The whole dogma of _passive obedience_ must be rejected, whatever guise it assumes, under whatever _alias_ it skulks,--whether in tyrannical usurpations of king, parliament, or judicial tribunal,--whether in exploded theories of Sir Robert Filmer, or rampant assumptions of the Fugitive Slave Act. The rights of the civil power are limited; there are things beyond its province; there are matters out of its control; there are cases in which the faithful citizen may say,--ay, _must_ say,--"I will not obey." One of the highest flights of Mirabeau was, when, addressing the National Assembly of France, he protested against a law then pending, and exclaimed, "If you make such a law, I swear never to obey it!"[138] No man now responds to the words of Shakespeare, "If a king bid a man be a villain, he is bound by the indenture of his oath to be one." Nor, in this age of civilization and liberty, will any prudent reasoner, who duly considers the rights of conscience, claim for any earthly magistrate or tribunal, howsoever styled, a power which the loftiest monarch of a Christian throne, wearing on his brow "the round and top of sovereignty," dare not assert. [138] Projet de Loi sur les Émigrations, 28 Février, 1791: OEuvres, (Paris, 1834,) Tom. III. p. 85. On this twofold conclusion I rest, and do not doubt the final result. The citizen who has sworn to support the Constitution is constrained to support it simply as he understands it. The citizen whose private life has kept him from assuming the obligations of official oath may bravely set at nought the unrighteous ruling of a magistrate, and, so doing, he will serve justice, though he expose himself to stern penalties. Fellow-citizens of Massachusetts, our own local history is not without encouragement. In early colonial days, the law against witchcraft, now so abhorrent to reason and conscience, was regarded as constitutional and binding,--precisely as the Fugitive Slave Act, not less abhorrent to reason and conscience, is regarded as constitutional and binding. A special Court of Oyer and Terminer, with able judges, whose names are entwined with our history, enforced this law at Salem by the execution of nineteen persons as witches,--precisely as petty magistrates, acting under sanction of the Supreme Court of the United States, and also of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, have enforced the Fugitive Act by the reduction of two human beings to slavery. The clergy of Massachusetts, particularly near Boston, and also Harvard College, were for the law. "Witchcraft," shouted Cotton Mather from the pulpit, "is the most nefandous high treason," "a capital crime,"--even as opposition to the Fugitive Act has been denounced as "treason." [_Laughter._]