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Collettivo Pace



Fifteen Fragments from

H. D. Thoreau’s “Resistance to Civil Governement” (1849)



1.

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.



2.

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.



3.

“I am too high-born to be propertied,

To be a second at control,

Or useful serving-man and instrument

To any sovereign state throughout the world.”



4.

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 “my” government which is

the “slave's” government also.



5.

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.



6.

When 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.



7.

This people must cease to hold slaves, and to make war on Mexico, though it

cost them their existence as a people.



8.

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, cost what it may.



9.

There are thousands 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.



10.

Why does not the government encourage its citizens to put out its faults,

and “do” better than it would have them?



11.

I know this well, that if “one” HONEST man, in this State of Massachusetts,

ceasing to hold slaves, was actually to withdraw from this co-partnership,

and be locked up in the county jail therefor, it would be the abolition of

slavery in America.



12.

Under a government which imprisons 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 despondent 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.



13.

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.



14.

When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned from

office, then the revolution is accomplished.



15.

There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State

comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from

which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him

accordingly.



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