CHAPTER V.

THE SCENERY OF QUEBEC; AND THE RIVER ST. LAWRENCE.

About twelve o’clock this day, being in the Lower Town, I looked up at

the signal-gun by the flag-staff on Cape Diamond, and saw a soldier up

in the heavens there making preparations to fire it,—both he and the gun

in bold relief against the sky. Soon after, being warned by the boom of

the gun to look up again, there was only the cannon in the sky, the

smoke just blowing away from it, as if the soldier, having touched it

off, had concealed himself for effect, leaving the sound to echo grandly

from shore to shore, and far up and down the river. This answered the

purpose of a dinner-horn.

There are no such restaurateurs in Quebec or Montreal as there are in

Boston. I hunted an hour or two in vain in this town to find one, till I

lost my appetite. In one house, called a restaurateur, where lunches

were advertised, I found only tables covered with bottles and glasses

innumerable, containing apparently a sample of every liquid that has

been known since the earth dried up after the flood, but no scent of

solid food did I perceive gross enough to excite a hungry mouse. In

short, I saw nothing to tempt me there, but a large map of Canada

against the wall. In another place I once more got as far as the

bottles, and then asked for a bill of fare; was told to walk up stairs;

had no bill of fare, nothing but fare. “Have you any pies or puddings?”

I inquired, for I am obliged to keep my savageness in check by a low

diet. “No, sir; we’ve nice mutton-chop, roast beef, beef-steak,

cutlets,” and so on. A burly Englishman, who was in the midst of the

siege of a piece of roast beef, and of whom I have never had a front

view to this day, turned half round, with his mouth half full, and

remarked, “You’ll find no pies nor puddings in Quebec, sir; they don’t

make any here.” I found that it was even so, and therefore bought some

musty cake and some fruit in the open market-place. This market-place by

the water-side, where the old women sat by their tables in the open air,

amid a dense crowd jabbering all languages, was the best place in Quebec

to observe the people; and the ferry-boats, continually coming and going

with their motley crews and cargoes, added much to the entertainment. I

also saw them getting water from the river, for Quebec is supplied with

water by cart and barrel. This city impressed me as wholly foreign and

French, for I scarcely heard the sound of the English language in the

streets. More than three fifths of the inhabitants are of French origin;

and if the traveller did not visit the fortifications particularly, he

might not be reminded that the English have any foothold here; and, in

any case, if he looked no farther than Quebec, they would appear to have

planted themselves in Canada only as they have in Spain at Gibraltar;

and he who plants upon a rock cannot expect much increase. The novel

sights and sounds by the water-side made me think of such ports as

Boulogne, Dieppe, Rouen, and Havre de Grace, which I have never seen;

but I have no doubt that they present similar scenes. I was much amused

from first to last with the sounds made by the charette and caleche

drivers. It was that part of their foreign language that you heard the

most of,—the French they talked to their horses,—and which they talked

the loudest. It was a more novel sound to me than the French of

conversation. The streets resounded with the cries, _“Qui donc!_”

“_March tôt!_” I suspect that many of our horses which came from Canada

would prick up their ears at these sounds. Of the shops, I was most

attracted by those where furs and Indian works were sold, as containing

articles of genuine Canadian manufacture. I have been told that two

townsmen of mine, who were interested in horticulture, travelling once

in Canada, and being in Quebec, thought it would be a good opportunity

to obtain seeds of the real Canada crook-neck squash. So they went into

a shop where such things were advertised, and inquired for the same. The

shopkeeper had the very thing they wanted. “But are you sure,” they

asked, “that these are the genuine Canada crook-neck?” “O yes,

gentlemen,” answered he, “they are a lot which I have received directly

from Boston.” I resolved that my Canada crook-neck seeds should be such

as had grown in Canada.

