CHAPTER VII.

QUESTION OF EXPEDIENCY CONSIDERED.

Now what is the practical use of these results? what the true inference of propriety and duty, to be drawn for the administrators of such a government, and for politicians of every grade who undertake to speak of its affairs? Are we to respect the counsel of the fathers or despise it? to use our institutions according to what we know of their true character and the intent of those who founded them, or to put upon them a construction that does violence to both? In a word, shall the government be administered as it is, or as it is not? as a christian or a pagan government?

On legal principles all is plain. The law divides nothing against itself. To administer a christian government in an unchristian way, is like an experiment of despotism in a republic; it is unlawful, inconsistent, revolutionary; and never to be justi

reasons

fied but by reasons of the last necessity calling not for administration, but for change. And to this point the argument inevitably comes. Of course it ceases here to be a legal argument, and becomes one of expediency; and the question now is, whether it be better for us as a people to continue firm in the law and religion of our institutions, or to barter both for a style of politics which both alike discountenance. This is the final test-question of the case. Let us give it a

short trial.

SECTION I. — Direct Bearings of the Question.

There are two lights to place it in; the one religious, and more particularly interesting to christians; the other political, and of general concern.

If the bible be true, religion is important both to states and individuals in a degree which nothing else can approach. This will be conceded.

If then the bible be true, it is the duty of all men indiscriminately, to cherish the interests of religion in the world. Station and influence, instead of furnishing an exemption from this duty, greatly enhance it; being talents which the author of the bible claims the use of for himself.

And is the truth of the bible doubtful? and to be so held by a nation institutionally founded upon it? At any rate, the bible may be true; and so, unless the religion it teaches were discredited by

bad fruits, as working mischief rather than righteousness and peace; to honour it, as well in public life as elsewhere, would be still the safest, wisest policy.

Nay, it is still a duty, as plain if not quite as urgent as before; for it is the duty of all men, and especially men charged with the trusts of a republican government, to advance as much as possible the happiness of all: and to this end, the happiness of every class in particular, so far as consistent with the general weal. This is at once republican and christian. Republic is a word of christian meaning: by the very force of the term, the justice which reduces men to a common level of desert for legal ends, and the kindness that would extend to them a ministry of equal beneficence without respect of persons, are enjoined upon the officers of such a government.

The pious portion of our citizens may be more or less in number as compared with the whole mass enough to say, that they are a large and respectable company; with sensibilities as acute as those of other men, as capable of pleasure or pain, of being gratified or tortured; and that the subject to which of all others they are most alive, and through which the most oppressive wrongs can be inflicted on them, is that of their religion and the interests connected with it. In a cause in which they believe the salvation of the world in

volved, and which therefore they have no alternative but to pray and labour for without ceasing, how is it possible they should see their faith derided, their profession scoffed at, their efforts frustrated or embarrassed, their master spit upon anew in the halls of power, without distress? And does a republican government allow the peace of one portion of its citizens to be thus invaded? is it thus that an administration for the common welfare proceeds?

But even admitting that religious citizens have no just claims as such upon the favour, or if you will, the forbearance of government, and that their peculiar interests and happiness may be rightfully trodden under foot; there is yet a further observation to be made: the bible deals with nations in their organic structure, as capable themselves of religion, and amenable to God for the want of it. What shall we say here? Nations are moral beings, and thus, in reference to a power above them, competent subjects of moral government. There could be no law of nations, for the great republic of nations to enforce, if it were not so. Their capacity for having the discipline of a regular moral control applied to them, is already under practical treatment upon earth; and how much better is the right of the celestial wisdom to assume and act upon it as the basis of a polity such as earth is unequal to a perfect polity, that puts the states

and empires of the world upon their good behaviour, not only for purposes of international law, but for those of the yet higher law that binds them all in common obligations to heaven. Nations, like individuals, must answer for their doings. And as this grows out of their relationship to the divine government, it is a moral, a religious responsibility: nothing else can be made of it: a responsibility that touches the conscience, and has to do with sanctions of tremendous weight.

But whose conscience? First and chiefly, that of men in office. Let them look to it. After them, all who have influence, all who love their country and can serve it, owe a debt to the cause of the national piety.

But what are the sanctions referred to? Ask revelation; ask history. Nations die, but rise not again; and as there are no judgements for them beyond the grave, they have their deserts, for good or for evil, in this life; nor of this did any nation ever yet come finally short. Temporal prosperity in various forms, and temporal misfortune and misery no less various, these are the sanctions of a nation's duty.

How to escape the evil and secure the good, is the material inquiry. Can it be hard to tell? Are not the great principles of moral government the same in all their applications? Is there one rule of right for individuals and another for bodies