THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN OF THE STATE.

ROM.XIII: 3-4--"For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou, then, not be afraid of the power? Do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same. For he is a minister of God to thee for good."

There is no writer on the proper functions of government, on the rights and duties of citizens, on the rewards held out to good citizenship, and the penalties impending over evil, who is clearer or stronger than the Apostle Paul. True Christianity always makes a man more of a man. More than once Paul had stood for his own citizenship. At Philippi, after the midnight earthquake and the conversion of the jailor, and when one would think his mind would have been on other things, he sent word to the magistrates, who offered to let himself and his companion depart in peace: "They have beaten us openly, uncondemned, being Romans, and have cast us into prison. And now do they thrust us out privily? Nay, verily, but let them come themselves and fetch us out." Just as open as had been the outrage on his Roman citizenship should be the amends those magistrates should make. Grand old hero! He was not afraid of politics. He was ready to stand for his civil rights amid earthquakes and miracles. The more his soul was the temple of freedom.

At Jerusalem, too, when the Chief Captain had him bound with thongs, and was about to examine him by 00044scourging--that is, to see if he could lash the truth out of his back, in the old mediæval plantation style,--what happened then? The same utterance as at Philippi: "Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman, and uncondemned?" Lawful? A man that is a Roman? There is no grander collocation of words in all the annals of Roman freedom. Here is a man, under the protection of law. What law? Roman law. The Roman eagles had carried that gospel all over the world.

I think we can afford to sit at the feet of this man, who, when God set up His Kingdom within him did not forget that he had civil rights; who, although he had the ministration of supernatural powers to deliver him from prison, yet, when he stood within the purview of his citizenship, appealed only to that, and did not pray to God to do for him what he could claim from man; I say, I think we can afford to sit at the feet of this man, as this Thanksgiving morning we study "The State and the Citizen of the State."

I. What is State? Literally, it is that which stands. Men come and go; the nation stands! "Cease from man, whose breath is in his nostrils, "says the prophet. The citizen passes away; the nation stands. It is touching to think of the great names that built themselves into the civil fabric of this nation between the years of 1850 and 1880. But where are they now? Where are the boys in blue and their gallant commanders? Abraham Lincoln and his war cabinet? the great men the forum,Summer and Wilson and Fessenden? the great war governors, Andrew and Buckingham and Morton? Salmon Chase and his associates upon the 00055bench? where are why now? And yet the nation stands. The nation stands because they built themselves into it as living stones.

But for what does the nation stand? It stands for God. I give you here the Apostle's theory of civil government; nay, I give you the words of inspiration itself upon this point. The State stands for God. "He is a minister of God to thee for good." Who is this minister of God? The power the chief executive; the man who has the civil authority to reward thee for good and to punish thee for evil.

Read Mulford's recent work entitled "The Nation"; he has got no farther than this; he stands just where Paul stood nineteen centuries ago. "The powers," says he, "the powers with which the nation is invested are indicative of its origin. It is clothed with an authority, and has a majesty which no power on earth may assume. The affirmation of its will is law; apart from it, the will of no man, and no collection of men, is law for another. The right of government is its right; but apart from it, no man and no collection of men have the right to govern another;and it belong to the nation only as it is of divine right. There is no human ground on which it can rest. They who are entrusted with it hold it as the representatives of the nation, and as the ministers of the divine right in the nation." This is the politics of the Bible.

Next to God, the mightiest thing upon the earth is a great nation; and she is great because she wields powers which inhere in her in His name. Just think of it. Let 00066a man commit a crime against the majesty of this nation; let him, in a gush of morbid sentiment, even so much as level his musket to take the life of a criminal whom he is stationed to guard; though that criminal be the most offensive creature on earth, deserving of a felon's death and sure to undergo it; there is not a department of the nation that can sympathize with him, that is not in arms against him. He has offended them all in one. He was set there a sentinel to guard the supremacy of the law, not to defy it; to be a terror to evil works, not to do them, nor even to punish them. This criminal is sacred, vile as he is, and ill-deserving as he is, just so long as he is in the keeping of the nation; until her own voice shall say, "Dying thou shalt die!" And there is no other voice this side of Heaven that can rightfully utter such a sentence as this against any creature of God, however deserving of death. The power of life and death comes from God.

