Discussions A

HENRY DAVID THOREAU 1817–1862

Henry David Thoreau aspired to write great literature by adventuring at home, traveling, as he put it, a good deal in Concord, Massachusetts. “As travelers go around the world and report natural objects and phenomena, so let another stay at home and report the phenomena of his own life,” he remarked in a journal entry of August 1851. Known by some of his Concord neighbors as the Harvard graduate who never lived up to his potential, Thoreau presented himself in Walden as an exemplary Sgure who— by virtue of his philosophical questionings, economic good sense, nonconformity, and appreciative observation of the natural world— could serve as a model for others. Thoreau infuriated and inspired his Massachusetts neighbors and audiences while he lived; since his death, his writings have contin- ued to provoke generations of readers to contemplate their obligations to society, nature, and themselves.

The third of four children of Cynthia (Dunbar) and John Thoreau, a storekeeper who opened a pencil- making business in the early 1820s, Thoreau was born in Con- cord on July 12, 1817. His sister Helen, Sve years his se nior, was an important teacher in his childhood years; his brother, John, two years his se nior, was his closest friend; and his sister Sophia, two years his ju nior, cared for him at the end of his life. Because Henry was regarded as the more academically promising of the two brothers, the family, which was struggling eco nom ical ly (his mother ran their home as a boarding- house to produce additional income), decided that he would be the one son to attend Harvard. Thoreau began his studies there in 1833, excelling in languages but other- wise failing to distinguish himself. After his 1837 graduation he returned to Con- cord, where he taught brie^y at a local elementary school before resigning in protest when he was instructed to ^og some of his students. In 1838 he took a teaching and administrative position at the private Concord Academy, where a year later John joined him as a teacher and co- director of the school. The brothers had to close the Concord Academy in 1841 because of John’s poor health. Paralyzed by tetanus from a razor cut, John died in Thoreau’s arms on January 1, 1842. The grief at the loss of his beloved brother would inspire his elegiac A Week on the Concord and Merri- mack Rivers (1849), which memorialized a two- week boating trip that the brothers took in 1839.

Thoreau met his fellow Concordian, Ralph Waldo Emerson, in 1836. Emerson, fourteen years his se nior, became the most important in^uence and friendship in his life. Thoreau attended the informal meetings of the New En gland Transcendentalists that convened irregularly in Emerson’s study and there met such people as Margaret Fuller and the education reformers Elizabeth Peabody and Bronson Alcott (father of Louisa May). With Emerson’s encouragement, Thoreau also began to keep a jour- nal, which served him as a sourcebook for some of his published writings and lec- tures, eventually growing to nearly two million words. In 1840, Thoreau commenced his efforts to make a name for himself as a published writer. He placed a poem and an essay in the inaugural issue of the Dial, the journal founded by the Concord Tran- scendentalist circle and edited by Margaret Fuller (and at times by Thoreau himself); he would publish over thirty essays, poems, and translations in the journal before it ceased operations in 1844. He never stopped reading, although contemporary writers meant little to him except for Emerson and Thomas Carlyle, whom he regarded as

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one of the great prophets of the era. He steeped himself in the classics— Greek, Latin, and English— and read the sacred writings of the Hindus in translation; they are an enormous in^uence on the cosmic vision of Walden.

Early in 1844 Thoreau delivered his Srst series of lectures, “The Conservative and the Reformer,” in Boston’s Armory Hall. To his great embarrassment, during a camp- ing trip in April of that year, he accidentally set Sre to the Concord woods near Walden Pond, burning approximately three hundred acres. Shortly after the Sre, Thoreau decided to begin what he termed his “experiment” at Walden, building a cabin on land that Emerson owned near the pond and taking up residence there on July 4, 1845— a symbolic moment of personal liberation aligned with the celebration of national freedom. One of Thor eau’s major goals in moving to the pond was to write a book about his 1839 boating journey with his brother (which he completed before he left after two years, two months, and two days). Only a couple of miles from town, his cabin became the destination of many local visitors, and he often went back to Concord for meals and conversation. During his time at Walden, Tho- reau also spent one night of 1846 in the local jail when, in protest against what he regarded as the proslavery agenda of the war against Mexico, he refused to pay his poll tax. That experience would inspire “Re sis tance to Civil Government” (1849), which in due time would become a world- famous essay on the relationship of the individual to the state.

