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Civil Disobedience

I heartily accept the motto,-" That goverment is best which governs least:" and I should like to see it acted upon more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe,- " That goverment is best which governs not at all;" and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of goverment which they will have. Goverment is at best but an expedient; but most goverments are usually, and all goverments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing goverment. The standing army is only an arm of the standing goverment. The goverment itself which is only 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 goverment as thier tool; for , in the outset, the people would not have consented to this measure.

This American goverment,-what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to prosperity, but each minute loosing some of it's integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will. It is a sort of wooden gun to the people themselves; and, if they should ever use it in earnest as a real one against each other, it will surely split. But it is not the less necessary for this; for the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea of goverment which they have. Goverments show thus how succesfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage. It is excellent, we must all allow; yet this goverment never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the west. It does not educate. The charcter inhernet in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the goverment had not sometimes got in its way. For goverment is an expedient in which men would fain succeed in letting one another alone;and, as has been said, when it is most expedient, the governed are most let alone by it. Trade and commerce, if they were not made of India rubber, would never manage to bounce over the obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way;and, if one were to judge these men wholly by the effects of their actions, and not partly by their intentions, they would deserve to be classed and punished with those mischievious persons who put obstructions on the railroads.

But, to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-goverment men, I ask for, not at once no goverment, but at once a better goverment. Let every man make known what kind of goverment would command his respect, and that will be one step towards obtaining it. 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. But a goverment in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a goverment in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience?-in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume, is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said, that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made men a whit more just;and, by means of their respect for it, even the well- disposed are daily made the agents of injustice. A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys and all, marching in admirable order over the hill and dale to the wars,against their wills,aye, against their commen sense and conscience, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart, They have no doubt that it is a damnable buisiness in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? or small moveable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power? Visit the Navy yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American goverment can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts, a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniments, though it may be

"Not a drum was heard, nor a funeral note, As his course to the ramparts we hurried; not a soldier discharged his farwell shot O'er the grave where our hero we buried."

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