1. To justify rebellion, (or what is the same thing, forcible resistance of the laws,) a government must be so bad, as to fail manifestly of its just end, that is, to promote the happiness of the people. If it does promote that general happiness, it answers the just end of government--it is a good government, and ought not to be overthrown. 2. To justify rebellion, the injustice or failure of a government must be so great, that it cannot be endured,--so great, that it will manifestly be better on the whole, to run all the risks of a bloody conflict, of civil war, than to endure the execution of the governmental laws. 3. To justify rebellion, there must be little or no prospect that the government can be peaceably altered, as ours may be, or that the injustice or oppression of the government can be made to cease by any peaceable means. Violence against government, rebellion, civil war, are no small matters. They bring horrid evils along with them. The injury of government must be very great to justify the introduction of such evils; and if the injury can be made to cease, by any peaceable means and within any reasonable time, it would be better to bear the injury for a while, than to involve the nation in confusion and blood, with uncertainty as to _the result_.--The last four years' experience of nations in Europe may read us a lesson. 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!