In 1849 Thoreau published the book he had drafted at Walden as A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, a work that mixes naturalist meditations, personal re^ections, poetry, and scripture. Barely noticed by reviewers and readers, it sold fewer than three hundred of the thousand copies printed. Thoreau had subsidized the publication through his royalties, and in 1853, when he received the unsold books, he wrote in his journal: “I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself.” Despite the critical and Snancial setback of A Week, Thoreau worked intensively on Walden between 1847 and its publication in 1854. The prestigious Boston Srm of Ticknor and Fields published the book in a small print run of two thousand copies, and by 1859 most of these copies had been sold. Encouraged by the relatively good reviews and sales, Thoreau over the next few years attempted to work up books from his Cape Cod travels of 1849 and 1850 and his Maine travels of 1857, bringing out sections of the Cape Cod manuscript in the 1855 Putnam’s Monthly Magazine. None of the other books that Thoreau published or projected has achieved the in^uence and reputation of Walden, where Thoreau’s whole literary character emerges— his love of nature, his rhetorical inventiveness, his humor, his philosophical adventurousness, his everyday nonconformity. In it he becomes, in the highest sense, a fully employed public servant, offering readers the fruits of his experience, thought, and artistic dedication.

His writing and lectures brought Thoreau a small but widening circle of admirers. His earlier journals had combined naturalistic observations with moral commen- tary; in the 1850s they increasingly recorded his observations of nature without comment and in great detail as he sought to understand the daily and seasonal rhythms of nature. Inspired by his reading during the early 1850s of the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1769– 1859) and the En glish naturalist Charles Darwin (1809– 1882), he made himself into what critic Laura Dassow Walls has called “a scientiSc seer, walking, recording, mea sur ing, and weaving the details of nature into meaning.” Professors at Harvard, such as the geologist Louis Agassiz, found his scientiSc vision of interest. At the same time, Thoreau emerged as one of the most outspoken abolitionists in the Concord area. In 1854, the year of Walden’s publication, he delivered his best-known antislavery speech, “Slavery in Massachu- setts,” at a rally in Framingham, Massachusetts, protesting the arrest of the fugitive slave Anthony Burns. Thoreau achieved his greatest prominence as an antislavery speaker with his defense of John Brown immediately after Brown’s arrest at Harpers

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Ferry in October 1859. Before large audiences in Concord, Boston, and Worcester, Thoreau honored Brown’s revolutionary antislavery aims. He thus welcomed the Civil War, with its promise of ridding the nation of slavery, even as he faced the dif- Sculties of declining health brought on by tuberculosis, the great nineteenth- century killer of young adults. (His sister Helen had died of the disease in 1849.) In May 1861 Thoreau traveled to Minnesota with the hope of recovering his health, and there he collected botanical specimens and observed the Sioux Indians of the region. His health continuing to deteriorate, he returned to Concord and worked with his sister Sophia to prepare what he recognized would be posthumously published writings. He was forty- four when he died at Concord on May 6, 1862. The little fame he had achieved was as a social experimenter who applied Emerson’s theoretical transcen- dentalism to daily life, and as John Brown’s champion.

