 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. This reading by Gordon McKenzie. On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thurow. 1849, original title, Resistance to Civil Government. Part 1. I heartily accept the motto. That Government is best which governs least. And I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this which also I believe. That Government is best which governs not at all. And when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of Government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient. But most Governments are usually and all Governments are sometimes inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing Government. The standing army is only an arm of the standing Government. The Government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it. Witness the present Mexican War. The work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing Government as their tool. For in the outset, the people would not have consented to this measure. This American Government, what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity. It has not the vitality and force of a single living man, for a single man can bend it to his will. It is a sort of wooden gun to the people themselves. But it is not the less necessary for this. For the people must have some complicated machinery or other, to hear its din, to satisfy that idea of Government which they have. Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed upon, even impose on themselves for their own advantage. It is excellent. We must all allow. Yet this Government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate. The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished, and it would have done somewhat more if the Government had not sometimes got in its way. For Government is an expedient by which men would feign succeed in letting one another alone. And as has been said, when it is most expedient, the governed are most let alone by it. Trade and commerce, if they were not made of India rubber, would never manage to bounce over obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way. And if one were to judge these men wholly by the effects of their actions and not partly by their intentions, they would deserve to be classed and punished with those mischievous persons who put obstructions on the railroads. But to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no Government men, I ask for not at once no Government, but at once a better Government. Let every man make known what kind of Government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it. After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted and for a long period continue to rule is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a Government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a Government in which the majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience? In which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment or in the least degree resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think we should be men first and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience. But a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made men a wit more just, and by means of their respect for it even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice. A common and natural result of an undue respect for the law is that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder monkeys, and all marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars against their wills. I against their common sense and consciences which makes it very steep marching indeed and produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned. They are all peaceably inclined. Now what are they? Men at all? Or small movable forts and magazines at the service of some unscrupulous man in power? Visit the navy-yard and behold a marine. Such a man as an American government can make. Or such as it can make a man with its black arts? A mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity. A man laid out alive and standing and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniment. Though it may be not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, as his course to the rampart we hurried, not a soldier discharged his farewell shot or the grave where our hero was buried. The mass of men serve the state thus. Not as men, mainly, but as machines with their bodies. They are the standing army and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or the moral sense. But they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones. And wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Men such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others, as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office holders, serve the state chiefly with their heads. And as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil without intending it as God. A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense and men, serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part. And they are commonly treated as enemies by it. A wise man will only be useful as a man and will not submit to be clay and stop a hole to keep the wind away, but leave that office to his dust at least. I am too high-born to be propertied, to be a second at control, or useful serving man and instrument to any sovereign state throughout the world. He who gives himself entirely to his fellow man appears to them useless and selfish, but he who gives himself partially to them is pronounced a benefactor and philanthropist. How does it become a man to behave toward the American government today? I answer that he cannot, without disgrace, be associated with it. I cannot, for an instant, recognize that political organization as my government, which is the slave's government also. All men recognize the right of revolution. That is the right to refuse allegiance to and to resist the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable. But almost all say that such is not the case now. But such was the case, they think, in the Revolution of 1975. If one were to tell me that this was a bad government because it taxed certain foreign commodities brought to its ports, it is most probable that I should not make an adieu about it. For I can do without them. All machines have their friction, and possibly this does enough good to counterbalance the evil. At any rate it is a greater evil to make a stir about it. But when the friction comes to have its machine and oppression