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(originally published
1849)
By Henry David Thoreau
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
Excerpts from
Civil Disobedience
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,
perchance, 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.
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
disapprove 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 requisition s 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 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?
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 a 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?
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.
Thus the state never
intentionally confronts a mans 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. W hat 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 t o
make way for the other, but both obey
their own laws, and spring and grow and
flourish as best they can, till one,
perchance, overshadows and destroys the
other. If a plant cannot live according
to nature, it dies; and so a man.
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 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 lie 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.
Henry David Thoreau
(Compiled by Gary Gibson)
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