Between June 1862, the month after Thoreau’s death, and November 1863, the Boston- based Atlantic Monthly published the essays “Walking,” “Autumn Tints,” “Wild Apples,” “Life without Principle,” and “Night and Moonlight.” In 1862 Ticknor and Fields reissued A Week and Walden (which never again went out of print) and attempted to capitalize on the growing interest in Thoreau by publishing Sve new books: Excursions (1863), The Maine Woods (1864), Cape Cod (1864), Letters to Vari- ous Persons (1865), and A Yankee in Canada, with Anti- Slavery and Reform Papers (1866). An expanded version of Emerson’s eulogy for Thoreau, published in the Atlan- tic Monthly for August 1863, conSrmed Thoreau’s growing reputation. By the early twentieth century, Thoreau was becoming widely recognized as a social phi los o pher, naturalist, and writer with few peers. In 1906 his journals were published for the Srst time in chronological order, in fourteen volumes as part of a twenty- volume set of his complete works. That same year, Mahatma Ghandi, in his African exile, read “Re sis tance to Civil Government” and later acknowledged its important in^uence on his thinking about how best to achieve Indian in de pen dence. Later in the cen- tury, Martin Luther King Jr. would similarly attest to the crucial in^uence of Tho- reau on his adoption of nonviolent civil disobedience as a key to the civil rights movement.

By the middle of the twentieth century, Thoreau’s literary reputation equaled or surpassed Emerson’s, with Walden regarded as one of the masterpieces of American literature. It is a work that powerfully affected environmentalists like John Muir and Aldo Leopold, who greatly admired Thoreau for his concerns about the natural habitat; contemporary writers like Edward Abbey and Annie Dillard also cite him frequently. As crucial as environmental concerns, and even antislavery, were to Tho- reau, however, he always insisted that all principled action had to be undertaken by the individual rather than through groups. It is important to recall that Thoreau described Walden as an “experiment”— an account of one possible way of viewing, representing, and acting in the world. In Walden’s punning wordplay, richly allusive sentences, and (with its numerous references to a panoply of Eastern and Western texts) truly global textual vision, Thoreau more than anything else attempted to push his readers to think— to “wake . . . up,” as he put it in the book’s epigraph. Life is short and life is miraculous, Thoreau insists, and it is incumbent on each individ- ual to Sgure out how best to respond to the circumstances of the moment. Though there are considerable differences between Thoreau and Emerson, the most pro- vocative literary expression of Emerson’s call for self- reliance may well be Thoreau’s bragging, visionary, down- to- earth Walden.

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Re sis tance to Civil Government1

I heartily accept the motto,—“That government is best which governs least;”2 and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it Snally 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 some- times, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a stand- ing 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 mea sure.3

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; and, if ever they should use it in earnest as a real one against each other, it will surely split. But it is not the less necessary for this; for the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea of government which they have. Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, 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 expe- dient by which men would fain 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 the obstacles which legislators are continually put- ting 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

1. “Re sis tance to Civil Government” is reprinted here from its Srst appearance, in Aesthetic Papers (1849), edited by the educational reformer Eliz- abeth Peabody (1804– 1894). Thoreau had delivered a version of the essay as a lecture in January and again in February 1848 at the Con- cord Lyceum, under the title “The Rights and Duties of the Individual in Relation to Govern- ment.” After his death it was reprinted in A Yan- kee in Canada, with Anti- Slavery and Reform Papers (1866) as “Civil Disobedience.” That title, although commonly used, may not be authorial; the title of the Srst printing, as Thoreau indi- cates, was a play on “The Duty of Submission to

Civil Government Explained,” the title of a chap- ter in Principles of Moral and Po liti cal Philosophy (1785), by the En glish theologian and moralist William Paley (1743– 1805). 2. These words appeared on the masthead of the Demo cratic Review, the New York magazine that published two early Thoreau pieces in 1843. 3. The Mexican War (1846– 48) was criticized by Whigs and some Demo crats as an “executive’s war” because President Polk commenced hos- tilities without a congressional declaration of war. Many New En glanders, including Thoreau, regarded the war as part of the South’s effort to extend the territorial domain of slavery.