and robbery are organized, I say, let us not have such a machine any longer. In other words, when a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty, our slaves, and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is that fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army. Paley, a common authority with many on moral questions, in his chapter on the duty of submission to civil government, resolves all civil obligation into expediency, and he proceeds to say that, so long as the interest of the whole society requires it, that is so long as the established government cannot be resisted or changed without public inconvenience, it is the will of God that the established government be obeyed and no longer. This principle being admitted, the justice of every particular case of resistance is reduced to a computation of the quantity of the danger and grievance on the one side and of the probability and expense of redressing it on the other. Of this, he says, every man shall judge for himself. But Paley appears never to have contemplated those cases to which the rule of expediency does not apply, in which a people, as well as an individual, must do justice, cost what it may. If I have unjustly rested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself. This, according to Paley, would be inconvenient. But he that would save his life in such a case shall lose it. This people must cease to hold slaves and to make war on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people. In their practice nations agree with Paley. But does anyone think that Massachusetts does exactly what is right at the present crisis? A drab of stat, a cloth and silver slut, to have her train borne up and her sole trail in the dirt. Practically speaking the opponents to a reform in Massachusetts are not a hundred thousand politicians at the south, but a hundred thousand merchants and farmers here who are more interested in commerce and agriculture than they are in humanity and are not prepared to do justice to the slave and to Mexico, cost what it may. I quarrel not with far-off foes, but with those who, near at home, cooperate with and do the bidding of those far away, and without whom the latter would be harmless. We are accustomed to say that the mass of men are unprepared. But improvement is slow, because the few are not as materially wiser or better than the many. It is not so important that many should be good as you, as that there be some absolute goodness somewhere, for that will leaven the whole lump. There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them. Who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets and say that they know not what to do and do nothing. Who even postpone the question of freedom to the question of free trade and quietly read the prices, current along with the latest devices from Mexico after dinner. And it may be fall asleep over them both. What is the price current of an honest man and patriot today? They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition. But they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. At most they give up only a cheap vote and a feeble countenance and God's speed to the right as it goes by them. There are 999 patrons of virtue to one virtuous man. But it is easier to deal with the real possessor of a thing than with the temporary guardian of it. All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions, and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote per chance as I think right. But I am not vitally concerned that that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority. Its obligation therefore never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves. Only his vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom by his vote. I hear of a convention to be held at Baltimore or elsewhere for the selection of a candidate for the presidency, made up chiefly of editors and men who are politicians by profession. But I think what is it to an independent, intelligent and respectable man what decision they may come to? Shall we not have the advantage of this wisdom and honesty nevertheless? Can we not count upon some independent votes? Are there not many individuals in the country who do not attend conventions? But no. I find that the respectable man, so called, has immediately drifted from his position and despairs of his country when his country has more reasons to despair of him. He forthwith adopts one of the candidates thus selected as the only available one, thus proving that he is himself available for any purposes of the demagogue. His vote is of no more worth than that of any unprincipled foreigner or hireling native who may have been bought. Oh, for a man who is a man, and as my neighbor says, has a bone in his back which you cannot pass your hand through. Our statistics are at fault. The population has been returned too large. How many men are there to a square thousand miles in the country? Hardly one. Does not America offer any inducement for men to settle here? The American has dwindled into an odd fellow, one who may be known by the development of his organ of gregariousness and a manifest lack of intellect and cheerful self-reliance, whose first and chief concern on coming into the world is to see that the almshouses are in good repair. And before yet he has lawfully donned the virile garb to collect a fund to the support of the widows and orphans that may be, who, in short, ventures to live only by the aid of the Mutual Insurance Company, which is promised to bury him decently. It is not a man's duty as a matter of course to devote himself to the eradication of any, even to most enormous wrong. He may still properly have other concerns to engage him. But it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it. And if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support. If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too. See what gross inconsistency is tolerated! I have heard some of my townsmen say, I should like to have them order me out to help put down an insurrection of the slaves or to march to Mexico, see if I would go. And yet these very men have each, directly, by their allegiance, and so indirectly, at least, by their money, furnished a substitute. The soldier is applauded who refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse to sustain the unjust government which makes the war. Is applauded by those whose own act and authority he disregards and sets at naught. As if the State were penitent to that degree that