people governed, or there is no real government.

Government is not only that which governs, but that which has the
right or authority to govern. Power without right is not
government. Governments have the right to use force at need, but
might does not make right, and not every power wielding the
physical force of a nation is to be regarded as its rightful
government. Whatever resort to physical force it may be obliged
to make, either in defence of its authority or of the rights of
the nation, the government itself lies in the moral order, and
politics is simply a branch of ethics--that branch which treats
of the rights and duties of men in their public relations, as
distinguished from their rights and duties in their private
relations.

Government being not only that which governs, but that which has
the right to govern, obedience to it becomes a moral duty, not a
mere physical necessity. The right to govern and the duty to
obey are correlatives, and the one cannot exist or be conceived
without the other. Hence loyalty is not simply an amiable
sentiment but a duty, a moral virtue. Treason is not merely a
difference in political opinion with the governing authority, but
a crime against the sovereign, and a moral wrong, therefore a sin
against God, the Founder of the moral Law. Treason, if committed
in other Countries, unhappily, has been more frequently termed by
our countrymen Patriotism and loaded with honor than branded as a
crime, the greatest of crimes, as it is, that human governments
have authority to punish. The American people have been chary of
the word loyalty, perhaps because they regard it as the
correlative of royalty; but loyalty is rather the correlative of