Page:Fugitive slave law. The religious duty of obedience to law- a sermon, preached in the Second Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, Nov. 24, 1850 (IA fugitiveslave00spencer).pdf/21

 to the result.―The last four years' experience of nations in Europe may read us a lesson.

A republic is different from a despotism. A nation where a constitution forming the foundation of Law, limiting its enactments and establishing courts, is plainly written out in language that everybody can understand,―where Constitution and Law provide for their own amendment at the will of the soverign people expressed in a regular and solemn manner,―where the will of the people thus governs, and (for example,) there is no "taxation without representation,"―where the elective franchise is free, and every man capable of intelligently exercising the right may give his voice for altering the Constitution of Law,―and where, therefore, there can be no necessity of violently opposing the laws, and no excuse for meanly evading them;―such a nation is very differently conditioned form what it would be, if the will of one man or a few governed. In such a nation, rebellion, or any evasion of Law, becomes a more serious moral evil. Rebellion there can scarcely be called for; and if it were difficult to gauge the dimensions of its unrighteousness!

4. To justify rebellion, it is necessary that there should be a fair prospect of successful resistance―of an overthrow of the government. If the resistance is not likely to be successful for good, but is only likely to cost the lives of the resisting individuals and others; then, such individuals are sacrificing themselves and others for no good purpose,―which is a thing that cannot be justified to reason or religion. A man has no right to fling away his life for a mere sentiment, and leave his wife a widow, or his gray-haired parents}}