it hired one to scourge it while it sinned, but not to that degree that it left off sinning for a moment. Thus, under the name of order and civil government, we are all made at last to pay homage to and support our own meanness. The first blush of sin comes its indifference, and from immoral it becomes, as it were, un-moral, and not quite unnecessary to that life which we have made. The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it. The slight reproach to which the virtue of patriotism is commonly liable, the noble are most likely to incur. Those who, while they disprove of the character and measures of a government, yield to it their allegiance and support, are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to reform. Some are petitioning the State to dissolve the Union, to disregard the requisitions of the President. Why do they not dissolve it themselves, the Union between themselves and the State, and refuse to pay their quota into its treasury? Do not they stand in the same relation to the State that the State does to the Union? And have not the same reasons prevented the State from resisting the Union which have prevented them from resisting the State? How can a man be satisfied to entertain an opinion merely and enjoy it? Is there any enjoyment in it if his opinion is that he is aggrieved? If you are cheated out of a single dollar by your neighbor, you do not rest satisfied with knowing you are cheated, or with saying that you are cheated, or even with petitioning him to pay you your due. But you take effectual steps at once to obtain the full amount and see to it that you are never cheated again. Action from principle, the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations. It is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divided States and churches, it divides families. I, it divides the individual separating the diabolical in him from the divine. Unjust laws exist. Shall we be content to obey them? Or shall we endeavor to amend them and obey them until we have succeeded? Or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally under such government as this think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to put out its faults and do better than it would have them? Why does it always crucify Christ and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels? One would think that a deliberate and practical denial of its authority was the only offense never contemplated by its government. Else why has it not assigned its definite its suitable and proportionate penalty if a man has no property refuses but wants to earn nine shillings for the state? He is put in prison for a period unlimited by any law that I know and determined only by the discretion of those who put him there. But if he should steal ninety times nine shillings from the state he is soon permitted to go at large again. If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government let it go, let it go. Perchance it will wear smooth. Certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring or a pulley or a rope or a crank exclusively for itself then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil. But if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another then I say break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see at any rate that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn. As for adopting the ways the state has provided for remedying the evil I know not of such ways. They take too much time and a man's life will be gone. I have other affairs to attend to. I came into this world not chiefly to make this a good place to live in but to live in it be it good or bad. A man has not everything to do but something and because he cannot do everything it is not necessary that he should be doing something wrong. It is not my business to be petitioning the governor or the legislature any more than it is theirs to petition me. And if they should not hear my petition what should I do then? But in this case the state has provided no way. Its very constitution is the evil. This may seem to be harsh and stubborn and unconciliatory but it is to treat with the utmost kindness and consideration the only spirit that can appreciate or deserves it. So is all change for the better like birth and death which convulse the body. I do not hesitate to say that those who call themselves abolitionists should at once effectually withdraw their support both in person and property from the government of Massachusetts and not wait till they constitute a majority of one before they suffer the right to prevail through them. I think that it is enough if they have God on their side without waiting for that other one. Moreover, any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already. I meet this American government or its representative the state government directly and face to face once a year, no more, in the person of its tax-gatherer. This is the only mode in which a man situated as I am necessarily meets it. And it then says distinctly, Recognize me and the simplest, the most effectual and in the present posture of affairs the indispensable mode of treating with it on this head of expressing your little satisfaction with and love for it is to deny it then. My civil neighbor, the tax-gatherer, is the very man I have to deal with. For it is, after all, with men and not with parchment that I quarrel. And he has voluntarily chosen to be an agent of the government. How shall he ever know well that he is and does as an officer of the government or as a man until he is obligated to consider whether he will treat me, his neighbor, for whom he has respect as a neighbor and well-disposed man or as a maniac and disturber of the peace and see if he can get over this obstruction to his neighborliness without a ruder and more impetuous thought or speech corresponding with his action. I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten men whom I could name, if ten honest men only, I, if one honest man in this state of Massachusetts ceasing to hold slaves were actually to withdraw from this co-partnership and be locked up in the county jail, therefore, it would be the abolition of slavery in America. For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be. What is once well done is done forever. But we love better to talk about it. That, we say, is our mission. Reform keeps many scores of newspapers in its service, but not one man. If my esteemed neighbor, the state's ambassador, who will devote his days to the settlement of the question