Page:The American Democrat, James Fenimore Cooper, 1838.djvu/93

 ON THE PRIVATE DUTIES OF STATION.

The private duties of the citizen, as connected with social station, are founded chiefly on the relations between man and man, though others may be referred to a higher source, being derived directly from the relations between the creature and his creator.

A regard for the duties of private station, are indispensable to order, and to the intercourse between different members of society. So important have they always been deemed, that the inspired writers, from the Saviour through the greatest of his apostles down, have deemed them worthy of being placed in conspicious characters, in their code of morals.

The first direct mandates of God, as delivered on Mount Sinai, were to impress the Jews with a sense of their duties to their Heavenly Father; the next to impress them with the first of their social duties, that of honor and obedience to their parents.

The fifth commandment, then, may be said to contain the first of our social duties. It is strictly one of station, for it enforces the obligation of the child to its parents. Nor is this all; the entire extent of the family relations are included in principle, since it cannot be supposed that those who precede our immediate parents, are excluded from the general deference that we owe to the greater experience, the love, and the care of our predecessors.