The Apostle Paul thought of the Roman Empire as the representative of God's majesty for his protection and his praise so long as he did well. And it was so. Rome represented the majesty of law; therefore he first made an appeal to it, as a man, a Roman, who could not be treated with indignities except according to law; whose person was too sacred for chains and scourges, except after due process of law. That law had behind it the majesty of Rome, and the majesty of had behind it the majesty of God! God made him a man; Rome made him a citizen,and to him, as a citizen, Rome stood for God.

God is in human government, just as He is in the processes 00077of nature, just as he is in the moral and physical constitution of man. The functions of civil government come from God. They are His idea. He is called the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. By Him Kings reign and princes decree justice; by Him princes rule, and nobles, even all the judges of the earth. It makes no difference what the form the government; what its perfections or imperfections, when you have reached its chief man, its power, you have reached one whose functions come from God. The Romans called their civil ruler Caesar; we call ours President. And when the President signs a law enacted by the representatives of the people in Congress assembled, he signs it as the chief executive, the power of sixty millions of people. It is their act; it is their will, their pleasure put into law, and he says so over his own signature.

There are some who have the idea that if a thing is not constitutional it is not law; that is the end of it. Constitutions and laws do not originate government, but only express it. Government is in the nature of things. Constitution and laws are the expression of the will of the people as to what they have found by study to be in the nature of things. Our government is what our fathers found there. They dug deep and built on bedrock. The forms of government in different nations should be adapted to the genius and progress of the people. It is the only way progress is possible. Hence come constitutional amendments. Some need more government; some need less. The time may come, when, with barbarism in our cities, and barbarism on our frontiers, American civilization will require another form of government; or else, go to pieces.

00088

The laws of man regulating the family relation do not originate that relation. Respecting that relation, the laws of man attempt to recognize and guard what is in the nature of things. What is in the nature of thingsGod has put there. We may make the dissolution of the marriage relation easy or hard; adapting ourselves to circumstances, as Moses did. But God makes it hard, even where we try to make it easy. People who have been united in marriage, if the marriage bond be dissolved, often drag the fragments of a broken chain, all their life long; suffer, perhaps, in their children, generation after generation. God has made it so. We cannot trifle with any of God's institutions, without taking the penalty.

II. The history of the science of civil government is the history of the effort to adjust the functions of the citizen to the functions of the State; to make good citizens under a good government. And we are writing this history today. The great names of history, what are they, but the names of men, who, when upon them and their contemporaries, the pressure of the hand of the State became unendurable; when the government of the State became tyranny, lifted up their voice; drew the sword against it? The men whom you and I honor to day, for whom as free Americans we thank God, are the men who, in the history of Anglo-Saxon race on this continent, stood for man, as against government; for the citizen, as against the State.

When the State assumes prerogatives that God has not given it; when government forgets that it has to do with a creature of God, who has rights under it, just as 00099God-given as its own prerogative; forgets that tyranny, unjust laws, unfair interpretation, or unequal execution of them, are a betrayal of its most sacred function, and in defiance of the God who ordained them; then you and I, educated in the school of those heroic souls, from whom we have inherited what we value most, can make but one answer: That resistance to such tyranny is of God; is obedience to God. If the State say to me, "I have a divine right to exact this thing of you; that you pay this tax on tea, this stamp on certain government papers; and if you do not do it, here is the penalty," I answer back to the State, "I have a divine right as well as you. I have a divine right to be represented in the legislative body that taxes me. I have a divine right to be heard there as to the justice of this taxation. I will be represented there; or I will appeal from you to the God, whose vicegerent you are." This is the way our ancestors have talked; and this is what they have done. Why, the echoes of the cannon, which the other day celebrated the evacuation of the British from New York, one hundred years ago, are yet ringing in our ears. What was that evacuation? It was their going out of the court of God of battles, with sentence against them, on this appeal; the citizen against the State. What did our fathers want? They wanted their rights as citizens. They said "Is it right for a man, that is an Englishman, with John Hampden and John Milton, and Oliver Comwell behind him in history, to be deprived of the right of representation in the legislative body that makes laws for him?" That is a question too for the citizens of the District of Columbia.