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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 bet- ter 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 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 that we should be men Srst, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obliga- tion which I have a right to assume, is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said,4 that a corporation has no conscience; but a corpo- ration of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well- disposed are daily made the agents of injustice. A common and natu- ral result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a Sle of soldiers, col o nel, captain, corporal, privates, powder- monkeys and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, aye, 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 peace- ably inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? or small moveable forts and magazines, at the ser vice 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 accompaniments, though it may be

“Not a drum was heard, nor a funeral note, As his corse to the ramparts we hurried; Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot O’er the grave where our hero we buried.”5

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, con- stables, posse comitatus,6 &c. In most cases there is no free exercise what ever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufac-

4. By the En glish jurist Sir Edward Coke (1552– 1634), in a famous legal decision of 1612. 5. From the Irish poet Charles Wolfe’s “Burial

of Sir John Moore at Corunna” (1817). “Corse”: corpse. 6. Sheriff ’s posse (Latin).

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7. Shakespeare’s Hamlet 5.1.236– 37. 8. Shakespeare’s King John 5.1.79– 82.

tured 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. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others, as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and ofSce- holders, serve the State chie^y with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the dev il, 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 by it as enemies. 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,”7 but leave that ofSce to his dust at least:—

“I am too high- born to be propertied, To be a secondary at control, Or useful serving- man and instrument To any sovereign state throughout the world.”8

He who gives himself entirely to his fellow- men appears to them useless and selSsh; but he who gives himself partially to them is pronounced a bene- factor and philanthropist.

How does it become a man to behave toward this American government to- day? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. I cannot for an instant recognize that po liti cal or ga ni za tion as my govern- ment which is the slave’s government also.

All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse alle- giance to and to resist the government, when its tyranny or its inefSciency 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 ’75. If one were to tell me that this was a bad government because it taxed certain foreign com- modities brought to its ports, it is most probable that I should not make an ado 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 great evil to make a stir about it. But when the friction comes to have its machine, and oppression and robbery are or ga nized, 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 are slaves, and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and sub- jected 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 the 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 obliga- tion 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 inconveniency, it is the will of God that the established government be obeyed, and no longer.”—“This principle being admitted, the justice of every par tic u lar case of re sis tance is

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9. A problem in situational ethics cited by Cicero (106– 43 b.c.e.) in De Of"ciis 3. 1. Matthew 10.39; Luke 9.24. 2. Cyril Tourneur (1575?– 1626), The Revenger’s Tragedy 3.4. 3. Thoreau refers to the economic alliance of southern cotton growers with northern shippers,

farmers, and manufacturers. 4. 1 Corinthians 5.6: “Know ye not that a little leaven leaventh the whole lump?” 5. New dispatches. “Children of Washington and Franklin”: i.e., patriotic Americans, children of rebels and revolutionaries.

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 wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself.9 This, according to Paley, would be incon- ve nient. But he that would save his life, in such a case, shall lose it.1 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 any one think that Massachusetts does exactly what is right at the present crisis?

“A drab of state, a cloth- o’- silver slut, To have her train borne up, and her soul trail in the dirt.”2

Practically speaking, the opponents to a reform in Massachusetts are not a hundred thousand politicians at the South, but a hundred thousand mer- chants and farmers here,3 who are more interested in commerce and agri- culture 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, co- operate 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 materially wiser or better than the many. It is not so important that many should be as good as you, as that there be some absolute goodness some- where; for that will leaven the whole lump.4 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 advices5 from Mexico, after dinner, and, it may be, fall asleep over them both. What is the price- current of an honest man and patriot to- day? They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do noth- ing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to rem- edy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. At most, they give only a cheap vote, and a feeble countenance and God- speed, to the right, as it goes by them. There are nine hundred and ninety- nine 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 chequers 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

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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 aboli- tion 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,6 or elsewhere, for the selec- tion of a candidate for the Presidency, made up chie^y of editors, and men who are politicians by profession; but I think, what is it to any in de pen dent, intelligent, and respectable man what decision they may come to, shall we not have the advantage of his wisdom and honesty, nevertheless? Can we not count upon some in de pen dent votes? Are there not many individuals in the country who do not attend conventions? But no: I Snd that the respectable man, so called, has immediately drifted from his position, and despairs of his country, when his country has more reason 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 this 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 Srst and chief concern, on com- ing into the world, is to see that the alms- houses are in good repair; and, before yet he has lawfully donned the virile garb,7 to collect a fund for 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 has promised to bury him decently.