of human rights in the council chamber, instead of being threatened with the prisons of Carolina, were to sit down the prisoner of Massachusetts, that state which is so anxious to foist the sin of slavery upon her sister, though at present she can discover only an act of inhospitality to be the ground of a quarrel with her, the legislature would not wholly wave the subject of the following winter. Under a government which imprisons unjustly, a true place for a just man is also a prison. The proper place today, the only place which Massachusetts has provided for her freer and less despondent spirits is in her prisons to be put out and locked out of the state by her own act, as they have already put themselves out by their principles. There the fugitive slave and the Mexican prisoner on parole and the Indian come to plead the wrongs of his race should find them. On that separate but more free and honorable ground where the state places those who are not with her but against her, the only house in a slave state in which a free man can abide with honor. If any think that their influence would be lost there and their voices no longer afflict the ear of the state, that they would not be as an enemy within its walls, they do not know by how much truth is stronger than error, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who is experienced a little in his own person. Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence, a minority as powerless while it conforms to the majority. It is not even a minority then, but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison or give up war and slavery, the state will not hesitate which to choose. If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure as it would be to pay them and enable the state to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution if any such is possible. If the tax-gatherer or any other public officer asks me as one has done, but what shall I do? My answer is, if you really wish to do anything, resign your office. When the subject has refused allegiance and the officer has resigned from office, then the revolution is accomplished. But even suppose blood should flow? Is there not a sort of bloodshed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man's real manhood and immortality flow out and he bleeds to an everlasting death. I see this blood flowing now. End of Part 1. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, please visit LibriVox.org. This reading by Gordon Mackenzie. On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau. 1849, original title, Resistance to Civil Government. Part 2. I have contemplated the imprisonment of the offender rather than the seizure of his goods. Though both will serve the same purpose, because they who assert the purest right and consequently are most dangerous to a corrupt state commonly have not spent much time in accumulating property. Through such the state renders comparatively small service and a slight tax is want to appear exorbitant, particularly if they are obliged to earn it by special labor with their hands, if there were one who lived wholly without the use of money, the state itself would hesitate to demand it of him. The rich man, not to make any invidious comparison, is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue. For money comes between a man and his objects and obtains them for him. Surely no great virtue to obtain it. It puts to rest many questions which he would otherwise be taxed to answer, while the only new question which it puts is the hard but superfluous one, how to spend it. Thus his moral ground is taken from under his feet. The opportunities of living are diminished in proportion as that are called the means are increased. The best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor. Christ answered the Herodians according to their condition. Show me the tribute money, said he, and one took a penny out of his pocket. If you use money which has the image of Caesar on it and which he has made current and valuable, that is, if you are men of the state and gladly enjoy the advantages of Caesar's government, then pay him back some of his own when he demands it. Render therefore to Caesar that which is Caesar's and to God those things which are God's, leaving them no wiser than before as to which was which, for they did not wish to know. When I converse with the freest of my neighbors, I perceive that whatever they may say about the magnitude and seriousness of the question, in their regard for the public tranquility, the long and the short of the matter is, that they cannot spare the protection of the existing government, and they dread the consequences to their property and families of disobedience to it. For my own part I should not like to think that I ever rely on the protection of the state. But if I deny the authority of the state when it presents its tax bill, it will soon take and waste all my property and so harass me and my children without end. This is hard. This makes it impossible for a man to live honestly and at the same time comfortably in outward respects. It will not be worth the while to accumulate property. That would be sure to go again. You must hire or squat somewhere and raise but a small crop and eat that soon. You must live within yourself and depend upon yourself always, tucked up and ready for a start and not have many affairs. A man may grow rich and turkey even if he will be in all respects a good subject of the Turkish government. Confucius said, if a state is governed by the principles of reason, poverty and misery are subjects of shame. If a state is not governed by the principles of reason, riches and honors are subjects of shame. No. Until I want the protection of Massachusetts to be extended to me in some distant southern port where my liberty is endangered or until I am bent solely on building up an estate at home by peaceful enterprise, I can afford to refuse allegiance to Massachusetts and her right to my property and life. It costs me less in every sense to incur the penalty of disobedience to the state than it would to obey. I should feel as if I were worth less in that case. Some years ago the state met me in behalf of the church and commanded me to pay a certain sum toward the support of a clergyman who's preaching my father attended, but never I myself. Pay, it said, or be locked up in the jail. I declined to pay. But unfortunately another man saw fit to pay it. I did not see why the schoolmaster should be taxed to support the priest and not the