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!

4. To justify rebellion, it is necessary that there should be a fair
prospect of successful resistance--of an overthrow of the
government. If the resistance is not likely to be successful for
good, but is only likely to cost the lives of the resisting
individuals and others; then, such individuals are sacrificing
themselves and others for no good purpose,--which is a thing that
cannot be justified to reason or religion. A man has no right to
fling away his life for a mere sentiment, and leave his wife a
widow, or his gray-haired parents without a son to solace them.
There must be some fair prospect of great good to come from it,