It is not a man’s duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradi- cation of any, even the 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 Srst see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man’s shoulders. I must get off him Srst, that he may pursue his contemplations too. See what gross incon- sistency 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,

6. The Demo cratic convention was held in Bal- timore in May 1848. 7. Adult clothes allowed for a Roman boy on reaching the age of fourteen. The In de pen dent Order of Odd Fellows, a benevolent fraternal

or ga ni za tion, was chosen by Thoreau for the satirical value of its name; in his view the arche- typal American is not the individualist, the gen- uine odd fellow, but the conformist.

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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 nought; 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 govern- ment, we are all made at last to pay homage to and support our own mean- ness. After the Srst blush of sin, comes its indifference; and from immoral it becomes, as it were, unmoral, 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 disapprove of the character and mea sures 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 trea sury? 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 satisSed 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 satisSed with knowing that 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 that you are never cheated again. Action from principle,— the perception and the per for mance of right,— changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with any thing which was. It not only divides states and churches, it divides families; aye, 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 trans- gress 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 be on the alert to point out its faults, and do better than it would have them? Why does it always crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther,8 and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?

8. Thoreau cites as announcers of new truths Copernicus (1473– 1543), the Polish astronomer who died too soon after the publication of his new system of astronomy to be excommuni-

cated from the Catholic Church for writing it, and Martin Luther (1483– 1546), the German leader of the Protestant Reformation who was excommunicated.

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One would think, that a deliberate and practical denial of its authority was the only offence never contemplated by government; else, why has it not assigned its deSnite, its suitable and proportionate penalty? If a man who has no property refuses but once to earn nine shillings9 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 placed 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 govern- ment, 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 which 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 chie^y to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad. A man has not every thing to do, but something; and because he cannot do every thing, it is not necessary that he should do 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 Constitu- tion 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 major- ity 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.1

I meet this American government, or its representative the State govern- ment, 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 neces- sarily meets it; and it then says distinctly, Recognize me; and the simplest, the most effectual, and, in the present posture of affairs, the indispensablest 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,2 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

9. Because of sporadic coin shortages, the Brit- ish shilling was still in use in parts of the United States during the 1840s; it was valued at approx- imately 20 U.S. cents. The amount of the tax, assessed on adult male citizens, was $1.50, approx- imately $30 in today’s currency.

1. John Knox (1505?– 1572), the Scottish religious reformer, said that “a man with God is always in the majority.” 2. Sam Staples, who sometimes assisted Tho- reau in his surveying.

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3. Samuel Hoar (1778– 1856), local po liti cal Sg- ure who as agent of the state of Massachusetts had been expelled from Charleston, South Car-

olina, in 1844 while interceding on behalf of imprisoned black seamen from Massachusetts.

the government. How shall he ever know well what he is and does as an ofScer of the government, or as a man, until he is obliged to consider whether he shall 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,— aye, if one honest man, in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, were actually to withdraw from this copartnership, and be locked up in the county jail therefor, 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 for ever. But we love better to talk about it: that we say is our mission. Reform keeps many scores of news- papers in its ser vice, but not one man. If my esteemed neighbor, the State’s ambassador,3 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 waive the subject the following winter.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. The proper place to- day, the only place which Mas- sachusetts 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 Snd 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 in^uence would be lost there, and their voices no longer af^ict 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 in^uence. 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 mea sure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the deS- nition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible. If the tax- gatherer, or any other public ofScer, asks me, as one has done, “But what shall I do?” my answer is, “If you really wish to do any thing, resign your ofSce.” When the subject has refused allegiance, and the ofScer has resigned his ofSce,

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then the revolution is accomplished. But even suppose blood should ^ow. Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man’s real manhood and immortality ^ow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death. I see this blood ^owing now.

