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Title: On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

 

Author: Henry David Thoreau

 

Release Date: Jun, 1993 [EBook #71]

[Most recently updated: May 29, 2002]

 

Edition: 11

 

Language: English

 

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On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

 

by Henry David Thoreau

 

[1849, original title: Resistance to Civil Goverment]

 

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 the 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, and 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

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 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 mischievious

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 can not 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 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. 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 on

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 on 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, ay, 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 corse to the rampart we hurried;

Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot

O’er the grave where out 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

judgement or of 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.

Yet 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 the 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 men appears

to them useless and selfish; but he who gives himself

partially to them in 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 ‘75. 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 ado about it, for I can do without them.

All machines have their friction; and possibly this does

enough good to counter-balance 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

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 are 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 it, so long as the established

government cannot be resisted or changed without public

inconveniencey, 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 and an individual, must do justice, cost

what it may. If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a

drowning