The Sun.
London, England, 1841-03-20 00:00:00

SELL, and, though the audience might not be so I
ready to laugh with the Hon. Member, the
people out of d,) )r.3 will think that he paid the
Noble Lord in his own coin.

The House was employed during the re-
mainder of the evening in Committee, discussing
the clauses of the Bill. It adjourned at Half-
past Twelve o'Clock.

The debate on Mr. EASTHOPE'S motion rela-

five to Mr. BAJENES has given rise to a discus-

sion on a far more important subject than
Church-rates—the moral duty of obedience to

law. Lord J. RUSSELL described Mr. BAINES'S

conduct, in setting up his own convictions in op-
position to the law, " as a crime against society."
Sir ROBERT PEEL also contended for the prin-
ciple that " the law must be obeyed." If it were
wrong, he said, in substance, it should be al-
tered, but as long as it was law, without any re-
ference to what it enacted, obedience must be
enforced. The same doctrine is maintained in

the public prints, in which it is said " that the
law is every individual's superior," and that con-
science must not be asked a question, for it has

no other duty but submission—an excellent doc-
trine for Turkey, Persia, or China, but which no

Englishman can on reflection assent to. Whe-
ther these doctrines be correct or not, they touch

our dearest interests too nearly not to make it
desirable to attain a thorough conviction of their

truth or falsehood. To have clear moral concep-

tions and to be perfectly sure of what is our

duty, is essential happiness and rectitude. We
shall, therefore, without hesitation, submit this
dogma of the Parliament and the Press to exa-

urination.

It is said to be a crime not to obey the law.
Have those who make the assertion considered

what the law is? It is nothing more than the

declaration of the will of some individuals, and

how can it be, per se, a crime in other indivi-

duals not to obey their will. In the debate, Dr.
NICHOLL contended that the particular law to

which obedience was required was the common

law, not the statute law. But the common law
consists of doubtful decisions of some Judges, in-
terpreted or misinterpreted by others, applied or
misapplied as suits the particular views and
fancies of living Judges, and such decisions, apart
from their own merits, be they what they may,

can carry no obligation for this generation to obey
them. Nothing is more natural than that those who
make, and those who administer the laws, should
insist on the virtue of obedience. They are

judges in their own cause. They are not impar-
tial, and their declaration, unenforced by the fact
that the law itself is worthy of obedience, that
the actions it prescribes ought to be done
though it prescribed them not, cannot supply a
reflecting and conscientious man with a convic-
tion that it is a crime not to do as they tell him.
It was admitted by all parties in the debate,
that if the law were wrong it ought to be altered ;
but it was insisted that, till it were altered, it
ought to be obeyed. Suppose, however, instead
of takinis, a few pence out of men's pockets it
commanded them to strangle their offspring, or
murder the aged. Would it, or could it, then
be said that men ought to obey the law, till it

pleased the tyrants who enacted it to repeal it ?
We answer, no ; and consequently it is only
when the law is of itself good, and commands
what is right, that it ought to be obeyed. As to
who is to decide what is right, we have confidence
in human nature, and leave it to the decision of
each individual. Those who will not so leave it,
insist on some one or a few—themselves, or their

patrons—deciding for all. We have not yet
seen the man who was endowed from Heaven
with any such patent, and therefore we say the
decision of what is right, and what is to be
obeyed, must be left to each individual.
We will take an existing case to test this prin-
ciple. The Corn-laws are, in our estimation, and
in the estimation of thousands, a flagrant ini-
quity. They actually put to death infants and
the aged, they starve the weakly and the needy
out of existence : ought such a law to be obeyed?
We have no hesitation in answering—No. There
is a difficulty, we admit, in disobeying it. Those
who suffer from it have neither means to escape
from it, nor to evade its enactments. The ship-
owners, who could oppose it, have only a slight
pecuniary interest in opposing it ; they do not re-
flect on its consequences, and they will not subject
themselves to difficulties, when their gains might
well render their conduct liable to misconstrue-

tion. While we see and admit the physical diffi-
culty in the way of resisting such a law, we
nevertheless say it ought to be resisted, like a
law for slaughtering innocents. •
Those who make the assertion that we ought
to obey the law, whatever it may ordain, con-
found, we apprehend, two essentially different
things,—the duty of obedience and the prudence
of obedience. The law being backed by the
physical force of society, for an individual or
two individuals to resist it is running their heads
against a wall. Prudence tells them to put up
with the lesser evil of being plundered. But as
the law is a mere empty declaration of a Judge,
or a piece of parchment with crooked marks on
it, unless it be enforced by society, the duty of
obeying implies the duty of enforcing it. Though
not prudent for a few individuals to resist it, the

multitude may with propriety say, it is not their
duty to obey, and they will not enforce it. To
justify Mr. BAINES, then, all the Dissenters
ought to follow his example. Till they do so,
they enforce the law against him and against
themselves. They are inconsistent. They
complain of the exaction which they assist in
levying. To give dignity and effect to resistance,
it should be general. The bulk of the Dissenters
should prefer going to gaol, if the remainder of
the community would send them to gaol, to
paying an impost which they denounce as ini-
quitous. There is no difficulty in the way of re-
sisting th'e Church-rate law enforced by Ecclesi-
astical Courts, as there is in resisting the Corn-
law; and the Dissenters must blame only them-
selves if they enforce against themselves the law
by which they are continually plundered.
It might be supposed that those who maintain
this doctrine, that laws, however iniquitous,
ought to be obeyed, acknowledged no other
ruling power than the law, and no superior to
the law-maker. The reverse is the case. They
not only acknowledge a superior power—they
pretend that from it they derive all their rights
and power. They not only so pretend, but they
actually pay an army of priests to preach to the
people that the superior power commands them
to obey the laws which the inferior power makes.
At any rate, the inferior power never would
pay those priests who teach a different doctrine.
There is here, we think, a remarkable con-
tradiction. The law-makers tell us there is a
power superior to them and to us, which they, as
well as we, are bound, above all things, to obey.
As long as the commands of the two run together,
all goes well, but when, as in the case of the Dis-
senters, men say the ALMIGHTY commands them
not to obey the human lawgiver, then the latter,
who had before imposed on them obdience to the
ALMIGHTY, turns round and tells them they must
not obey Him, they must obey only the law-
giver. At the same time he acknowledges that
the laws, which he insists shall be obeyed, are
wrong, and ought to be repealed. There is, in
our judgment, a terrible and even revolting in-
consistency in such conduct. Moreover, it shows
that politicians prostitute the name of the DEITY
to their own purposes, and deny His authority
when it crosses their schemes.
Mr. HUME, on Thursday night, observed cor-
rectly, that by the Cabinet proposing to put an
end to the Church-rates in 1838, the Ministers,
and the House of Commons who supported them,
admitted that the Church-rate law was a bad
law. When Lord STANLEY proposed to re-
lieve the Irish from the Vestry-cess, equi-
valent to our Church-rates, he denounced it
as a perpetual blister. Every one admits that
the Church-rates are a source of strife in almost
every parish. The best friends of the Church
have said they inflict a heavy blow on the Esta-
blishment. According, however, to the Tory
Journals, to Sir ROBERT PEEL, and to Lord JOHN
RUSSELL, it is the duty of all men to submit to
this mischievous law. Common sense repudiates
the conclusion, to which nothing gives the least
countenance but the misplaced conviction of the
lawgivers, the result of their overweening vanity,
that society is held together by their enactments,
however unwise and unjust.
Now that the question of obedience has been