"Human Government," from Anthropology or the Science of Man in its Bearing on War and Slavery, by Henry C. Wright (1797-1870) (Cincinnati, 1850). Wright was an abolitionist writer who edited the publications of William Lloyd Garrison. Quite a brilliant and forgotten polemicist.

HUMAN GOVERNMENT. - What is it? A government in which the will of man is law, and death the penalty.

Dost thou ask, what I think of human government? If it be true that God works out his purposes solely by fixed laws, and that man cannot be justly held amenable to arbitrary laws and penalties, then all human governments must be wrong, for they cannot be other than governments of arbitrary law and penalty. How can man have the right to dictate law to his equal brother, and kill him if he disobeys? for all human government must fall back on death for execution. Death is personified in every legislature, judge and ruler; the government is but an embodiment of death. No man can be under obligation to do anything because human governments tell him to do it. If they require what is right, we are to do it.; not because they require, but because it is right, and not because congress of parliament commands it.

But thy query is, "Does not ther bible sanction human government?" My answer is, if the bible says our Creator ever authorized human beings to dictate laws to their fellows and to punish those who disobey, the bible is mistaken. A benevolent and all-wise God never placed men under the dominion of men. Nature acknowledges allegiance only to the Creator. To say that God makes man his viceregent in the government of this world, and arms him with governing power over his brother, is to say that he intended man's earthly existence to be the scene of hatred, contention, violence, and blood. To say that he instituted human governments, and armed them with death as the executive power - is to charge him with the folly of setting up an institution to protect life, and basing itsd existence on the right to kill men; that he protects liberty by enslaving men, truth by lying, purity by impurity, and justice by injustice.Death the guardian of life! Slavery the guardian of liberty, falsehood the guardian of truith, war of peace, violence of love; the author of all evil, the protector of the Author of all good! The author of man and this universe never committed such folly. The history of all human governments demonstrates, that he who could do this knew not what he was about. As well say, that the only way to make men love us is to hate them, as to say that governments of violence ever did or ever can protect life. They exist by death, and they make of earth a charnel house. I cannot and will not love and worship any being as God, that ever did or ever can approve of their existence.

Dost thou ask, "What can we do without the protection of governments of human will and death?" Better ask, what has the human race done with them? Just what might have been expected they would do. Such governments have made criminals and killed them. That is all. Nature says, man was made to be governed, not to govern. Whatever says man was made to govern, says what cannot be true, because it is opposed to nature. The history of all attempts of man to rule over man, to dictate to him a rule of life, and to punish him if he disobeys, demonstrates that an assumption of such power is opposed to nature and to nature's God. They have made earth a scene of blood and carnage.

The moment a man claims the right to control the will of a fellow by physical force, he is at heart a slaveholder.