Obligations with his Duties. As a Witness, to give true testimony; as a Judge, to administer justice; are always Duties. By means of Oaths, these Duties become Obligations imposed by a distinct Contract, and accepted by a solemn Engagement. And if there be not this identity of Duty and Obligation in general, the State cannot subsist. For the State consists of men, who are moral beings; and who cannot, without an intolerable violation of their nature, go on continually discharging Obligations, which have no connexion with their Duties. The essential part of the business of the State must be regarded with the solemnity which belongs to moral acts; otherwise, the State itself cannot be a permanent reality, in the minds of moral men. And, as we have already said (677), the natural way of acknowledging and marking this moral solemnity, among religious men, is by acting, and declaring that we will act, as in the presence of God; that is, by taking an Oath to act rightly. The thoughtlessness of men, and the excuses which, in common life, they make for falsehood, deceit, injustice, partiality, inconsistency, passion, and the like, are such, that it is requisite, for the essential business of a State, to demand of them another frame of mind than that which is usual in their common intercourse. If the Witness were to give his Evidence, the Jury, their Verdict, the Judge, his Sentence, with the carelessness and perversion of truth and right, which men often allow themselves in common conversation; the administration of justice would be impossible. If the Witness told his tale, and the Judge gave his opinion, with the levity which prevails at a convivial meeting, how could a moral citizen bear a part in a court of Justice? On such occasions, then, men must be grave, must be thoughtful, and must engage to be so. The occasion and the acts must be marked as solemn ; and

this, as we have said, is necessarily done, among religious men, by the Witness narrating, and the Judge And the occadeciding, as in the presence of God. sion is marked as solemn, by each person declaring that he does this; that is, by the Oaths of the Witness, and of the Jurymen, taken at the time of the trial; and by the Oath of Office, which the Judge has previously taken.

842. The necessity of the Right of administering Oaths being vested in the State, will also appear from the following considerations. If the State do not exercise this Right, a body of the Citizens, bound together by their common belief in God and in his Judgments, may administer, to each other, Oaths to co-operate in their common purposes; and may thus, when their purposes become inconsistent with, or hostile to, the existing Government, overthrow the Government, and take the Authority of the State into their own hands. For a State, not claiming a moral reality for its acts, by means of religious solemnities, could not stand against a great body of citizens bound together by religion. If such citizens be brought before the tribunals for hostility to the government; the witnesses, the jury, the judge, may be of the religious party; and, not being bound to their official act by religion, they will act so as not to be the effective agents of laws which they deem unjust and cruel. And if the laws be still enforced, by the agency of citizens acting without any acknowledged tie of religion, the laws must soon cease to be regarded as just; for morality cannot long subsist in men's minds without religion. When this has taken place, and the laws are no longer supported by an opinion of their general justice, the empire of the law becomes the empire of mere force, which the moral nature of man will not allow to continue long among men.

Thus the ground of the necessity of Oaths in a

State is, that Morality cannot long subsist in men's minds without Religion; that for the efficacy of religion, a recognition of it by the State is requisite ; and that this recognition is especially requisite on certain solemn occasions, such as judicial proceedings, the assumption of important State offices, and the like.

843. If it be said that Religion may be efficacious in making men true and just on solemn occasions, without being publicly recognized and referred to; we reply, that though this may be so with some persons, the State can never know which persons are, and which are not, of this number, without the use of some Formula referring to Religion: nor can it be known, without the use of some such Formula, whether any particular person considers the occasion a solemn one or not.

844. The State, therefore, necessarily has the Right of administering Oaths of Testimony, of Office, and the like. And this State Right, like the others, is a special and original Right of the State, not derived from any Combination of individual Rights. For though men, in a Contract or other transaction, may be willing to accept Oaths from one another; no one man can be conceived as having any Right to impose an Oath upon another man. If there be any difficulty in ascribing to the State a Right to question or limit a man's actions on account of his religious belief or religious sentiments, there must be a much greater difficulty in ascribing such a Right to any individual. And as no individual could have any portion of such a Right, no collection of Individuals could have the Right: and the State Right to impose Oaths cannot arise from the combination of the Rights of the Individuals, of whom the State consists.

845. It may perhaps be said, that an assemblage of religious individuals, associating themselves for

their mutual advantage, might exclude from their body, all who would not, upon due occasions, make certain religious declarations. And this might be so; but we cannot conceive this as the origin of the Right of the State to impose Oaths. For to imagine this, would be to suppose the State to be, not only a voluntary association of individuals; but of individuals in whose minds religious belief and religious sentiments were already established, and who were drawn together by their religious sympathies. But this is an impossible supposition: for we cannot conceive Religion without Morality, or Morality without Society already established. We know that the State does not derive its religious belief from the spontaneous religious sympathies of individuals; but that individuals derive their religious sentiments, in a great measure, from the Society in which they are born and live. Men bind themselves by Oaths, under the direction of the State, not as if it were part of a social contract that they should do so; but looking upon the State as a Divine appointment, and a channel through which the forms of the most solemn engagements must necessarily be derived.

846. We are thus led to reckon, as Rights of States, besides the general Rights of Government, these four the Right to the National Territory; the Right of War and Peace; the Right of Capital Punishment; and the Right of imposing Oaths. These Rights are all necessary to the continued existence of States; and, as we have seen, they are not derivative or cumulative attributes, but original and peculiar. We have called them State Rights, in order to distinguish them from Individual Rights.

To Individual Rights correspond Obligations; and it may be asked whether the State has any Obligations corresponding to its Rights. The answer to this Question will occupy the next Chapter.

CHAPTER II.

THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE STATE.

847. THE State is, as we have said, the Sourc of Law and of Authority, and the Realizer of individual Rights. The State Rights exist, in order that the State may discharge this its office. And hence, the Obligation corresponding to the State Rights is, that the State shall be the State; that it shall deliver and administer Laws, and thus realize Rights. And this it must do, not for a short time merely; not for one generation only; but permanently, and with a prospect of permanence. Hence, to provide for this permanence is an Obligation of the State. This we may describe as the Obligation of Self-preservation.

848. We more frequently hear the Duty of Self-preservation ascribed to the State: but we shall, in general, use the term Obligation in speaking of this subject not only because Obligation is the term corresponding to Right; but also, because this Obligation is enforced by a real Sanction, as individual obligations are for if the State do not fulfil this Obligation of Self-preservation, it will not be preserved, but will be dissolved, and will cease to be a State. If, however, we wish to retain the term Duty in this case, we may speak of the Duty of Self-preservation as the Lower Duty of a State, in comparison with other Duties, such as the Duty of rendering its subjects moral and intelligent, which are its Higher Duties.

849. This State Obligation of Self-preservation divides itself into several branches; related in some measure to the different State Rights of which we have spoken. Those Rights are assigned to the State for certain purposes; and the State is under Obligations to employ them for those purposes. Q 2

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