priest the schoolmaster. For I was not the state's schoolmaster, but I supported myself by voluntary subscription. I did not see why the lyceum should not present its tax bill and have the state to back its demand as well as the church. However, at the request of the select men, I condescended to make some such statement as this in writing. Know all men by these presents that I, Henry Thoreau, do not wish to be regarded as a member of any incorporated society which I have not joined. This I gave to the town clerk, and he has it. The state, having thus learned that I did not wish to be regarded as a member of that church, has never made a like demand on me since. Though it said that it must adhere to its original presumption that time, if I had known how to name them I should then have signed off in detail from all the societies which I never signed on to. But I did not know where to find such a complete list. I have paid no poll tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account for one night. And as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones to be locked up. I wondered that it should have concluded at length that this was the best use it could put me to, and had never thought to avail itself of my services in some way. I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar. I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax. They plainly did not know how to treat me, but behaved like persons who were under bread. In every threat and in every compliment there was a blunder, for they thought that my chief desire was to stand the other side of that stone wall. I could not but smile to see how industriously they locked the door on my meditations, which followed them out again without let or hindrance, and they were really all that was dangerous. As they could not reach me, they had resolved to punish my body. Just as boys, if they cannot come at some person against whom they have a spite, will abuse his dog. I saw that the state was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it. Thus the state never intentionally confronts a man's sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They only can force me who obey a higher law than I. They force me to become like themselves. I do not hear of men being forced to live this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life were that to live? When I meet a government which says to me, your money or your life, why should I be in haste to give it my money? It may be in a great strait and not know what to do. I cannot help that. It must help itself do as I do. It is not worth the while to snivel about it. I am not responsible for the successful working of the machinery of society. I am not the son of the engineer. I perceive that when an acorn and a chestnut fall side by side, the one does not remain inert to make way for the other, but both obey their own laws and spring and grow and flourish as best they can till one, per chance, overshadows and destroys the other. If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies. And so a man. The night in prison was novel and interesting enough. The prisoners in their shirtsleeves were enjoying a chat in the evening air in the doorway when I entered. But the jailer said, Come, boys, it is time to lock up. And so they dispersed, but I heard the sound of their steps returning into the hollow apartments. My roommate was introduced to me by the jailer as a first-rate fellow and clever man. When the door was locked he showed me where to hang my hat and how he managed matters there. The rooms were whitewashed once a month, this one at least was the whitest, most simply furnished and probably neatest apartment in town. He naturally wanted to know where I came from and what brought me there, and when I had told him I asked him in my turn how he came there, presuming him to be an honest man, of course. And as the world goes, I believe he was. Why, said he, they accuse me of burning a barn, but I never did it. As near as I could discover he had probably gone to bed in a barn when drunk and smoked his pipe there, and so a barn was burnt. He had the reputation of being a clever man, had been there some three months waiting for his trial to come on, and would have to wait as much longer. He was quite domesticated and contented, since he got his board for nothing, and thought that he was well treated. He occupied one window and I the other, and I saw that if one stayed there long his principal business would be to look out the window. I had soon read all the tracts that were left there and examined where former prisoners had broken out, and where a grate had been sawed off, and heard the history of the various occupants of that room, for I found that even there there was a history and a gossip which never circulated beyond the walls of the jail. Probably this is the only house in the town where verses are composed, which are afterward printed in a circular form, but not published. I was shown quite a long list of young men who had been detected in an attempt to escape, who avenged themselves by singing them. I pumped my fellow prisoner as dry as I could, for fear I should never see him again. But at length he showed me which was my bed and left me to blow out the lamp. It was like traveling into a far country, such as I had never expected to behold, to lie there for one night. It seemed to me that I never had heard the town clock strike before, nor the evening sound of the village, for we slept with the windows open, which were inside the grating. It was to see my native village in the light of the Middle Ages, and our concord was turned into a rine stream and visions of knights and castles passed before me. They were the voices of old burgers that I heard in the streets. I was an involuntary spectator and auditor of whatever was done and said in the kitchen of the adjacent village in. A wholly new and rare experience to me. It was a closer view of my native town. I was fairly inside of it. I never had seen its institutions before. This is one of its peculiar institutions, for it is a shire town. I began to comprehend what its inhabitants were about. In the morning our breakfasts were put through the hole in the door in small oblong square tin pans made to fit and holding a pint of chocolate with brown bread and an iron spoon. When they called for the vessels again I was green enough to return what bread I had left but my comrade seized it and said that I should lay that up for lunch or dinner. Soon after he was let out to work at Haying in