6

WHY DO WE OWE ALLEGIANCE?

There are two questions pertaining to civil government which are fundamental: Why do we owe allegiance to Government? and, Where do we owe it? In other words, what is the ground of my obligation to render obedience to civil authority; and, in cases of conflict, to what authority shall I render it?

As to the first of these questions, there is a theory somewhat current, that all the authority of a State or Nation comes from the individual citizen. It assumes that, prior to civil society, the individual man has certain rights, by the giving up of which civil society and government are formed. It is sometimes said that a man gives up a portion of his rights for the greater security of the remainder. The theory supposes that men come together and deposit a portion of their rights and powers in a common stock; and that no government can legitimately exercise any powers except those thus deposited. According to this, the power originally resides in the individual citizens; and until they give it up, each for himself, there can be no such thing as civil government.

To this theory there are divers objections. Suppose the individual man does not choose to place in the common stock his infinitesimal portion of civil power; how is it to be taken from him? Plainly, civil government on such a theory would be well-nigh an impossibility. The majority could never bind the minority. As new generations came upon the stage, they would remain free from all obligations to obey law and government until they had voluntarily, and each one for himself, thus given up their individual rights. We should have nations containing multitudes of men over whom the law and the ruler could have no control-privileged characters, acknowledging and owing no allegiance to any civil power. Were the theory true, such cases would be found. But no nation, civilized or barbarous, will acknowledge that it contains any such class among its citizens. Outlaws there may be, and are; but nowhere do we find a class of men who, because they have never made any surrender of their individual rights, claim to owe neither allegiance nor obedience to civil government, and have their claim allowed.

Nor, again, does history give us any account of men coming together and making a deposit of a part of the powers and rights with which they were endowed by nature. There is no instance on record that any nation was ever formed in this way.

But even if such a surrender were to take place, government could not thus be constituted. The powers of government include those which never belonged to the individual man. The right to impose taxes, to punish crime, to make war, is one which, as individuals, we never possessed, and therefore we could never delegate it.

The fallacy in the theory we are considering consists in confounding men as individuals with men as constituting a community. Wherever a

THE THEORY OF INDIVIDUAL SOVEREIGNTY.

7

community of men can be found, there is already civil society. There is no necessity for men to assemble and surrender a part of their rights in order to form a basis for authority; the authority exists without any such surrender.

In mathematics, the whole is equal to the sum of the parts; but in civil society, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. As an individual, I am destitute of all civil authority; I have none now; I never had any. And this is true of every citizen. Yet the nation has it-has

all it needs.

Civil government is a fact-a reality. We do not make it; we find it already existing, and ourselves amenable to it. We are born into the nation as into the family. And we are to obey the laws of the land, not because we helped to enact them—not because we, as individuals, have given to any one authority to enact them for us, but because they are the laws of the land. The child is to obey his parents because they are his parents; he is born subject to their authority. So the citizen is born subject to the authority of the country in which he lives. He may dislike its constitution and every law upon its statute-book, but this does not release him from his obligation to obedience.

In the strict sense, then, we do not create civil government, though we may give it its form. We can not live prior to it, and thus discuss the propriety of calling it into existence, though we may modify it, and give it such shape as pleases us. We never decide whether government shall be, though we do decide what it shall be.

In all this we find the teachings of sound philosophy and the verdict of history to agree with each other, and both to be in accordance with the Word of God. "The powers that be are ordained of God." "There is no power but of God." It was the intention of Providence that men should live in civil society, and under civil government, as much as that the race should be grouped in families, and the child be subject to his parents. We do not believe in the divine right of kings, that is, that a particular man has a divine right to be a king; but whoever exercises legitimately any function of the civil ruler, whether he be king or president, legislator or judge, is exercising a power which is as divine in its origin as is the power of a parent over his child.

Such theories as the one upon which I have now been animadverting, tend to degrade government in the estimation of the people. It becomes a kind of joint-stock company; it loses its sacredness; moral ideas disappear from it. Men come to look upon it as a thing of human creation; they made it, and they can unmake it. Thus respect for it is lost, and the spirit of true loyalty dies out. They delight to speak of rulers as their servants. Mr. Jefferson Davis speaks thus contemptuously of the General Government: "The agent through whom they (the

8

CIVIL GOVERNMENT OF DIVINE ORIGIN.

Confederate States) communicated with foreign nations is changed, but this does not necessarily interrupt their relations." The government of one of the most powerful nations of the world is but the agent through whom South Carolina and Mississippi have heretofore communicated with foreign nations! Since the delivery of his inaugural, in which these words occur, Mr. Davis may possibly have found some reason to modify his opinion of this "agent."

Government is of divine origin, and is to be respected and honored. But because the authority comes from above, the rights of the people are not thereby diminished. The people do all they could do if they, in their individual capacity, imparted the power to the ruler. They determine the form in which the government shall be administered, and they elect the rulers. While, thus, the difference between this theory of the social compact, or individual sovereignty, and that which makes civil government a divine institution, is rather theoretical than practical, so far as it affects the rights of the people, yet as truth is ever better than error, the false theory should not be suffered to supplant the true one. The true theory gives dignity to government; prevents its degradation; raises it above a mere copartnership; gives rulers their places as rulers. Government becomes to us more than a public crib to be fed from; it is something to be honored,' to be sustained; something to make sacrifices for, to die for.

