The essay deals with the question of how a man ought to relate himself to government, particularly when that government engages in abuses he cannot in good conscience countenance. According to Thoreau, because of the nature of government, this is bound to happen sooner or later. “Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.”

Majority rule by the people is no insurance against abuse. The reason a majority is permitted to rule, Thoreau writes, is not because they are most likely to be in the right or because this seems fairest to the minority or because the decision of a majority will always be based on justice. Mere numbers do not make something right, fair or just. The majority rules and is permitted to rule simply “because they are physically the strongest.” How could such a system ensure that what is always right will prevail?

Can there be a government, Thoreau wonders, where matters of right and wrong are left to individual conscience, and government only addresses those matters to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Thoreau does not describe what he means by matters of “expediency” but it is easy to give an example of a decision that does not implicate a man’s conscience. It cannot be left to individual decision from moment to moment which side of the road a man will drive on — there must be a rule or custom. Even though this is a matter of life or death, there is no moral issue involved in the question whether it should be the right side or the left; it is only necessary everyone agree it is one particular side. The question whether it be the right or left may be decided by majority vote or any other means people accept.

Enforcers

But why should a man let the decision of a majority determine what his conscience tells him it is wrong to do? “Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator?” Thoreau notes that this is exactly what “the mass of men” do: they serve the state essentially “as machines, with their bodies,” and submit themselves to be used as tools of the state without question. “They are the standing army, and the militia, jailors, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense.”

The obvious examples of this are known to all — men like police, soldiers, prosecutors, judges, jailors, tax collectors, whose working philosophy is, “I don’t make the laws, I only enforce them.” Or, “I don’t give the orders, I only carry them out.” But this is not the only group Thoreau believes act essentially as “machines” for the state. Almost everyone else also carries out the state’s purposes as if a machine because of their acquiescence, indifference, or sole concern for their own comfort and prosperity.

At the time Thoreau wrote this essay, there were two issues he believed warranted a man of conscience in refusing allegiance to, and in resisting, the government: slavery, and America’s war with Mexico. He does not target the slave owners of the South, or the Southern politicians, or the men who thought to benefit by waging war with Mexico, as the primary problem, but his fellow citizens of Massachusetts, who simply went along with injustice to get along and to prosper.

The real opponents of reform in Massachusetts, he said, were “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, cost what it may. I quarrel not with far-off foes, but with those who, near at home, cooperate with, and do the bidding of, those far away, and without whom the latter would be harmless.”

Passivity

How did Massachusetts cooperate with slavery? Thoreau does not address that here, but at the time Massachusetts cooperated in enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act, by returning runaway slaves to their owners in the South. In addition, some wealthy Bostonians had domestic or household slaves. However, it is likely Thoreau meant more than that, that he held to deal in commerce and trade with Southerners who owned slaves was to cooperate with slavery, and he thought a man who really opposed slavery would not deal with men who used slaves.

Thoreau next embarks upon one of the great themes of his essay: the passivity and ineffectiveness of those who believe it possible to reform the government, and to establish what is right, by expressing their opinion. He makes a strong critique of the belief men can accomplish any good by voting. His words and thoughts on this subject bear careful consideration, because if we are concerned with reigning in the tyranny of our own government, and voting is a sop to the people that secures their passivity and inaction by giving them an illusion of power to control those who in fact rule over them; it would be good to wake up to that reality and to cease wasting life by following a well-worn path designed to take us — nowhere.

“There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves the children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, ... 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, which they may no longer have it to regret. At most, they give only a cheap vote, and a feeble countenance and God-speed, to the right as it goes by them.”

“All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; ... The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority ... 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.”

The voter acts under the delusion he may bring about some result in the world by the mere expression of his opinion. This is a delusion that flatters a man’s self-importance, and conduces to keep him in his place while he busies himself with finding, joining and creating men of like opinion, since that which he wants depends on numbers.

To Act

For Thoreau, there is only one test of what a man really esteems and believes: that which he acts upon. A man who is really concerned with a matter will not simply express an opinion on the subject, or petition for what he believes is right, he acts, without waiting first for the approval of the majority. “If you are cheated out of a single dollar by your neighbor, you do not rest satisfied with knowing that 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, and the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary.”

What did this mean for the cause of abolishing slavery? “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.”

In the next column, we will look at Thoreau’s refusal to pay a tax and his stay in jail. I will then discuss what we can learn from Thoreau about the philosophy of the Second Amendment.