But in our own country, if the state governments shall ever be broken down, and state marks obliterated, what will the right of resistance be worth to us? When the oppression comes from the greedy many, and is exerted over the proscribed few, is it not worse than {281} mockery to tell them they may resist in the last resort--that the minority, enfeebled and impoverished by legislative plunder, without army, navy, or treasury, disorganized, unsteady, and vacillating in its plans, may rise against the many who possess the advantages of physical force, wealth, organization, together with the whole power of an energetic government, which can break the ranks of the minority, and sow the seeds of dissension among them, by the corrupting influence of its mighty patronage, or attack and conquer by its force those who shall first have the temerity to take the field against its oppression? Resistance is worth but little, when the strong man, armed and resolute, has pushed me, feeble and unarmed, to the wall.[24] [Footnote 24: The principle of the _absolute majority_ claimed by a great central government, would make the republican form of government more intolerable than any other, for the following reasons: 1st. The parties may be permanent, and consequently the oppression may be permanent likewise. 2d. An individual with power to oppress may or may not do it. Even Nero or Caligula may refrain from exactions--but a multitude being _always_ governed by the selfish principle, will be _sure_ to oppress if they have the power; the operation of the selfish principle on _one_ man is a matter of chance,--on a _multitude_, it is a certainty. 3d. In such a government, the influence of the public opinion of the oppressed produces the _least possible_ influence on the oppressors, first, because the majorities and minorities being almost always sectional, the opinions of the latter are not likely to be known to the former; and secondly, if they were known they would produce little effect, because the former have on their side the majority of public opinion, and therefore would generally disregard that of the minority. 4th. The rapacity of such a government would be increased, from the necessity of procuring a large _dividend_ for so great a number of _divisors_.]