On the Duty of Civil Disobedience - Henry David Thoreau (books for 10th graders txt) 📗

was the best use it could put me to, and

had never thought to avail itself of my services in some

way. I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me

and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to

climb or break through before they could get to be as free

as I was. I did nor for a moment feel confined, 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 blunder; 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

hindrance, 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.

 

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 with 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. What sort of life were

that to live? When I meet a government which says to me,

“Your money our 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 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 night in prison was novel and interesting enough.

The prisoners in their shirtsleeves were enjoying a chat and

the evening air in the doorway, 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 first-rate fellow and

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 neatest

apartment in 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 an, 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 there there was a history and a gossip which

never circulated 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 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.

 

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, not the evening 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 Concord 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 whatever 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. 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 fit,

and holding a pint of chocolate, 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 field, 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 that tax—I did not perceive that great changes had

taken place on the common, such as he observed who went in a

youth and emerged a gray-headed man; and yet a change had

come 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

propose 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 sacrifices 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 particular straight through

useless path from time to time, to save their souls.

This may be to judge my neighbors harshly; for I believe

that many 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 fingers, which were crossed to

represent the jail window, “How do ye do?” My neighbors did

not this salute me, but first 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 mender. When I was let out the next morning,

I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my

mended show, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient

to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour—for

the horse was soon tackled—was in the midst of a

huckleberry field, 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.”

 

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

particular 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 effectually. I do not care to trace

the course of my dollar, if I could, till it buys a man a

musket to shoot one with—the dollar is innocent—but I am

concerned to trace the effects of my allegiance. In fact, I

quietly declare war with the State, after my fashion, though

I will still make use and get what advantages 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 property, 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 actions be biased

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 different kind. Again, I sometimes say to

myself, When many millions of men, without heat, without ill

will, without personal feelings of any kind, demand of you a

few shillings only, without the possibility, such is their

constitution, of retracting or altering their present

demand, and without the possibility, on your side, of appeal

to any other millions, why expose