There is not time to discuss, as fully as the subject requires, this first great question: Why do we owe allegiance to government? but my strong convictions of the evil effects wrought by the erroneous notions too widely prevalent in regard to it, and its close connection with the other question which I propose to discuss, would not allow me to pass it over in silence. You may say that so long as men admit the obligation to obedience, it is not material on what grounds that obedience is rendered; that allegiance being paid as a matter of fact, the philosophical explanation of that allegiance is of no great consequence. But the history of the world shows that erroneous doctrines work themselves out in practice, and our own nation is no exception. Is the allegiance of all our citizens all that it should be in purity and strength? Is there not manifest an undermining of loyalty? Are there not multitudes in whom attachment to party has overmastered allegiance to the government?

One cause of this, if not the great cause, is the prevalence of this notion of individual sovereignty. "By nature," says Mr. Calhoun, "every individual has the right to govern himself." Of course, there is no human right to govern him, without his consent. And whatever right civil government shall ever possess to govern him, must come from the individual himself. We are not surprised to hear Mr. Calhoun say

GOVERNMENT NOT A TRUST FROM INDIVIDUALS.

9

further, "Indeed, according to our theory, governments are, in their nature, but trusts, and those appointed to administer them, trustees, or agents, to execute trust powers." A parent can not devote the time to superintend personally the education of his child, and so intrusts him to another, whom he makes his trustee, or agent, for this purpose. If, at any time, he is dissatisfied with the manner in which this trust power is discharged by his agent, he revokes the trust and recalls his son. In like manner, the individual sovereign, who has "by nature the right to govern himself," may withdraw, at pleasure, the trust he has committed to the government. This makes government a voluntary matter. We can make it, or leave it unmade; live subject to it, or independent of it, as fancy dictates.

Can true loyalty take root in such soil? Can reverence for law dwell in the breast of him who is profoundly conscious of his native right to govern himself? In the estimation of those holding such theories, government is like the log of wood out of which the heathen fashioneth for himself a god. The theory is false. Government is not a matter of choice. A nation is not a voluntary society. Whether we will or not, we must have some civil government. Government is prefigured on the human soul, and we find it there, as we find a mathematical truth. We may as well say that a triangle has three right angles, as that there can be no government till men have consented to give up their right to govern themselves. Government exists, and always will exist. We can not escape from it. We may exchange one for another; if we dislike that of the United States, we may go to France, or Madagascar, but we must be subject to some civil rule. And every government has powers, whether the individual sovereigns have delegated them or not.

These false notions of the origin of government, have so weakened the principle of allegiance, that party spirit has supplanted it in the breasts of too many. The strength of this feeling was never so obvious as now. Heretofore there has been no good occasion to test its intensity. When two ships are sailing in the same direction, we can judge of their relative but not of their absolute velocity. So of two political parties in the heat of controversy; we can estimate their relative partisan feeling, but not the absolute intensity of either. When Sumter was fired upon by the rebels, the Northern people rose as one man. There seemed to be in every heart a glimmer, at least, of the true idea of the divine origin and nature of government, and when sacrilegious hands were laid upon it the flame burst forth. Alas, that in some hearts it was but a momentary flash! Party spirit smothered it! And we have now presented to us, the pitiable spectacle of party placed before the country. The odious character of intense partisan feeling is now revealed in all its deformity, as it stands out in contrast with patriotism. It is no longer

10

WHERE IS OUR ALLEGIANCE DUE?

party with party, but party with country. For this sad state of things, I regard these false notions of the nature of government to be in great measure responsible. Show me a man who sincerely believes civil government to be an ordinance of God, and who renders obedience to it for conscience sake, and I will show you one who is not, and can not be, an intense political partisan; I will show you one who will labor to secure the election to office of the men best fitted to perform its duties, and who will never hesitate to scratch from his ticket the name of an incompetent or bad man.

The second question, Where is our allegiance due? would have no pertinency in most governments. It is a question with us, because of the peculiarity of our governmental system. We have a National Government, with its three departments, and each State has its government, with the same departments. "Our government," says John Quincy Adams, "is a complicated machine. It is an anomaly in the history of the world. It is that which distinguishes us from all other nations, ancient and modern; from the simple monarchies and republics of Europe, and from the confederacies which have figured in any age upon the face of the globe." It is sometimes said that the States sustain to the nation the same relation that counties do to States, or townships to counties. This statement is incorrect; or, at least, incomplete. The county government receives all its authority from the State; while the State receives its, not from the United States, but from the people. We have two sets of Constitutions-both made by the people: one for the United States, others for the States. We might have had more, giving them to counties and townships and cities; we might have had less, dispensing with those for States, and having one great Constitution for the Nation. But the people have chosen the present mode, with a National Government for national matters, and State governments for municipal and local matters. These two have different functions, and need not conflict with each other; but if the conflict comes, is my allegiance due to the United States, or to the State of Ohio?

This brings us to the subject of State Sovereignty, so closely connected with our present national difficulties; and, as the questions regarding allegiance, and the sovereignty of a State, involve substantially the same principles, I shall, for the most part, use the language of the latter, as more convenient. Says Dr. Thomas Cooper, formerly President of the College of South Carolina, in a work published nearly thirty years ago, Allegiance is the paramount submission due by the citizen to the constitution and government of the State to which he belongs." To the Government of the United States, "the citizens of the various States owe obedience, because their own State, as party to this confederation, enjoins it; but allegiance is a term applicable only to that submission which we