a neighbouring field whether he went every day and would not be back till noon. So he bade me good day saying that he doubted if he should see me again. When I came out of prison for someone interfered and paid that tax I did not perceive that great changes had taken place on the common such as he observed who went in a youth and emerged a grey-headed man and yet a change had to my eyes come over the scene the town and state and country greater than any that mere time could affect. I saw yet more distinctly the state in which I lived I saw to what extent the people among whom I lived could be trusted as good neighbours and friends that their friendship was for summer weather only that they did not greatly propose to do right that they were a distinct race from me by their prejudices and superstitions as the Chinaman and the Malays are that in their sacrifices to humanity they ran no risks not even to their property that after all they were not so noble but they treated the thief as he had treated them and hoped by a certain outward observance and a few prayers and by walking in a particular straight though useless path from time to time to save their souls this may be to judge my neighbours harshly for I believe that many of them are not aware that they have such an institution as the jail in their village it was formerly the custom in our village when a poor debtor came out of jail for his acquaintances to salute him looking through their fingers which they crossed to represent the jail window how do you do my neighbours did not thus salute me but first looked at me and then at one another as if I had returned from a long journey I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemakers to get a shoe which was mended when I was let out the next morning I proceeded to finish my errand and having put on my mended shoe joined a Huckleberry party who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct and in half an hour where the horse was soon tackled was in the midst of a Huckleberry field on one of our highest hills two miles off and then the state was nowhere to be seen that is the whole history of my prisons I have never declined paying the highway tax because I am as desirous of being a good neighbour as I am of being a bad subject and as for supporting schools I am doing my part to educate my fellow countrymen now it is for no particular item in the tax bill that I refuse to pay it I simply wish to refuse allegiance to the state to withdraw and stand aloof from it effectually I do not care to trace the course of my dollar if I could till it buys a man or a musket to shoot one with the dollar is innocent but I am concerned to trace the effects of my allegiance in fact I quietly declare war with the state after my fashion though I will still make use and get what advantages of her I can as is usual in such cases if others pay the tax which is demanded of me from a sympathy with the state they do but what they have already done in their own case or rather they abet injustice to a greater extent than the state requires if they pay the tax from a mistaken interest in the individual taxed to save his property or prevent his going to jail it is because they have not considered wisely how far they let their private feelings interfere with the public good this then is my position at present but one cannot be too much on his guard in such a case lest his actions be biased by obstinacy or an undue regard for the opinions of men let him see that he does only what belongs to himself and to the hour I think sometimes why this people mean well they are only ignorant they would do better if they knew how why give your neighbors this pain to treat you as they are not inclined to but I think again this is no reason why I should do as they do or permit others to suffer much greater pain of a different kind again I sometimes say to myself when many millions of men without heat without ill-will without personal feelings of any kind demand of you a few shillings only without the possibility such as their constitution of retracting or altering their present demand and without the possibility on your side of appeal to any other millions why expose yourself to this overwhelming brute force you do not resist cold and hunger the winds and the waves thus obstinately you quietly submit to a thousand similar necessities you do not put your head into the fire but just in proportion as I regard this as not wholly a brute force but partly a human force and consider that I have relations to those millions as to so many millions of men and not of mere brute or inanimate things I see that appeal is possible first and instantaneously from them to the maker of them and secondly from them to themselves but if I put my head deliberately into the fire there is no appeal to fire to the maker of fire and I have only myself to blame if I could convince myself that I have any right to be satisfied with men as they are and to treat them accordingly and not according in some respects to my requisitions and expectations of what they and I ought to be then like a good muscleman and fatalist I should endeavor to be satisfied with things as they are and say it is the will of God and above all there is this difference between resisting this and a purely brute or natural force that I can resist this with some effect but I cannot expect like Orpheus to change the nature of the rocks and trees and beasts I do not wish to quarrel with any man or nation I do not wish to split hairs to make fine distinctions or set myself up as better than my neighbors I seek rather, I may say even an excuse for conforming to the laws of the land I am but too ready to conform to them indeed I have reason to suspect myself on this head and every year as the tax-gatherer comes round I find myself disposed to review the acts and position of the general and state governments and the spirit of the people to discover a pretext for conformity we must affect our country as our parents and if at any time we alienate our love or industry from doing it honour we must respect, affect and teach the soul matter of conscience and religion and not desire of rule or benefit I believe that the state will soon be able to take all my work of this sort out of my hands and then I shall be no better patriot than my fellow countrymen seen from a lower point of view the constitution with all its faults is very good the law and the courts are very respectable even this state and this American government are, in many respects very admirable and rare