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33 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1849
It was like travelling into a far country, such as I had never expected to behold, to lie there for one night. It seemed to me that I never had heard the town clock strike before, nor the evening sounds of the village; for we slept with the windows open, which were inside the grating. It was to see my native village in the light of the Middle Ages, and our Concord was turned into a Rhine stream, and visions of knights and castles passed before me. They were the voices of old burghers that I heard in the streets. I was an involuntary spectator and auditor of whatever was done and said in the kitchen of the adjacent village inn- a wholly new and rare experience to me. It was a closer view of my native town. I was fairly inside of it. I never had seen its institutions before. . . .This last passage is the one that touched me close to the heart, for I am that supposed “good neighbor,” that “summer weather” friend. “From time to time” I have walked that “straight though useless path,” but I am far from certain that walking that path I have managed to save my soul.
When I came out of prison- for some one interfered, and paid that tax- I did not perceive that great changes had taken place on the common . . . and yet a change had to my eyes come over the scene- the town, and State, and country- greater than any that mere time could effect. I saw yet more distinctly the State in which I lived. I saw to what extent the people among whom I lived could be trusted as good neighbors and friends; that their friendship was for summer weather only; that they did not greatly propose to do right; . . . they . . . hoped, by a certain outward observance and a few prayers, and by walking in a particular straight though useless path from time to time, to save their souls. . .
I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker's to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour- for the horse was soon tackled- was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen.
”The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. […] very few—as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men—serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it.”
That government is best which governs not at all.
[The state's] very Constitution is the evil.
If [an act of government] is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.
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.
[A]ny man more right than his neighbors, constitutes a majority of one already.
I should not like to think that I ever rely on the protection of the State.
"Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience?"