Government Corrupted by Vice, and Recovered by Righteousness

May 31, 1775 | Samuel Langdon | Watertown, Massachusetts Bay

Headnote, written for Huzzah

This is an excerpt. What was left out, and why, is set out at the foot of the page.

Langdon preached this on 31 May 1775 at Watertown, to the third Provincial Congress of Massachusetts, six weeks after Lexington and three weeks before Bunker Hill. It was the annual election sermon, the day fixed by charter for choosing counselors, being kept by a body the Crown did not recognize, in a town outside a capital held by British troops. He was president of Harvard.

The argument is plain and it is not new to him. A nation may set up whatever government suits its common welfare. Those rights are natural, held before any human law and merely recognized by the charter rather than granted by it. And if the men entrusted with a people's government betray that trust, they may be discarded and others appointed, without waiting for them to resign what they have already forfeited.

He does not present this as a discovery. He presents it as something his hearers already know, which is the point. Fourteen months before the Declaration, the case for replacing a government that has broken faith is being made from a pulpit, to a legislature, as ordinary doctrine. Thornton, editing this in 1860, saw the same thing and footnoted the sentence about setting up a government with the words of the Declaration itself.

The document

Ask Poor Richard

Shall we rejoice, my fathers and brethren, or shall we weep together, on the return of this anniversary, which from the first settlement of this colony has been sacred to liberty, to perpetuate that invaluable privilege of choosing from among ourselves wise men, fearing God and hating covetousness, to be honorable counsellors, to constitute one essential branch of that happy government which was established on the faith of royal charters ?

On this day the people have from year to year assembled, from all our towns, in a vast congregation, with gladness and festivity, with every ensign of joy displayed in our metropolis, which now, alas ! is made a garrison of mercenary troops, the stronghold of despotism. But how shall I now address you from this desk, remote from the capital, and remind you of the important business which distinguished this day in our calendar, without spreading a gloom over this assembly by exhibiting the melancholy change made in the face of our public affairs ?

[The greater part of the sermon is omitted here. See the note at the foot of this page.]

Every nation, when able and agreed, has a right to set up over themselves any form of government which to them may appear most conducive to their common welfare. The civil polity of Israel is doubtless an excellent general model, allowing for some peculiarities; at least, some principal laws and orders of it may be copied to great advantage in more modern establishments.

Thanks be to God that he has given us, as men, natural rights, independent on all human laws whatever, and that these rights are recognized by the grand charter of British liberties. By the law of nature, any body of people, destitute of order and government, may form themselves into a civil society, according to their best prudence, and so provide for their common safety and advantage. When one form is found by the majority not to answer the grand purpose in any tolerable degree, they may, by common consent, put an end to it and set up another, — only, as all such great changes are attended with difficulty and danger of confusion, they ought not to be attempted without urgent necessity, which will be determined always by the general voice of the wisest and best members of the community.

If the great servants of the public forget their duty, betray their trust, and sell their country, or make war against the most valuable rights and privileges of the people, reason and justice require that they should be discarded, and others appointed in their room, without any regard to formal resignations of their forfeited power.

[The sermon closes.]

May the Lord hear us in this day of trouble, and the name of the God of Jacob defend us, send us help from his sanctuary, and strengthen us out of Zion ! We will rejoice in his salvation, and in the name of our God we will set up our banners. Let us look to him to fulfil all our petitions.

What was left out

The sermon runs to about nine thousand words. Printed here are the opening, three passages from the middle of the argument, and the closing prayer, together about six hundred. What is omitted is the long central section: Langdon's reading of Isaiah on the corruption of Judah, his account of the corruption of Britain and of the ministry, the narrative of Lexington and Concord and of the siege of Boston, and his address to the Congress on reviving the form of government. The complete text is linked in the source note below.

Source and provenance

Text from John Wingate Thornton, The Pulpit of the American Revolution, Boston, 1860, Discourse V, read from the scan at https://archive.org/details/pulpitofamerican00thor. This is the one document in the library resting on a single nineteenth century witness, and the position is stated here rather than left to be inferred. No period printing could be reached. The sermon was printed at Watertown in 1775 by Benjamin Edes, and a search of the Internet Archive on 20 September 2026 by title, by title fragment, by Samuel Langdon as creator across the years 1770 to 1780, and across the collection of eighteenth century imprints, returned no copy. Langdon's other sermons are digitized and this one is not, at least not anywhere openly reachable. So nothing here has been checked against the sheets Edes set in 1775. What that means for the text below. Thornton reproduces the 1775 title page, "Printed and Sold by Benjamin Edes, Mdcclxxv", together with the order of the Provincial Congress that the sermon be printed, so his edition says what it is copying. It does not follow that he copied it exactly, and there is no second witness here to test him against, which is the ordinary way a claim like that is checked in this library. Thornton also prints his own footnotes through the sermons, signed "Ed.", and the scanning drops them into the middle of the paragraphs around them. The passages below were selected one at a time rather than lifted as a continuous run, each was read against the page image before it went into the file, and the rendered page was checked after deploy for the marker "Ed." appearing anywhere inside the document. It does not appear. That check is the reason to trust the selection rather than the edition. If a copy of the Watertown printing becomes reachable, this document is re-sourced to it and the note is rewritten.

Read next: The Preachers and the Revolution, 7 books in The Formation Library.

This is step 4 of 6 in How the free American mind was built, which says what changed before it and what to watch for in it.

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