Think of this, that "The great object of government is the protection of property." Tell that to Samuel Adams, and John Hancock, and Washington, and the older Winthrops, and the Bradfords and Carvers! Why! it seems as if the buried majesty of Massachusetts would start out of the ground, and with its Bible in its hand say--This is false! 3. The third false idea is this--That you are morally bound to obey the statute, let it be never so plainly wrong and opposed to your conscience. This is the most dangerous of all the false ideas yet named. Ambitious men, in an act of passion, make iniquity into a law, and then demand that you and I, in our act of prayer, shall submit to it and make it our daily life; that we shall not try to repeal and discuss and agitate it! This false idea lies at the basis of every despot's throne, the idea that men can make right wrong, and wrong right. It has come to be taught in New England, to be taught in our churches--though seldom there, to their honor be it spoken, except in the churches of commerce in large towns--that if wrong is law, you and I must do what it demands, though conscience declares it is treason against man and treason against God. The worst doctrines of Hobbes and Filmer are thus revived. I have sometimes been amazed at the talk of men who call on us to keep the fugitive slave law, one of the most odious laws in a world of odious laws--a law not fit to be made or kept. I have been amazed that they should dare to tell us the law of God, writ on the heavens and our hearts, never demanded we should disobey the laws of men! Well, suppose it were so. Then it was old Daniel's duty at Darius's command to give up his prayer; but he prayed three times a day, with his windows up. Then it was John's and Peter's duty to forbear to preach of Christianity; but they said, "Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye." Then it was the duty of Amram and Jochebed to take up their new-born Moses and cast him into the Nile, for the law of king Pharaoh, commanding it, was "constitutional," and "political agitation" was discountenanced as much in Goshen as in Boston. But Daniel did not obey; John and Peter did not fail to preach Christianity; and Amram and Jochebed refused "passive obedience" to the king's decree! I think it will take a strong man all this winter to reverse the judgment which the world has passed on these three cases. But it is "innocent" to try.