erritories altogether, and go to some other part of
the wide world where the obnoxious enactment is not in force. What he
may _not_ do, is to remain within the community, enjoy all the
advantages of its ordered life, exercise its franchises, receive the
protection of its forces, claim the securities of its courts and the
liberties of its constitution, and at the same time refuse to render it
obedience.

If in his misguided perversity he adopts this last-named course, the
duty of the State is plain. It is to call him to submission, or to
withdraw its protection from him. The person who will not recognize the
State's sovereignty, has no claim upon the services of the State. The
first essential of a government is that it should govern. It should, of
course, exercise the utmost care in issuing commands to avoid as far as
possible the giving of offence to tender consciences; but when once its
deliberate commands are issued, and so long as they remain unrepealed,
it should enforce them with calm but inexorable determination. Nothing
is more fatal to the very foundations of political society, than the
spectacle of a government that can be defied with impunity.[45] That
demoralizing spectacle has been seen far too often during recent years,
and at the moment when the war broke out it had led us to the verge of
national disaster. The war has brought us into closer touch with
realities than we had been for many a long year before, and it has
taught us how ruinous it is in fatuous complacency to "wait and see"
whither disorder, disloyalty, and disobedience will conduct us. If,
however, there are still in our midst ministers who tremble before
rebellion, and do not know how to act in the presence of organized
passive resistance, let me commend to them the worthy example of Edward
I, who in 1296 was faced by a general refusal on the part of the clergy
to pay taxes. He simply excluded them from the protection of the laws,
and closed his courts to their pleas. A few weeks of well-merited
outlawry brought to an end their ill-advised experiment in passive
resistance.

FOOTNOTE:

[45] Maine (_Popular Government_, p. 64) emphasizes this point. "If," he
says, "any government should be tempted to neglect, even for a moment,
its function of compelling obedience to law--if a Democracy, for
example, were to allow a portion of the multitude of which it consists
to set some law at defiance which it happens to dislike--it would be
guilty of a