now attempt to prove to you. On the right divine of authority, whatever vague allusions to it we may sometimes find in courtly flatterers of the day, we have no writers now who require to be confuted.

There is, indeed, one species of right divine which established authority does possess,-its tendency to the peace of those who submit to it, and consequently, in that respect to their happiness, which, as the object of our Creator, has the sanction of divine will. But it possesses this right divine, only as tending to public happiness,-it is secondary only, not primary; and when the public happiness, instead of being, upon the whole, promoted by obedience, would, upon the whole, when every consequence, indirect as well as direct, is taken into account, be promoted, by shaking off that power which is inconsistent with its great object,-remonstrance, even rebellion itself,--if that name can justly be given, in such circumstances of dreadful necessity, to the expression of the public will,--has as truly its right divine, as established authority, even in its best state, could be said to have it, when, as exercised with happier tenderness, it was productive of that good, in which alone the divinity of its right is to be found.

We have no need, then, of all those fictions to which political writers, in periods in which the true source of political obligation was less distinctly perceived, were obliged to have recourse, in asserting the rights of the governed, as paramount to the claims of mere possession, in the tyrannical governor. We have no need to speak of original compacts, of those who obey with those who command, understood as prior to the existing forms of social institutions,-and the violation of which by one party, might be considered as a warrant to the other party for resuming the original rights, of which they had consented through their ancestors, to divest themselves. Such compacts never existed, and could not, independently of the good that might flow from them, be of obligation on the new individuals, who form the present race of mankind, though they had truly taken place at some remote period. The only reason for which we could conceive it necessary for men at present, to pay the obedience which another number of men, at any other period, paid to a certain number of their fellow-creatures, who lived in their time, is, that a failure in this obedience, of the propriety of which the existing generation are equally capable of judging, or better capable, if political knowledge have made the slightest progress, would seem to be injurious to the society in which they live; and, if this reason be valid, it is valid without the necessity of the compact supposed. It is our duty to obey, because mankind-at

least that large part of mankind, which we term our country, -would suffer, upon the whole, if we were not to obey. This is the powerful hold which even imperfect governments possess on the obedience of the wise and good; and the stronger holds which they may seem to have, by corruption, or by mere usage of unreflecting veneration, on the profligate and the ignorant, is truly not half so strong. The profligate supporter of a system, for which he cares only as it ministers to his vices, may see, perhaps, some more tempting promise of wealth and power, in a rebellion against that very authority, the slightest attempt to ameliorate which, he has been accustomed to represent as a species of treason. The ignorant, who fall on their knees to-day, merely because something is passing which is very magnificent, and before which other knees are bent, or bending, may, to-morrow, when other arms are lifted in tumultuous rebellion, join their arms to the tumult and the dreadful fury of the day. It is only in the bosom of the wise and good, as I have said, that any security of obedience is to be found. He who is worthy of those honourable nameswho is wise to consult for the public weal, which his goodness wishes, has no object but the happiness of the community; and though he may see imperfections in government which tend to lessen this happiness, he yet knows how much is to be hoped from the calm influence of diffusive knowledge, and how very little is to be hoped from the exercise of force,-which would be opposed not by mere force of arins, but by the force of as many bad passions as could be summoned to resist it; and which would too often, also, be obliged to call to its own aid passions, as little worthy of the sacred cause in which they might be engaged, as the very passions that were opposed to him. He weighs good with good, evil with evil;-and the oppression must, indeed, be severe, and the prospect of relief from it by other means be truly gloomy, before he will lift his voice to call his fellow citizens to arm against their fellowcitizens. "The speculative line of demarcation, where obedience ought to end, and resistance must begin, is," as Mr. Burke truly says, "faint, obscure, and not easily definable. It is not a single act, or a single event, which determines it. Governments must be abused and deranged, indeed, before it can be thought of: and the prospect of the future must be as bad as the experience of the past. When things are in that lamentable condition, the nature of the disease is · to indicate the remedy, to those whom nature has qualified to administer, in extremities, this critical, ambiguous, bitter potion, to a distempered state. Times, and occasions, and provocations, will teach their own lessons. The wise, will

determine from the gravity of the case,-the irritable, from sensibility to oppression,-the highminded, from disdain and indignation at abusive power in unworthy hands-the brave and bold, from the love of honourable danger in a generous cause ;--but, with or without right, a revolution will be the very last resource of the thinking and the good."*

