# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1855 02 13_S100
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

100

political liberty, that the right and duty of every member, citizen or civic body of a state is established and secured by such laws as truly guarantee or secure to each the exercise and fulfilment of his calling.

You see, liberty and law hang together most intimately, are inseparable, wherefore also the fundamental laws or constitution of the United States are appealed to when it is to be proved that political liberty prevails here. Suppose you live in a free country and practice, say, the trade of a cabinetmaker; then your neighbor, the wheelwright, may not take against your will the wood which you use for the practice of your calling and trade, in order to carry on his trade therewith: the law hinders him, protects you; but in respect of your neighbor's trade the law protects him and hinders you, that you may not, say, take his wood [illegible] his will and in [illegible] use up. To you your calling is [illegible] of your neighbor, to your neighbor [illegible] calling is secured against your encroachments; you limit one another, and just through such limitation you are both free. My readers can with ease bring forward a multitude of like examples and make it clear to themselves thereby that liberty rests in the law, not in lawlessness.

Hence it may also happen that the citizen of a free country, in which the best laws rule, is a wretched slave. He is so when he does the good laws of the land only from fear of punishment, thus with unwilling heart and vexed mind. Such a one will never be free, let him dwell in a state of political liberty or of political bondage. Therefore, that political liberty prevails in a land is by no means yet to say that the inhabitants of it are all free men. You must do the good law of the land with a willing heart and joyful mind; only then are you yourselves free people. But this no one learns of himself, nor is it to be learned anywhere save from the Word of God. The Word of God teaches you to recognize in the good law of the land the will of God, declares thereby your keeping of it to be a divine service, Matthew 22:51; Romans 13. And again the Word of God, the Gospel, makes God's commandment and service dear and precious to you, so that you delight therein after the inward man, Rom. 7:22, and so also keep the good law of the land gladly from the heart. Will you be free in the free land, then hold to the Word of God and hold with the Christian church and help that it be built; will you that your children be free, then build for them Christian schools and churches. If the Son of God, Jesus Christ, make you free, ye shall be free indeed. John 8:36.

Political liberty is a very fair and excellent good, but he would greatly deceive himself who should believe that with it the happiness and welfare of a land and people were already founded and given. Laws of state, however wisely drawn, can only ever up to a certain limit determine the conduct of the citizen toward his fellow citizen; they can effect no more than that the one respects the other's right. What a cheerless, sorrowful life one would lead where men served one another only so far as the right of each prescribes! One would not rob the other, not kill him, such a thing would be forbidden by the law of the land, but the brother would not help to better and guard his brother's goods and living, would not help him in all bodily distresses, unless perhaps he were appointed thereto as a policeman. Patience, kindliness, compassion, mercy, rejoicing with them that rejoice, weeping with them that weep, giving, lending, hoping for nothing again, in short all service of love, all social intercourse, the forbearing and bearing of the neighbor's weakness would be excluded there, where political liberty alone should make up the happiness of a land; for that whereby it is founded and maintained, the law of the state, cannot command even one of those precious services of love. That the citizens of a country render the Samaritan's service to one another, that only the Word of the Lord Jesus can bring about, who himself is the true merciful Samaritan and makes those who so believe on him into merciful Samaritans. If you would be happy, truly happy in the free land, then believe on the Lord Christ and gather yourselves into Christian congregations; if you would have your children happy, build them churches and Christian schools and bring them up yourselves in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. The law of the state cannot indeed even protect against what is called chicane, chicanery. How often does it happen that neighbors simply compel their neighbor to move away out of the neighborhood, without his being able to apply the help of the law against it! They lie in wait for him, for example, to discover the sinful and evil in his walk, and then bring it among the people behind his back, rob him by such gossip of the honor which he, like everyone, needs for the fulfilment of his calling, e.g. for the guidance of his household and the education of his children — soon he must yield. Or a richer man sets up close beside him the same business which he carries on, draws by the splendor which he knows how to spread about himself by means of his wealth all the custom to himself — the poorer must depart. Factory owners pay for hard labor so wretched a wage that the workman must pinch, the usurer holds back the payment for work delivered as long as possible, in order with the money needed therefor to make money first, in short, one citizen can enslave and tyrannize over another in a free country, without its being possible to check it by the laws. Or is he who is compelled by the chicanery of his neighbors to move away not at least as badly enslaved as the serf in Russia, whom his lord may not even drive from house and farm? You cannot enjoy the advantages of political liberty unless there prevail among you and your fellow citizens mutual good will, disinterested kindliness, loving consideration and reverence, and these virtues you will plant in yourselves and your children and make your own only by doing God's Word and by the founding of churches and schools among you maintaining it. The Holy Ghost, who comes through the Gospel of Jesus Christ, is a spirit of power, of love and of a sound mind, 2 Tim. 1:7.

In order that the political liberty guaranteed in the laws may really come to the citizens of a country, there is further need of an upright magistracy and of faithful officials generally, be they called presidents, judges, senators, representatives, etc. Those officials, for example, who have to manage the finances, revenues and expenditure of a state, can by bad administration plunge the country into debt and thereby make such high levies or taxes necessary that the citizens of the country are put by excessive payments of that kind out of condition to fulfil their earthly calling completely, so that they thus suffer abridgment of their liberty. High levies it is, indeed, whereby many countries of Europe, many states of Germany also, have come into the reputation that there is less political liberty in them than in the U. States; but those levies are the consequence of dreadful administration of the finances, especially during the last two centuries. How much worse and more destructive encroachments upon the liberties of the citizens of a country can judges and in general such officials make, who are to uphold the very laws given for the protection of body, life and calling! Such upholding of the laws always demands two kinds of principal labor. The one is: to carry out what the law commands, thus e.g. to protect the life and property of the citizens; the other principal labor is this, to make new laws as soon as new callings, civic bodies or corporations acquire rights, or the earlier laws in course of time have become insufficient. That an unfaithful judge, despite the most exact laws, can acquit the rascal who bribes him and punish the innocent, that jurors (the jury) themselves may be brought to acquit an open murderer, everyone knows; that officials or representatives (Representatives, Senators, etc.) who are entrusted with the drafting of the laws abuse their power and with new laws overthrow existing rights and liberties of individual persons and of whole members of the state, has happened often enough at all times; the independent existence of the U. States, in which we live, reminds us continually that about 1770 the English lawgivers, the Parliament, wished to lay taxes upon the then colonies within the bounds of the present U. States, against the known and acknowledged rights of the same. Political liberty is endangered by nothing so much as by unfaithful officials of state. — Therefore we choose all these officials ourselves and always only for a few years, says the citizen of the United