t 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. In such a nation, rebellion, or any evasion of Law,
becomes a more serious moral evil. Rebellion _there_ can scarcely be
called for; and 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 without a son to solace them.
There must be some fair prospect of great good to come from it,
before one can justly fling his life into the scale, in a violent
contest with the government.

5. To justify rebellion, there must be a fair prospect of the firm
_establishment of a letter governmen