what the majority of our fellow-citizens do from choice?  We lawyers may think it is an absurdity to say a man can’t sue, for, like the Apostle at Ephesus, it touches our “craft,” but that don’t go far to prove it.  Then, as to taxes, doubtless many cases might be imagined, when every one would allow it to be our duty to resist the slightest taxation, did Christianity allow it, with “war to the hilt.”  If such cases may ever arise, why may not this be one?

Until I become an Irishman, no one will ever convince me that I ought to vote, by proving that I ought not to pay taxes!  Suppose all these difficulties do really encompass us, it will not be the first time that the doing of one moral duty has revealed a dozen others which we never thought of.  The child has climbed the hill over his native village, which he thought the end of the world, and lo! there are mountains beyond!  He won’t remedy the matter by creeping back to his cradle and disbelieving in mountains!

But then, is there any such inconsistency in non-voters sueing and paying taxes?

Look at it.  A. and B. have agreed on certain laws, and appointed C. to execute them.  A. owes me, who am no party to the contract, a just debt, which his laws oblige him to pay.  Do I acknowledge the rightfulness of his relation to B. and C. by asking C. to use the power given him, in my behalf?  It appears to me that I do not.  I may surely ask A. to pay me my debt—­why not then ask the keeper, whom he has appointed over himself, to make him do so?

I am a prisoner among pirates.  The mate is abusing me in some way contrary to their laws.  Do I recognize the rightfulness of the Captain’s authority, by asking him to use the power the mate has consented to give him, to protect me?  It seems to me that I do not necessarily endorse the means by which a man has acquired money or power, when I ask him to use either in my behalf.

An alien does not recognize the rightfulness of a government by living under it.  It has always been held that an English subject may swear allegiance to an usurper and yet not be guilty of treason to the true king.  Because he may innocently acknowledge the king de facto (the king in deed,) without assuming him to be king de jure (king by right.) The distinction itself is as old as the time of Edward the First.  The principle is equally applicable to suits.  It has been universally acted on and allowed.  The Catholic, who shrank from acknowledging the heretical Government of England, always, I believe, sued in her courts.

Who could convince a common man, that by sueing in Constantinople or Timbuctoo, he does an act which makes him responsible for the character of those governments?

Then, as for taxes.  It is only our voluntary acts for which we are responsible.  And when did government ever trust tax-paying to the voluntary good will of its subjects?  When it does so, I, for one, will refuse to pay.