001010

Solon says, "Society is well governed when the people obey the magistrates, and the magistrates obey the laws." That has been the trouble as between the citizen and the State. Those who have been exalted into places of power have forgotten that the laws were made for them, as well as the citizens; and that they were there to submit to them and carry them out. They have no discretion as to whether a violated law shall be enforced. They are the power to enforce it. Justice is represented as blind. But, justice in this country, American justice, can always tell the color of a man's skin' whether he is black or white; the place of his nativity; whether he were born in China or Ireland. A great many good people think she has somehow worked the bandage up from her eyes, even the in the highest judiciary of the land, or else she is color-blind there. I do not know. When the other day a colored man was told in Mississippi, no, white man, that if he, a free citizen, a man and an American, dared to cast his ballot, he would be shot in his tracks; and when he did cast his ballot and was shot in his tracks, American justice did not hear that shot. She is deaf as well as blind. It was telegraphed from one end of the land to the other, but American justice has not yet discovered it. She is making up judicial decisions. This man sympathized with a race to protect which, from just such outrages, so long perpetrated on them on account of service to the nation when her life was imperilled, and on account of special exposure to them, because of previous condition of servitude, three articles were expressly inserted in the United States Constitution. But, it seems, we have the 001111old Constitution still! The amendments are null and void. The new cloth has torn away from the old garment, and the rent has been made worse. This great, free Republic, which fondly thought when she had her boys in blue in arms around her, that she was a nation, and could amend her own constitution, and could legislate for her citizens, whom she had made citizens, now finds that she labored under a slight mistake; that she has no such high functions as these; and that if her citizens are abused, if they are shot down in the very act of exercising the elective franchise, she has no remedy for them, no punishment for the criminal. They are more out of her power than if they were in a foreign land. She cannot ask for them, as criminals, of the different States which compose her domain.

I know all the learning and ingenuity by which this interpretation of the law has been defended, though one voice from a border State has been lifted up in the minority; Mr. Justice Harlan disssenting. Relative to numbers, it seems like a still, small voice. "And after the wind, an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire, a still, small voice." The letter of the law is one thing; the spirit of the law is another. The letter killeth. And never was the spirit of the law more cruelly murdered by the letter o, in the house of its friends. The legal part I will leave with the lawyers, but of the equity part I shall speak. States rights, indeed! What cared the United States Government for State rights, what cared she for class legislation, when 001212the Constitution was interpreted in favor of slavery; when the American flag had no protection but only terrors for the black man; when U. S. meant you slave to him, as he fled into the fens and marshes and swamps of death before the shot-gun and bloodhound; when with no such word as slave in the United States Constitution, the United States a Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law; when with a provision in the Constitution against class legislation, the United States Supreme Court rendered the Dred-Scott decision, in which men who were citizens in many of the States, were in their race stigmatized by the highest judiciary of the nation, as belonging to a class which had no rights that white men were bound to respect?

It is true, that in the majority decision the Supreme Court goes out of its way to suggest that though under the new amendments of the Constitution, intended to cover the civil rights of the recent bondmen, Congress has no right to legislate in their behalf, yet Congress may so legislate under section 8, of article I, where authority is given to regulate commerce among the several States and with the Indian tribes. Commerce! Still goods and chattels! Still to be treated, not as citizens, but as rifles and blankets and trinkets! The Government cannot say to this man, an American, "You are a citizen, therefore your civil right are assured wherever our flag waves." But, perhaps, the Government may be permitted to say: "This railroad corporation has made a contract to deliver you in such a time, at such a station, and though as a man and a citizen you have no protection, yet, as a traveling commodity, as a biped, 001313ticketed through, as goods to be delivered by a railroad corporation, possibly you may have. Steam-power can protect you, through the law-power cannot. It is altogether too suggestive of the time when the chief value of the colored man consisted in what he would bring at the auction-block. The Government can regulate commerce even where one of the contractors is a colored man, can even protect her citizens as commercial travelers, but not as citizens. That would interfere with State rights!

III. In his relation to the State, the citizen owes the State something in the line of citizenship; the State owes the citizen something in the line of state-craft. In the Apostle's language, the citizen owes the State good works; the State owes the citizen praise.

I assume in this discussion, that the citizen and the State are necessary to each other; have both been ordained by God, and cannot live apart. The citizen cannot say of the State, "I have no need of you; neither can the State say this of the citizen. Except where it conflict with his duty to God, the citizen has no discretion as to his duty to the State. "He that resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God!" Neither has the State any discretion as to its duty to the citizen. These reciprocal duties are involved in their relation to each other; which is a necessity; which is in the nature of things. There are those who say that State is for the citizen; and there are those who say the citizen is for the State. These statements are both true;, and one is as true as the other; and they cannot be alone. It is like saying, the parent is for the child; and the child is 001414for the parent. They are both true; and one is as true as the other. Under this head, I shall show how the citizen is for the State; what the State has a right to expect of him. I shall show how the State is for the citizen; what the citizen has a right to expect of the State.

