Consider first, then, in any given case, “Are those in the minority seeking to keep or filch liberty from you, or only to obtain such liberty as is already yours? Are they seeking to set up equality of condition or inequality? Are they pressing for privilege or only for common ground?” And if the answer to such questions be that they seek only a like liberty upon common ground and equality with yourselves--then, I care not how large the majority against them--you must open or make available to them that same standing which you claim as your due; and on whatever basis of public service or private worth you have obtained your right,--that means, that test, that qualification must be open also to them, else your majority rule is nothing more than brute force, a despotism extended from the embodiment of one or of a few to an embodiment of 10, 15, or 20,000,000. But if you sanction that and make it your base, then, to be logical, you must sanction also (at least as a test) the employment of force by a minority to make its position untenable. And remember, that if among a minority some ten per cent. are willing to die, as against only some one or two per cent. in a majority, that minority is likely to win, and all your numbers will be vain. That fact puts no undue or dangerous power into the hands of minorities. Consent, on a just basis, can be obtained to government whose acts are little to the liking of individual minds or of minorities. But if, after long trial of expedient, persuasion, or coercion, consent cannot be obtained, then the weight of evidence (based on the unfailing document of human nature) has shifted against government; and it rests more with the government than with the rebel to prove that its claims are just. When governments establish inequalities affecting the lives and liberties of any, however few, I see no sanction whatsoever in majorities. One runaway slave had not to wait upon a majority of his fellow-slaves in order to establish his right to escape from slavery--still less upon a majority of the nation which owned him. If he could find a path along which to escape, that was the highroad appointed for him by God from of old; and if he died in the attempt his grave was still a monument to Liberty. Not the will of a million could destroy the right of that one. And though I admit that a society which sanctions slavery must treat as a murderer the slave who kills in his effort to escape,--nevertheless, by posterity, and in a society which has repudiated slavery, that act will be very differently regarded; and so long as the man’s aim when he committed that legal offence was freedom, we, who have repudiated slavery, look upon him not as a murderer but as a fighter in a just cause.