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<h1>On the Duty of Civil Disobedience</h1>
<h2 class="no-break">by Henry David Thoreau</h2>
<h4>1849, original title: Resistance to Civil Government</h4>
<hr />
<p>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 they 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.</p>
<p>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. <i>It</i> does not keep the country free. <i>It</i> does not settle
the West. <i>It</i> 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
mischievous persons who put obstructions on the railroads.</p>
<p>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
<i>at once</i> 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.</p>
<p>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 of conscientious men is a corporation <i>with</i> 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 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, 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 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</p>
<p class="poem">
“Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,<br/>
As his corpse to the ramparts we hurried;<br/>
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot<br/>
O’er the grave where our hero we buried.”</p>
<p>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, <i>posse comitatus</i>, &c. In most cases there is no free
exercise whatever 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 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 they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to
serve the devil, without <i>intending</i> it, as God. A very few, as
heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and <i>men</i>,
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,”
but leave that office to his dust at least:</p>
<p class="poem">
“I am too high-born to be propertied,<br/>
To be a secondary at control,<br/>
Or useful serving-man and instrument<br/>
To any sovereign state throughout the world.”</p>
<p>He who gives himself entirely to his fellow-men appears to them useless
and selfish; but he who gives himself partially to them is pronounced a
benefactor and philanthropist.</p>
<p>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 <i>my</i>
government which is the <i>slave’s</i> government also.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 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 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 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. This,
according to Paley, would be inconvenient. But he that would save his
life, in such a case, shall lose it. This people must cease to hold
slaves, and to make war on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as
a people.</p>
<p>In their practice, nations agree with Paley; but does anyone think that
Massachusetts does exactly what is right at the present crisis?</p>
<p class="poem">
“A drab of state, a cloth-o’-silver slut,<br/>
To have her train borne up, and her soul trail in the dirt.”</p>
<p>Practically speaking, the opponents to a reform in Massachusetts are not a
hundred thousand politicians at the South, but a hundred thousand
merchants and farmers here, who are more interested in commerce and
agriculture than they are in humanity, and are not prepared to do justice
to the slave and to Mexico, <i>cost what it may</i>. 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 somewhere; for that will
leaven the whole lump. There are thousands who are <i>in opinion</i>
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 advices from Mexico, after dinner, and, it may be,
fall asleep over them both. What is the price-current of an honest man and
patriot today? They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they
petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait,
well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have
it to regret. At most, they give only a cheap vote, and a feeble
countenance and Godspeed, 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.</p>
<p>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 that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the
majority. Its obligation, therefore, never exceeds that of expediency.
Even voting <i>for the right</i> is <i>doing</i> nothing for it. It is
only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise
man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to
prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in
the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for
the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to
slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by
their vote. <i>They</i> will then be the only slaves. Only <i>his</i> vote
can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom by his
vote.</p>
<p>I hear of a convention to be held at Baltimore, or elsewhere, for the
selection of a candidate for the Presidency, made up chiefly of editors,
and men who are politicians by profession; but I think, what is it to any
independent, 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 independent votes? Are there not
many individuals in the country who do not attend conventions? But no: I
find that the respectable man, so called, has immediately drifted from his
position, and despairs of his country, when his country has more reasons
to despair of him. He forthwith adopts one of the candidates thus selected
as the only <i>available</i> one, thus proving that he is himself
<i>available</i> 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 <i>man</i>, 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 <i>men</i> are there to a square thousand miles in the 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 first and chief concern, on
coming into the world, is to see that the alms-houses are in good repair;
and, before yet he has lawfully donned the virile garb, 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.</p>
<p>It is not a man’s duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to
the eradication 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 first see, at least, that I do not pursue them
sitting upon another man’s shoulders. I must get off him first, that
he may pursue his contemplations too. See what gross inconsistency 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, 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 naught; 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 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, <i>un</i>moral, and
not quite unnecessary to that life which we have made.</p>
<p>The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested
virtue to sustain it. The slight reproach to which the virtue of
patriotism is commonly liable, the noble are most likely to incur. Those
who, while they disapprove of the character and measures of a government,
yield to it their allegiance and support, are undoubtedly its most
conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to
reform. Some are petitioning the State to dissolve the Union, to disregard
the 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 treasury? Do not they stand in same
relation to the State, that the State does to the Union? And have not the
same reasons prevented the State from resisting the Union, which have
prevented them from resisting the State?</p>
<p>How can a man be satisfied to entertain an opinion merely, and enjoy
<i>it?</i> 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 satisfied with knowing 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 performance of right,—changes things and relations; it is
essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which
was. It not only divided states and churches, it divides families; aye, it
divides the <i>individual</i>, separating the diabolical in him from the
divine.</p>
<p>Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor
to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we
transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this,
think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to
alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be
worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the
remedy <i>is</i> worse than the evil. <i>It</i> 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 <i>do</i> better than it would have them? Why does it always crucify
Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington
and Franklin rebels?</p>
<p>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 definite, its suitable and proportionate penalty? If
a man who has no property refuses but once to earn nine shillings 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.</p>
<p>If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of
government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear
smooth,—certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a
spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then
perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the
evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent
of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a
counter friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any
rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.</p>
<p>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 chiefly 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 <i>every thing</i>, it is not necessary that he should
do <i>something</i> 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 Constitution is the
evil. This may seem to be harsh and stubborn and unconcilliatory; 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.</p>
<p>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 majority 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.</p>
<p>I meet this American government, or its representative, the State
government, 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 necessarily 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, 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 the
government. How shall he ever know well what he is and does as an officer
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 <i>honest</i> men only,—aye, if <i>one</i> HONEST
man, in this State of Massachusetts, <i>ceasing to hold slaves</i>, 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 newspapers in its service, but
not one man. If my esteemed neighbor, the State’s ambassador, 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 of the following winter.</p>
<p>Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man
is also a prison. The proper place today, the only place which
Massachusetts 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 find them; on that
separate, but more free and honorable ground, where the State places those
who are not <i>with</i> her but <i>against</i> her,—the only house
in a slave-state in which a free man can abide with honor. If any think
that their influence would be lost there, and their voices no longer
afflict 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 influence. 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 measure, as it
would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed
innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable
revolution, if any such is possible. If the tax-gatherer, or any other
public officer, asks me, as one has done, “But what shall I
do?” my answer is, “If you really wish to do any thing, resign
your office.” When the subject has refused allegiance, and the
officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished. But
even suppose blood should flow. Is there not a sort of blood shed when the
conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man’s real manhood and
immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death. I see this
blood flowing now.</p>
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