Civil Disobedience--Henry David Thoreau

 

American political philosopher, social activist and Harvard graduate Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) is a major figure in modern political thought and has served as an inspiration to Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr amongst many others. He opposed the institution of slavery and denounced the American-Mexican War (1846-48) which, incidentally, led to American ‘acquisition’ of more than half of Mexico’s pre-war territory. The area acquired makes up a large part of the modern American Southwest, including most of California, Nevada, Utha, New Mexico, Arizona and portions of several other states. (Texas had been annexed earlier).

The pamphlet, Civil Disobedience, -- too slim to be called a book -- is a powerful and profoundly moving tract addressing issues that may be termed eternally and universally valid: the nature of the state and the appropriate relationship of the individual with the state.

A useful experiment would be to try and provide a glimpse of Thoreau’s ideas from Civil Disobedience, in his own words.

‘That government is best that governs least….’

‘Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient…’

‘……government itself, which is only the mode which people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it…’

‘...I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government.’

‘Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience?’

‘I think that 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.’

‘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.’

‘The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies…  In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgement or of the moral sense…  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.’

‘How does it become a man to behave towards this American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.’

‘All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable.’

‘…… 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... sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say they know not what to do, and do nothing…they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil.’

‘Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail.’

‘...the respectable man, so called... despairs of his country, when his country has more reason to despair of him.’.

‘...under the name of Order and Civil Government, we are all made at last to pay homage to and support our own meanness. After the first 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.’

‘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.’

‘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? ...Why does it (government) always crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?’

‘I know this well… if one HONEST man, in this state of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, were to actually 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 forever. But we love better to talk about it:..’

“When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished.’

‘The authority of government, even such as I am willing to submit to…is 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.’

‘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.’

‘Nuff said.