The first duty the citizen owes the State, is good citizenship. There is no security, there is no permanence to the State, without this. Make the laws as perfect as you please; make the play into each other of the different departments of Government as faultless; yet, laws are nothing, the theory of Government is nothing, without good citizenship. It is the bad citizens in the country to-day, that make the Government insecure. In order to good citizenship, the citizen must know the laws and respect them, because they stand in the nature of things; because they seem to him to represent the government of God among men. In his report on "The Rights of Colonists," Samuel Adams says: "All positive and civil laws should conform as far as possible, to the law of natural reason and equity." Just in proportion as the Government represents God, it must be so. God is no respecter of persons; neither should the minister of God be.

Now, whatever the grounds of the decision of a majority of the Supreme Court with regard to the civil rights of the colored people, no man can say "it conforms to the law of natural freedom and equity." I do not care by what specious logic it is maintained, it is not according to "natural reason and equity" for this Government to say to seven millions of people, made free as a war measure, to save the life of the nation, to foster whose civil rights 001515three constitutional amendments have been adopted and corresponding legislation enacted; I say it is not according to "natural reason and equity" for this Government to say to these seven millions, "We can do nothing for you;" and you cannot make these citizens believe it is. They may well turn round and say, "If you cannot, what are you for?" Some people think this agitation of the colored people ill-timed. I honor them for it. I want to see their leaders stand as Samuel Adams did in Massachusetts, as Patrick Henry in Virginia. There is not an Anglo-Saxon who hears my voice who has not, in the loins of his ancestors, been stirred to mutiny by wrongs that had not half the dignity or importance.

You cannot make a good citizen out of a man who is not honored and respected by his government; against whom the law, or the administration of the law discriminates. It is not in the nature of things. "Do that which is good," says the Apostle, "and thou shalt have praise of the same." Yes, under Roman authority; and if you are a white man, under American. The citizen owes the government good citizenship, and the government owes the citizen applause and honor for this citizenship. One of the charges made in the Declaration of Independence against the British king was this: "He has abdicated government here by declaring us out of his protection." Is this Government prepared to abdicate authority over these seven millions? If the State cannot protect, with what right can the State assess and collect taxes? summon citizens to arms for national defense? expect good citizenship? The enemy of the 001616citizen is the enemy of the State. If the enemy of the citizen cannot be punished for his crime against citizenship, the State has abdicated one of its functions. How can it ask the citizen to rally to its defense?

The payment of taxes, is one duty of good citizenship. But what are taxes for? Let the Apostle answer this question: "For this cause pay ye tribute also; for they are God's ministers, attending continually upon this very thing. State-craft has to be paid for. The Judges of the Supreme Court have to be paid for their decisions. Their $100,000 a year comes partly from the sweat of the colored man. These millions of people, who are to look in vain to this Government for protection in their civil rights; will the Government excuse them from paying taxes? from bearing arms? from good citizenship? Why not? It acknowledges that it sees no way of performing its functions; why should not they be released from performing theirs? I know the bitter irony with which it is said: "They have the same protection the white man has." It is not true; the white man has the protection of his color, of his class, of his history of resisting oppression; of centuries of race prestige. He has the moral protection of the Government, which the colored man helped him to save. "The colored man has the same remedy for indignities as the white man?" Who believes this when he says it? Ah! the administration of all such remedies is in the hands of the white race. It is the white race whose hands hold the balance, and weigh out justice. This decision of the Supreme Court is the decision of eight white men; honest men, conscientious men, I believe; an honest decision, a con- 001717scientious decision, I do not doubt. Their color is not against them; but it is against the colored man. Do you think that eight colored men would ever have come to such a decision? Do you think that a Bench of Nine Judges, with one colored man on it--and that would be only the colored man's right, according to population--would have come to such a decision? I do not.

Now, let us hear the still small voice of Mr. Justice Harian, who dissents. We shall hear from other dissenters yet. My brethren says, "that when a man has emerged from slavery, and by the aid of beneficent legislation, has shaken off the inseparable concomitants of that state, there must be some stage in the progress of his elevation, when he takes the rank of mere citizen, and ceases to be the especial favorite of the laws; and when his rights as a citizen or a man are to be protected in the ordinary modes by which other men's rights are protected. It is, I submit, scarcely just, to say that the colored race has been the special favorite of the laws. What the nation, through Congress, has sought to accomplish, in reference to that race, is--what had already been done in every State of the Union for the white race--to secure and protect rights belonging to themas freemen and citizens; nothing more. The one underlying purpose of Congressional legislation has been to enable the black race to take the rank of mere citizens."

