itself. Because the majority have resolved to sin, we must go with them, and keep on sinning to the end of the chapter, and then turn right about and sin no more, because we have at length succeeded in convincing the majority that we are all miserable sinners, especially we who knew better, and so have added the guilt of hypocrisy to the guilt of cruelty."
But as this writer says, a still more conclusive answer may be drawn from history. Experience teaches us that obedience to an unjust law never procured its repeal. The actual method by which communities have gotten rid of unrighteous laws, has been by protesting against them, disobeying them, and thus coming into conflict with the government at the bar of public opinion, the common moral sense of mankind, which is the great umpire on earth, to whom monarchs and majorities must ultimately bow. "First the people have thrown unjust laws aside; and then the legislature have abrogated them because they were thrown aside. First the law has perished because of its injustice, and then been buried by statute, because it was dead."
What would be the effect on the minds of Mr. Webster and others, who have used "all their personal and official influence" to procure the enactment, and enforce obedience to this Fugitie Slave Law—what, I ask, would be the effect on their minds, if it should be known, that we, the people of Central New York, who have protested so loudly against it, were nevertheless every where consenting to obey it, in all its provisions? Would they not point to the fact, as a signal evidence, of the eminent success of "their
- ↑ 'The Higher Law tried by Reason and Authority,' published in New York, by S. W. Benedict, 16, Spruce Street.
