Modern History Sourcebook:
Henry David Thoreau:
Civil Disobedience, 1846
Thoreau went to jail for protesting the US annexation of Texas by refusing
to pay his taxes.
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. . . .
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also
in prison. The proper place to-day, the only place which Massachusetts has provided for
her freer and less desponding 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. It
is there that 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 has experienced a little in his own person. Cast your whole vote, not a
strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is 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 his
office, then the revolution is accomplished. But even suppose blood should flow. Is there
not a sort of blood shed 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.
Source:
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Modern History Sourcebook. The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and
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© Paul Halsall, January 1999
halsall@fordham.edu
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