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Civil Disobedience



"[...]"

"Under a government which imprisons any [person] unjustly, the true place
for a just [honest] man is in prison.  The proper place today, the only
place that 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 [of the State] by
their [own] 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 with her, but against her.  [It is] the only house in a
slave State where a free man can abide with honor.

"If any think that their influence would be lost there, and that their
voices would 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 [the machinery of
the State] 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 allow the State to commit
violence and shed innocent blood.  This, in fact, is 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
anything, resign your office."  When the subject has refused allegiance,
and the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished.

"But even suppose [that] 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 can see this blood flowing now.

"[...]"

[Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience", 1849, USA.]