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 prop- erty. To such the State renders comparatively small ser vice, and a slight tax is wont 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. But 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; and it was certainly 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 super^uous one, how to spend it. Thus his moral ground is taken from under his feet. The opportu- nities of living are diminished in proportion as what are called the “means” are increased. The best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavour 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 Cæsar 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 Cæsar’s government, then pay him back some of his own when he demands it: “Render therefore to Cæsar that which is Cæsar’s, and to God those things which are God’s,” 4— 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, what- ever they may say about the magnitude and seriousness of the question, and their regard for the public tranquillity, the long and the short of the matter is, that they cannot spare the protection of the existing government, and they dread the consequences of disobedience to it to their property and families. 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 in Turkey even, if he will be in all respects a good subject of the Turkish govern- ment. Confucious 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

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4. Matthew 22.16– 21. In their attempt to entrap Jesus, the Pharisees (a Jewish sect that held to Mosaic law) were using secular government functionaries of Herod, the king of Judea.

5. Confucius’s Analects 8.13. 6. I.e., since 1840.

7. The Middlesex County jail in Concord, a large three- story building.

principles of reason, riches and honors are the subjects of shame.” 5 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 at 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 whose preaching my father attended, but never I myself. “Pay it,” it said, “or be locked up in the jail.” I declined to pay. But, unfortunately, another man saw St 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 sup- ported 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 selectmen, 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 incor- porated 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 societ- ies which I never signed on to; but I did not know where to Snd a complete list.

I have paid no poll- tax for six years.6 I was put into a jail7 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 fool- ishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere ^esh 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 ser vices in some way. I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difScult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel conSned, 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 are underbred. In every threat and in every compliment there was a blun- der; 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 hin- derance, 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.

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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 hon- esty, 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 ^ourish as best they can, till one, perchance, 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 shirt- sleeves were enjoying a chat and the eve ning air in the door- way, when I entered. But the jailer said, “Come, boys, it is time to lock up;” and so they dispersed, and I heard the sound of their steps returning into the hollow apartments. My room- mate was introduced to me by the jailer, as “a Srst- rate fellow and a 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; and this one, at least, was the whitest, most simply furnished, and probably the neatest apartment in the 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; but 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 here there was a history and a gossip which never cir- culated 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 verses which were composed by some 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.

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8. Comparable to county seat. 9. The identity of this person is unknown.

It was like travelling 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 eve ning sounds 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 Con- cord was turned into a Rhine stream, and visions of knights and castles passed before me. They were the voices of old burghers that I heard in the streets. I was an involuntary spectator and auditor of what ever was done and said in the kitchen of the adjacent village- inn,—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.8 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 St, and holding a pint of choco- late, 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 neighboring Seld, whither 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 some one interfered, and paid the tax,9— I did not perceive that great changes had taken place on the com- mon, such as he observed who went in a youth, and emerged a tottering and gray- 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 effect. 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 neighbors and friends; that their friendship was for summer weather only; that they did not greatly purpose to do right; that they were a distinct race from me by their prejudices and superstitions, as the Chinamen and Malays are; that, in their sacriSces 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 par tic u lar straight though useless path from time to time, to save their souls. This may be to judge my neighbors harshly; for I believe that most 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 Sngers, which were crossed to represent the grating of a jail window, “How do ye do?” My neighbors did not thus salute me, but Srst 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 shoemaker’s to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to Snish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in

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1. Harnessed. 2. An allusion to the title of a book (1832) by the Italian poet Silvio Pellico (1789– 1854) describing

his years of hard labor in Austrian prisons. 3. Muslim.

half an hour,— for the horse was soon tackled,1— was in the midst of a huckleberry Seld, on one of our highest hills, two miles off; and then the State was nowhere to be seen.

