PHI LOS 0 P H Y . - Classic Works of Apologetics Online

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Duty ojCivil Obedience,
which I inculcated, in the most general and unqualified.
terms, all reservations and restrictions being superfluous,
and foreign to the doubts I was employed
to remove.
If in a short time after\vards, I should be accosted
by the same person, with complaints of public grievance~,
of exorbitant taxes, of acts of cruelty and oppression,
of tyrannical eneroachments upon the an ..
cient qr stipulated rights of the people, and should
be consulted whether it were lawful to revolt, or
justifiable to join in an attempt to shake off the yoke
by open resistance; I should certainly consider myself
as ~aving a ca~e and question before me very differpnt
from the former. I should now define and
discriminate. I should reply, that if public expedi ..
ency be the foundation, it is also the mp.a:,ure of civil
obedience; that the obligation of subjects and sovereigns
is reciprocal; that the duty of allegiance,
v/hether it be founded in utility or compact, is nei ..
ther unlimited nor unCOllditional; that pea, .e may
be purcha~ed too dear; that patience become.~ culpable
pusillanimity, when it serves only to encourage
our rulers to illcrease the weight of our burthen, or
to bind it the faster; that the submission, whicll surrenders
the iiberty of a nation, and entails slavery
upon future generations, is enjt.iined by no law of
rational morality: finally, I should in ~trllct the in4iiir~
er to compare the peril and expense of his enterprize,
vilth the effects it was expected to producf.!, and to
make choice of the alternative, by which, not his
O\l'D present relief or profit, but the whole and permanent
interest of the state was likely to be best pro ..
moted" If anyone who had been pre~ent at both
these conversations should upbraid me 'tA,ith change
or inconsistency of opinion, should retort upon me
the passive doctrine I before taught, the large and
absolute terms in which I then delivered lessons of
obedience and submission, I should account myseU
unfairly dealt with.
I should reply, that the only
differ~nce which the language of the two conversations
presented was, that I added now many excep.