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Show 170 DESPOTISM Prevailing ideas on the theory of government tPnd precisely the same way. rrhose ideas, derived from llobbcs, Locke, and Rousseau, represent government as a contract. The natural state of man, the state of nature, is assumed to be a state of hostility on the part of each individual against every othc>r, or, ac· cording to Rousseau, of total isolation. To escape out of this wretched condition, men, we arc told, resorted to the artificial expedient of societies and governments founded on contract. According to this theory, the only moral principle involved in the idea of government is-Contract; and this contract, we are told, must be preserved inviolate, or government is at an end, and chaos comes again. No matter how absurd; no matter how unjust towards ourselves or others: a bargain is a bargain; and though it sl ipulates for the pound of flesh, it must be fulfilled. l\Iany excellent men, ready to denounce slavery in the abstract as the sum of all iniquities, will tell us, in the same breath, that the "compromises of the constitutiQn" guaranty its existence. It is morally wrong, they say, to attempt to evade or get over, or set aside, those compromises-an appeal to notions of mercantile honor not without a powerful inllu~nce upon the best portion of the community. 'fhese opinions respecting law and government involve, indeed, the inconsisteiley and absurdity of sup· posing that men have power, by arrangement and convention, to make that artificially right which naturally is wrong-an inconsistency and absurdity which there have not been wanting able writers to expose. These writers have shown clearly enough, that the basis of law, the basis of property, the basis of personal rights, the basis of government, are to be sought for and found not in any artificial contracts, or arbitrary statutes or usages, but in the nature and constitution of man. They have shown clearly enough, that law, so far as it has any binding ~or~l force, is and mutit be conformable to natural prmctp pies of right; indeed, that in this conformity alone its IN AMERICA. 171 moral b~ndi~1g force_ consists; and that so far as this c?nform1ty JS wanting, what is called law is mere v10lcnce :111d tyranny, to wh~ch a man may submit 1or th~ sake o~ peace, but ~vluch he has a moral right to res1st p_asstvely at all times, and forcibly when he has any fa1r prospect of success. Such indeed was the principle upon which the America~ Uevol~tion was justified. The acts of parliament of which the colonies complained, had all the forms of law and Mansfield and other great lawyers said they wer~ law. But in the. view of the colonist•, they lacked the substance without whiCh law cannot exist. 'l'hey subverted those fundamental rights embodied in that maxim and usage of the English constitution, which co_uplcs. taxation and representation together. 'l'uxatwn without representation was dcnouuced by the colonists as mere robbery, to which, though concealed under the form of law, they were not legally obliaed to, and would not, submit. 0 'l'he principle of the perpetuity and inviolability of contra?ts, no matter what their object, character, or Op('ratton, has been attacked with no less energy and success. It has been triumphantly shown, that the very essence and substratum of contract is mutual benefit. Contracts; whether in la'v or morals' have no binding force. wHh?ut a consideration, a g~od and v~luable ~ons1dera_tion. l\'len cannot bargain away c1ther theu own r1ghts or the rights of others. All such pretend~d contra~ts are void from the beginning :-the spawn of fr~u? m. the on~ party, and ignorance Ill the other, or of 111JUStJce and Immoral intentions in both. 'l'o say, that by committing the folly or the cume . of contracting to do an immoral act, a man lays lumself under a moral obligation to do that immoral_ act, is to overturn the very foundations of morality .. Nor are these principles the mere notions of theoretical morali~ts. So far as rclt}tes to private contracts, they are fully acknowledged and admitted ?r all eour_ts of !aw throughout. the civilized world. lhey constttute, uuleed, the fundamental principle |