To hear some men talk of the government, you would suppose that

In the days when the voice of justice rang from the pulpits and the public square, when conscience was the fiercest weapon against tyranny, the great abolitionist Wendell Phillips spoke with fire and wit: “To hear some men talk of the government, you would suppose that Congress was the law of gravitation, and kept the planets in their places.” These words, sharp as a sword and luminous as a lamp, were not mere jest. They were a rebuke to blind reverence — a call for the people to remember that government is not God, but the servant of humanity. Phillips, who spent his life fighting slavery and corruption, warned his generation — and ours — that those who worship authority soon become its slaves.

The origin of this quote lies in the tumultuous years before the American Civil War, when Phillips, a fearless orator for the abolitionist cause, challenged both the moral cowardice of citizens and the complacency of politicians. He lived in a time when many men believed that Congress, the machinery of law and power, was infallible — that its decrees were as natural and eternal as the law of gravity itself. But Phillips, who measured justice not by statute but by conscience, saw through this illusion. He spoke with the conviction of a prophet: government is not a force of nature; it is the creation of men — and like all creations of men, it can err, it can decay, it can become corrupt.

When Phillips compared Congress to the law of gravitation, he was mocking the way citizens often confuse habit for necessity, and power for virtue. Just as the stars move in their courses by divine law, some people imagined their government to be an unchanging and sacred order. Yet governments are not eternal; they are fragile, human inventions. To revere them as perfect is to forget that justice and truth exist before and beyond all human law. As Phillips declared elsewhere, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” His warning was that when men begin to treat political authority as unshakable, they lose the courage to reform it — and in that silence, tyranny is born.

History bears cruel witness to this truth. In pre-revolutionary France, the people once believed that their king ruled by divine right — that his decrees, like gravity, held the world together. They bowed before the illusion of permanence until the weight of injustice broke the illusion apart. When the storm of revolution came, it was not the heavens that fell, but the false gods of government. So too in every age, from empires to republics, when men mistake authority for destiny, they invite ruin. Power that is worshiped becomes power unrestrained; power unrestrained becomes power corrupt. The planets of society begin to spin into chaos not because men defy government, but because they have allowed government to forget its place.

Phillips spoke as a man of faith, not in government, but in human conscience. His words call us to remember that the true laws of order — justice, reason, compassion — come not from Congress or crown, but from the moral universe itself. He believed that the people, guided by truth, could correct the errors of their rulers and keep the world in balance far better than any legislature of ambition and pride. The government’s duty, he said, is to serve those laws, not to replace them. To confuse the one with the other is to give up our birthright as free beings, capable of shaping our destiny.

In our own time, his warning still burns bright. Many still look to governments as though they were the source of all stability, the final refuge of safety and wisdom. Yet when we make government our god, we lose sight of our own strength. We forget that the stars would still burn and the earth would still turn without the decrees of men. The law of gravitation governs the cosmos, but the laws of government must answer to the law of conscience. The world does not collapse when the unjust are defied; it collapses when good people surrender their moral independence in fear of change.

So let this teaching pass down as an inheritance of liberty: question power, but never the principles of truth; honor government, but never worship it. Remember that the strength of a nation lies not in its parliaments or presidents, but in the virtue of its people — in their courage to think, to act, to challenge, and to dream. When leaders falter, let citizens rise; when laws oppress, let justice speak louder. For the heavens themselves do not rely on Congress to keep their order — and neither should we rely on governments to keep our souls in harmony.

Thus, as Wendell Phillips taught, laugh gently at the pomp of those who think themselves indispensable, and hold fast to the eternal truth that freedom and reason, not authority, are what truly keep the stars — and men — in their rightful places.