Á revolution, indeed, even in such circumstances, as this eloquent writer well says, should be, and will be, the last resource of the thinking and good. But, though it will be the last resource, it still is a resource--a resource in those miserable circumstances, in which times, and occasions, and provocations, teach their terrible lessons. When the rare imperious cases do occur, in which the patriotism that before made obedience a duty, allows it no more to him who feels that he has now another duty to perform ;-when he sees, with sorrow, that a cause which is good in itself, will demand the use of means from which, with any other motives, he would have shrunk with abhorrence, he will lift his voice sadly, indeed, but still loudly-he will lift his arm with reluctance, but, when it is lifted, he will wield it with all the force which the thought of the happiness of the world, as perhaps dependent on it, can give to its original vigour;--he has made that calculation in which his own happiness, and his own life, have scarcely been counted as elements. If he survive and prevail, therefore, though in anticipating the prosperity which he has in part produced, he may sometimes look back on the past with melancholy, he cannot look back on it with regret ;-and, if he fall, he will think only of the aid which his life might have given to that general happiness which he sought,-not of his life itself, as an object of regard, or even as a thing which it would have been possible for him to preserve.

* Burke's Works, Vol. V. p. 73. 8vo. Lond. 1803.

353.

LECTURE XCI.

ON THE DUTIES OF CITIZENSHIP-OBEDIENCE TO THE LAWS -DEFENDING OUR COUNTRY-AUGMENTING THE GENERAL HAPPINESS.

In the close of my last Lecture, Gentlemen, I had begun the consideration of those duties which we owe to the community of our fellow citizens, the duties understood as comprehended under the single term patriotism.

These duties of man, as a citizen, are considered as referable to three kinds;-first, the duty of obedience to the particular system of laws, under which he may live ;-2dly, the duty of defending the social system under which he lives, from every species of violent aggression ;-and 3dly, the duty of increasing, to the best of his power, the means of public happiness in the nation, by every aid which he can give to its external or internal resources,--and especially, as the most important of all ends, by every amelioration which it can be nationally prudent to attempt, of any existing evils, in its laws and general forms of polity.

In examining the first of these duties, we were, of course, led to inquire into the nature of that principle, from which existing institutions derived a moral authority. Of the divine right, to which it was long the easy and courtly practice of almost all the writers on this subject, to refer what, as divinely constituted, was therefore, they contended, to be deemed sacred from all human interference of the governed, as truly sacred as religion itself,--I did not think it necessary to occupy your time with any long and serious confutation. "The right divine of kings to govern wrong," cannot be a right derived from the Divinity. He who attached the delightful feeling of moral approbation, to every wish of diffusing happiness, cannot give the sanction of his own pure authority to crimes, which as established, have nothing to distinguish them from other crimes that have not been established, except that their atrocious oppression has been more lastingly and extensively VOL. III. Y y

injurious. When a whole nation is bowed down in misery, and intellectual and moral darkness,-which, by the length of its uniform and dreary continuance, marks only what principles it contains of a servitude that may be perpetuated for ages as uniformly wretched,—if a single effort, the elevation of a single standard, the utterance of a single word, were all which was necessary to give to millions that exist, and millions of millions that are afterwards to exist, not the happiness of freedom only, but with freedom all that light of thought, and purity of generous devotion, which liberty never fails to carry along with it;-would it be virtue to keep down that standard,-to refrian from uttering that word so productive,--and rather to say calmly to the world, be miserable still? The God, who is the God of happiness, and truth, and virtue, could not surely in such circumstances have made it guilt in the patriot to wish the single effort made; or guilt in him if he wish it made, to give his own heart, and arm, or voice, to that effort which he wished.

It is vain for us, when our object is to discover, not what man has done, but what man ought to do, to think of the origin of power, as if this were sufficient to determine the duty of our present acquiescence. Where all were not equal in every physical energy, one individual must soon have begun to exercise authority over other individuals. If we consider a number of children at play, where all may at first have the appearance of the most complete equality, we shall soon be able to discover how the stronger, in any period of life, or in any circumstances of society, might, in some cases, assume dominion which, in some other cases, might be given to superior skill. But, in whatever way power may have begun among mankind, it has usually, at least for many ages in countries that suffer under despotism, been perpetuated, by the necessary submission on the part of the slave, to the mere might of its hereditary or casual possessors;-the history of power is, therefore, the history of that to which men have generally or individually, considered it expedient to submit; but it is not on that account necessarily, the history of that to which it was the duty of man to submit. It leaves to the race of man, in every age, and in all the varying circumstances of their external and internal condition, to consider the duties of mankind in the same manner as they would have considered them in any former age; and the duty of man as a citizen, is not to prefer the happiness, or supposed happiness of one, to the happiness, or supposed happiness of many, but the happiness of many to the happiness of one, when these are opposed and incompatible. The happiness of many may, indeed, be best consulted, and truly