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 government, and the enactment of more just laws, after the present government is overturned.  Nothing can justify a revolution, a conflict, a waste of treasure and blood, which are not going to gain anything in the end.—­Again, the last four years’ experience of European nations may read us a lesson.

6.  To justify rebellion, or what is the same thing, violent resistance to the execution of the laws, it is necessary that something more than a small fraction of the people should rise in such a resistance.  If the people in general are ready for it, and are willing to run all the hazards of a rebellious conflict with the government, conscious that they have righteousness and the God of righteousness on their side; this is a very different affair from what it would be, if only a minority of the people were ready for rebellion.  Such a minority have no right, on account of their deemed injuries, to plunge the nation into a civil war, for the purpose of over-turning a government which suits the great mass of the people;—­a civil war, in which there is every prospect, that the government and the majority who aim to support it will prevail; and prevailing, must crush their hostile opponents, this hasty and reckless minority.