This is the whole history of “My Prisons.”2

I have never declined paying the highway tax, because I am as desirous of being a good neighbor 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 par tic u lar 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 effectu- ally. 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 con- cerned to trace the effects of my allegiance. In fact, I quietly declare war with the State, after my fashion, though I will still make what use and get what advantage 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 prop- erty 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 action be biassed 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 dif- ferent kind. Again, I sometimes say to myself, When many millions of men, without heat, without ill- will, without personal feeling of any kind, demand of you a few shillings only, without the possibility, such is their constitu- tion, of retracting or altering their present demand, and without the possi- bility, 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 Sre. But just in proportion as I regard this as not wholly a brute force, but partly a human force, and con- sider 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, Srst and instantaneously, from them to the Maker of them, and, secondly, from them to themselves. But, if I put my head deliberately into the Sre, there is no appeal to Sre or to the Maker of Sre, and I have only myself to blame. If I could convince myself that I have any right to be satisSed 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 Mussulman3 and fatalist, I should endeavor to be satisSed with things

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4. In Greek mythology, Orpheus’s singing and playing of the lyre charmed animals and moved even rocks and trees to dance.

5. Daniel Webster (1782– 1852), prominent Mas- sachusetts Whig politician, at the time a senator.

as they are, and say it is the will of God. And, above all, there is this differ- ence between resisting this and a purely brute or natural force, that I can resist this with some effect; but I cannot expect, like Orpheus,4 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 Sne 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 each year, as the tax- gatherer comes round, I Snd myself disposed to review the acts and position of the general and state govern- ments, and the spirit of the people, to discover a pretext for conformity. 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 a 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; but seen from a point of view a little higher, they are what I have described them; seen from a higher still, and the highest, who shall say what they are, or that 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 mov- ing society, but have no resting- place without it. They may be men of a cer- tain experience and discrimination, and have no doubt invented ingenious and even useful systems, for which we sincerely thank them; but all their wit and usefulness lie within certain not very wide limits. They are wont to for- get that the world is not governed by policy and expediency. Webster5 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 whose 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 chie^y to reveal the justice that

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may consist with wrong- doing. He well deserves to be called, as he has been called, the Defender of the Constitution. There are really no blows to be given by him but defensive ones. He is not a leader, but a follower. His leaders are the men of ’87.6 “I have never made an effort,” he says, “and never propose 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 the various States came into the Union.”7 Still thinking of the sanction which the Constitution gives to slavery, he says, “Because it was a part of the original compact,— let it stand.” Notwithstanding his special acuteness and ability, he is unable to take a fact out of its merely po liti cal relations, and behold it as it lies absolutely to be disposed of by the intellect,— what, for instance, it behoves a man to do here in America to- day with regard to slav- ery, but ventures, or is driven, to make some such desperate answer as the following, while professing to speak absolutely, and as a private man,— from which what new and singular code of social duties might be inferred?—“The manner,” says he, “in which the government of those States where slavery exists are to regulate it, is for their own consideration, under their responsi- bility to their constituents, to the general laws of propriety, humanity, and justice, and to God. Associations formed elsewhere, springing from a feeling of humanity, or any other cause, having nothing what ever to do with it. They have never received any encouragement from me, and they never will.”8

They who know of no purer sources of truth, who have traced up its stream no higher, stand, and wisely stand, by the Bible and the Constitu- tion, and drink at it there with reverence and humility; but they who behold where it comes trickling into this lake or that pool, gird up their loins once more, and continue their pilgrimage toward 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 com- parative 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 Snance, commerce and manufactures and agriculture. If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in Congress for our guid- ance, uncorrected by the seasonable experience and the effectual com- plaints of the people, America would not long retain her rank among the nations. For eigh teen 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,— is still an impure one: to be strictly just, it must have the sanction and consent of the

6. The authors of the U.S. Constitution. 7. From Webster’s speech “The Admission of Texas” (December 22, 1845).

8. These extracts have been inserted since the Lecture was read [Thoreau’s note]. He is refer- ring to the quotation beginning “The manner.”

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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. Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards rec- ognizing and or ga niz ing 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 in de pen dent power, from which all its own power and author- ity 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 indi- vidual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsis- tent with its own repose, if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulSlled 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 glo- rious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen.

1849, 1866

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