It certainly seems a very singular position to take, the assumption that what the executive power of the nation cannot do, and what the legislative power of the nation cannot do, and what the judiciary power of the nation 001818cannot do for the colored man, he is now, all these forces having failed, and having been withdrawn, to do for himself. The rank of a mere citizen! Has he ever had it? The special favorite of the laws! Legislation made to the ear, broken to their hope! As though laws unenforced, and which for the last six years the Government has made no pretense of enforcing, had put him under special obligation to the State: We cannot, as a nation, evade the issues thus, as though we confer a favor on him by leaving him alone. We owe something to these seven millions of citizens, which we have never paid. We owe a state-craft which we have never provided. And we here declare ourselves insolvent and unable or unwilling to pay. So far as the promises we made, so far the covenant we entered into is concerned, we confess bankruptcy. We never have done, but dare we say, we never mean to do our part as the State to them as citizens of the State? Remember, we stand here for God.

This thing is true. You may gauge the character of citizenship by the character of state-craft. The care you take of your citizen, the honor you put upon him as a citizen will largely determine what he will be to the State; true, loyal, heroic, if the State be true to him. If the State do not institute his rights and stand for his rights, that very depreciation he feels in his own soul. Educate him, he only feels them the more keenly. Has this nation come to the decision that she will leave seven millions, more than one-ninth of her citizens, under the pressure of burdens and indignities which make citizenship a mockery? Is she willing to confess to them, to confess to those whose blind but settles purpose 001917it is to thwart all free exercise of their rights of citizenship, to confess to the whole civilized world, which saw her bowed low under the discipline of the God of all the earth, and heard the covenant which she recorded is, if she is anybody's minister, that she has no such sovereignty in her own domain, that she can keep the covenant made in their behalf; or has she no domain which she can call her own except her forts and arsenals?

I look upon the recent decision of the Supreme Court, the honesty of which I do not call in question, as a simple acknowledgment on the part of the highest court in the land, that thus far all our state-craft in behalf of the seven millions of bondsmen, is futile and in vain; that this theory of State rights, which was buried deep on so many a battlefield, has risen again to haunt our national councils, and has seized and wielded the judicial pen; that there is to-day no proper citizenship for the colored man in any of the States where he was once enslaved; no remedy as yet devised for the want of it. If the majority of the Supreme Court have given us only the facts, this is the meaning of these facts, as I have interpreted them. So I agree with Senator John Sherman, of Ohio, who says:

"In spite of this decision I am in favor of trying again and again, both by State and national law, to secure to every citizen, black or white, native or naturalized, every right, privilege or exemption, which by law or custom is conceded to the most numerous class of the citizens of the State in which he lives. The minority should have the same or equal rights with the majority, the poor with the rich, the black with the white. Birth, fortune, education, luck, make enough distinction and differences between citizens to threaten us with discontent, communism, 002018jealousy and envy. These inequalities we cannot prevent, nor can we prevent social likes and dislikes, or the habits, preferences or customs of individuals. These are social, resting with each individual. But inequality made by law is tyranny, and should be resisted by constant opposition and agitation. I, therefore, for one, will not acquiesce in the decision of the court, though I have the highest respect for it, and for the members of it. It undermines the foundation stone of republican principles."

There is a State of which one would like to be a citizen; a State where man is recognized as man, because he lifts up his brow to one Father, God, and leans on the bosom of one Saviour, Brother; where the disfranchised of other nations may gather, and for the first time stretch up to the height of true manhood; feel the pulse of free citizenship; where, if there be any lowly class, any tempted ones, they are the nation's especial care; where home is sacred from the wiles of the tempter and the snare of the fowler; where from Atlantic to Pacific, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf, in the mines and factories of the North and Northwest, in the prairies of the West and the savannas of the South, there is but one thought, one wish, one prayer, to know how we can lift each other up into better citizenship and better brotherhood; how we can more fully realize the pattern shown to our fathers in the Mount. We may never live to see it, possibly it may never come; but to have dreamed of it; to have seen it in vision coming down out of Heaven from God; to have followed in the footsteps of those who prophesied of it, and died expecting it; to have believed in it as God's idea, in giving man the power of self-government; in giving His Son to be man's elder brother, this it is to have been an American!