The captain has no right to put to sea, and resign when the storm comes. Besides what supports a wicked government more than good men taking office under it, even though they secretly determine not to carry out all its provisions? The slave balancing in his lonely hovel the chance of escape, knows nothing of your secret reservations, your future intentions. He sees only the swarming millions at the North ostensibly sworn to restore him to his master, if he escape a little way. Perchance it is your false oath, which you don't mean to keep, that makes him turn from the attempt in despair. He knows you only--the world knows only by your _actions_, not your _intentions_, and those side with his master. The prayer which he lifts to Heaven, in his despair, numbers you rightly among his oppressors. OBJECTION VI. I shall only take such an office as brings me into no connection with slavery. ANSWER. Government is a whole; unless each in his circle aids his next neighbor, the machine will stand still. The Senator does not himself return the fugitive slave, but he appoints the Marshal, whose duty it is to do so. The State representative does not himself appoint the Judge who signs the warrant for the slave's recapture, but he chooses the United States Senator who does appoint that Judge. The elector does not himself order out the militia to resist "domestic violence," but he elects the President, whose duty requires, that a case occurring, he should do so. To suppose that each of these may do that part of his duty that suits him, and leave the rest undone, is _practical anarchy_. It is bringing ourselves precisely to that state which the Hebrew describes. "In those days there was no king in Israel, but each man did what was right in his own eyes." This is all consistent in us, who hold that man is to do right, even if anarchy follows. How absurd to set up such a scheme, and miscall it a _government_,--where nobody governs, but everybody does as he pleases. OBJECTION VII. As men and all their works are imperfect, we may innocently "support a Government which, along with many blessings, assists in the perpetration of some wrong."