things to be thankful for such as a great many have described them seen from a higher still and the highest who shall say what they are or what they are worth looking at or thinking of at all however the government does not concern me much and I shall bestow the fewest possible thoughts on it it is not many moments that I live under a government even in this world if a man is thought free, fancy free, imagination free that which is not, never for a long time appearing to be to him unwise rulers or reformers cannot fatally interrupt him I know that most men think differently from myself but those whose lives are by profession devoted to the study of these or kindred subjects content me as little as any statesmen and legislators standing so completely within the institution never distinctly and nakedly behold it they speak of moving society but have no resting place without it they may be men of a certain experience and discrimination and have no doubt invented in genius and even useful systems for which we sincerely thank them but all their wit and usefulness lie within certain not very wide limits they want to forget that the world is not governed by policy and expediency Webster never goes behind government and so cannot speak with authority about it his words are wisdom to those legislators who contemplate no essential reform in the existing government but for thinkers and those who legislate for all time he never once glances at the subject I know of those who serene and wise speculations on this theme would soon reveal the limits of his mind's range and hospitality yet compared with the cheap professions of most reformers and the still cheaper wisdom and eloquence of politicians in general his are almost the only sensible and valuable words and we thank heaven for him comparatively he is always strong, original, and above all practical still his quality is not wisdom but prudence the lawyer's truth is not truth but consistency or a consistent expediency truth is always in harmony with herself and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrongdoing he well deserves to be called, as he has been called, the defender of the constitution there are really no blows to be given him but defensive ones he is not a leader but a follower his leaders are the men of 87 I have never made an effort, he says, and never proposed to make an effort I have never countenanced an effort and never mean to countenance an effort to disturb the arrangement as originally made by which various states came into the union still thinking of the sanction which the constitution gives to slavery he says, because it was part of the original compact let it stand not withstanding his special acuteness and ability he is unable to take a fact out of its merely political relations and behold it as it lies absolutely to be disposed of by the intellect what? what, for instance, it behooves a man to do here in America today with regard to slavery ventures or is driven to make some such desperate answer to the following while professing to speak absolutely and as a private man from which what new and singular of social duties might be inferred the manner, says he, in which the governments of the states where slavery exists are to regulate it is for their own consideration under the responsibility to their constituents to the general laws of proprietary humanity and justice and to God associations formed elsewhere springing from a feeling of humanity or any other cause have nothing whatever to do with it they have never received any encouragement from me and they never will these extracts have been inserted since the lecture was read HDT they who know of no pure sources of truth who have traced up its stream no higher stand and wisely stand by the Bible and the Constitution and drink at it there with reverence and humanity but they who behold where it comes trickling into this lake or that pool heard of their loins once more and continue their pilgrimage towards its fountain head no man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America they are rare in the history of the world there are orators, politicians and eloquent men by the thousand but the speaker has not yet opened his mouth to speak who is capable of settling the much vexed questions of the day we love eloquence for its own sake and not for any truth which it may utter or any heroism it may inspire our legislators have not yet learned the comparative value of free trade and of freedom of union and of rectitude to a nation they have no genius or talent for comparatively humble questions of taxation and finance commerce and manufacturers and agriculture if we were left solely to the wordy width of legislators in Congress for our guidance un-corrected by the seasonable experience and the effectual complaints of the people America would not long retain her rank among the nations for eighteen hundred years though perchance I have no right to say it the New Testament has been written yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation the authority of government even such as I am willing to submit to for I will cheerfully obey those who know and can do better than I and in many things even those who neither know nor can do so well it is still an impure one to be strictly just it must have the sanction and consent of the governed it can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it the progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy from a limited monarchy to a democracy is a progress toward a true respect for the individual even the Chinese philosopher was wise enough to regard the individual as the basis of the empire is a democracy such as we know it the last improvement possible in government is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man there will never be a really free and enlightened state until the state comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power from which all its own power and authority are derived and treats him accordingly I please myself with imagining a state at last which can afford to be just to all men and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few were to live aloof from it not meddling with it nor embraced by it who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow men a state which bore this kind of fruit and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious state which I have also imagined but not yet anywhere seen End of On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau Part 2 as read by Gordon MacKenzie January 2007