But out of physical causes, unknown to
us, perhaps unknowable, arise moral duties, which, as we are able
perfectly to comprehend, we are bound indispensably to perform. Parents
may not be consenting to their moral relation; but consenting or not,
they are bound to a long train of burthensome duties towards those with
whom they have never made a convention of any sort. Children are not
consenting to their relation, but their relation, without their actual
consent, binds them to its duties; or rather it implies their consent,
because the presumed consent of every rational creature is in unison
with the predisposed order of things. Men come in that manner into a
community with the social state of their parents, endowed with all the
benefits, loaded with all the duties, of their situation. If the social
ties and ligaments, spun out of those physical relations which are the
elements of the commonwealth, in most cases begin, and alway continue,
independently of our will, so, without any stipulation on our own part,
are we bound by that relation called our country, which comprehends (as
it has been well said) "all the charities of all." Nor are we left
without powerful instincts to make this duty as dear and grateful to us,
as it is awful and coercive. It consists, in a great measure, in the
ancient order into which we are born.
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