On the Duty of Civil Disobedience | Page 4

am willing to
leave it to the majority. Its obligation, therefore, never exceeds that of
expediency. Even voting for the right is doing 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.
They will then be the only slaves. Only his vote can hasten the
abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom by his vote.
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 this 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 available one,
thus proving that he is himself available 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. O for a man
who is a man, and, and my neighbor says, has a bone is his back which
you cannot pass your hand through! Our statistics are at fault: the
population has been returned too large. How many men 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 almshouses are in good repair;
and, before yet he has lawfully donned the virile garb, to collect a fund
to 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.
It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the
eradication of any, even to 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,
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. 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