If it does promote that general happiness, it answers the
just end of government--it is a good government, and ought not to be
overthrown.
2. To justify rebellion, the injustice or failure of a government
must be so great, that it cannot be endured,--so great, that it will
manifestly be better on the whole, to run all the risks of a bloody
conflict, of civil war, than to endure the execution of the
governmental laws.
3. To justify rebellion, there must be little or no prospect that
the government can be peaceably altered, as ours may be, or that the
injustice or oppression of the government can be made to cease by
any peaceable means. Violence against government, rebellion, civil
war, are no small matters. They bring horrid evils along with them.
The injury of government must be very great to justify the
introduction of such evils; and if the injury can be made to cease,
by any peaceable means and within any reasonable time, it would be
better to bear the injury for a while, than to involve the nation in
confusion and blood, with uncertainty as 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 sovereign 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 or 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 from what it would be, if the will of one man or of a
few governed.
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