Excerpt from The Duty of the Free States, Vol. 2I insist on this, because the feeling of individual re sponsibility is very much lost in consequence of the excessive deference of the private man to the govern ment under which he lives. On the subject of slavery in particular, the responsibility both at the North and South is shifted very much from the individual to the State. The private conscience is merged in the public. What the government determines, the multitude of men are apt to think right. We do not exercise our moral judgment, because it has been forestalled by the consti tution and by the laws. We are members of a com munity, and this relation triumphs over all others.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.