Too much has not been said about the scenery of Quebec. The

fortifications of Cape Diamond are omnipresent. They preside, they frown

over the river and surrounding country. You travel ten, twenty, thirty

miles up or down the river’s banks, you ramble fifteen miles amid the

hills on either side, and then, when you have long since forgotten them,

perchance slept on them by the way, at a turn of the road or of your

body, there they are still, with their geometry against the sky. The

child that is born and brought up thirty miles distant, and has never

travelled to the city, reads his country’s history, sees the level lines

of the citadel amid the cloud-built citadels in the western horizon, and

is told that that is Quebec. No wonder if Jacques Cartier’s pilot

exclaimed in Norman French, _Que bec!_—“What a beak!”—when he saw this

cape, as some suppose. Every modern traveller involuntarily uses a

similar expression. Particularly it is said that its sudden apparition

on turning Point Levi makes a memorable impression on him who arrives by

water. The view from Cape Diamond has been compared by European

travellers with the most remarkable views of a similar kind in Europe,

such as from Edinburgh Castle, Gibraltar, Cintra, and others, and

preferred by many. A main peculiarity in this, compared with other views

which I have beheld, is that it is from the ramparts of a fortified

city, and not from a solitary and majestic river cape alone that this

view is obtained. I associate the beauty of Quebec with the steel-like

and flashing air, which may be peculiar to that season of the year, in

which the blue flowers of the succory and some late golden-rods and

buttercups on the summit of Cape Diamond were almost my only

companions,—the former bluer than the heavens they faced. Yet even I

yielded in some degree to the influence of historical associations, and

found it hard to attend to the geology of Cape Diamond or the botany of

the Plains of Abraham. I still remember the harbor far beneath me,

sparkling like silver in the sun,—the answering highlands of Point Levi

on the southeast,—the frowning Cap Tourmente abruptly bounding the

seaward view far in the northeast,—the villages of Lorette and

Charlesbourg on the north,—and further west the distant Val Cartier,

sparkling with white cottages, hardly removed by distance through the

clear air,—not to mention a few blue mountains along the horizon in that

direction. You look out from the ramparts of the citadel beyond the

frontiers of civilization. Yonder small group of hills, according to the

guide-book, forms “the portal of the wilds which are trodden only by the

feet of the Indian hunters as far as Hudson’s Bay.” It is but a few

years since Bouchette declared that the country ten leagues north of the

British capital of North America was as little known as the middle of

Africa. Thus the citadel under my feet, and all historical associations,

were swept away again by an influence from the wilds and from nature, as

if the beholder had read her history,—an influence which, like the Great

River itself, flowed from the Arctic fastnesses and Western forests with

irresistible tide over all.

The most interesting object in Canada to me was the River St. Lawrence,

known far and wide, and for centuries, as the Great River. Cartier, its

discoverer, sailed up it as far as Montreal in 1535,—nearly a century

before the coming of the Pilgrims; and I have seen a pretty accurate map

of it so far, containing the city of “Hochelaga” and the river

“Saguenay,” in Ortelius’s _Theatrum Orbis Terrarum_, printed at Antwerp

in 1575,—the first edition having appeared in 1570,—in which the famous

cities of “Norumbega” and “Orsinora” stand on the rough-blocked

continent where New England is to-day, and the fabulous but unfortunate

Isle of Demons, and Frislant, and others, lie off and on in the

unfrequented sea, some of them prowling near what is now the course of

the Cunard steamers. In this ponderous folio of the “Ptolemy of his

age,” said to be the first general atlas published after the revival of

the sciences in Europe, only one page of which is devoted to the

topography of the _Novus Orbis_, the St. Lawrence is the only large

river, whether drawn from fancy or from observation, on the east side of

North America. It was famous in Europe before the other rivers of North

America were heard of, notwithstanding that the mouth of the Mississippi

is said to have been discovered first, and its stream was reached by

Soto not long after; but the St. Lawrence had attracted settlers to its

cold shores long before the Mississippi, or even the Hudson, was known

to the world. Schoolcraft was misled by Gallatin into saying that

Narvaez discovered the Mississippi. De Vega does _not_ say so. The first

explorers declared that the summer in that country was as warm as

France, and they named one of the bays in the Gulf of St. Lawrence the

Bay of Chaleur, or of warmth; but they said nothing about the winter

being as cold as Greenland. In the manuscript account of Cartier’s

second voyage, attributed by some to that navigator himself, it is

called “the greatest river, without comparison, that is known to have

ever been seen.” The savages told him that it was the “_chemin du

Canada_,”—the highway to Canada,—“which goes so far that no man had ever

been to the end that they had heard.” The Saguenay, one of its

tributaries, which the panorama has made known to New England within

three years, is described by Cartier, in 1535, and still more

particularly by Jean Alphonse, in 1542, who adds, “I think that this

river comes from the sea of Cathay, for in this place there issues a

strong current, and there runs there a terrible tide.” The early

explorers saw many whales and other sea-monsters far up the St.

Lawrence. Champlain, in his map, represents a whale spouting in the

harbor of Quebec, three hundred and sixty miles from what is called the

mouth of the river; and Charlevoix takes his reader to the summit of

Cape Diamond to see the “porpoises, white as snow,” sporting on the

surface of the harbor of Quebec. And Boucher says in 1664, “from there

(Tadoussac) to Montreal is found a great quantity of _Marsouins

blancs_.” Several whales have been taken pretty high up the river since

I was there. P. A. Gosse, in his “Canadian Naturalist,” p. 171 (London,

1840), speaks of “the white dolphin of the St. Lawrence (_Delphinus

Canadensis_),” as considered different from those of the sea. “The

Natural History Society of Montreal offered a prize, a few years ago,

for an essay on the _Cetacea_ of the St. Lawrence, which was, I believe,

handed in.” In Champlain’s day it was commonly called “the Great River

of Canada.” More than one nation has claimed it. In Ogilby’s “America of

1670,” in the map _Novi Belgii_, it is called “De Groote Rivier van Niew

Nederlandt.” It bears different names in different parts of its course,

as it flows through what were formerly the territories of different

nations. From the Gulf to Lake Ontario it is called at present the St.

Lawrence; from Montreal to the same place it is frequently called the

Cateraqui; and higher up it is known successively as the Niagara,

Detroit, St. Clair, St. Mary’s, and St. Louis rivers. Humboldt, speaking

of the Orinoco, says that this name is unknown in the interior of the

country; so likewise the tribes that dwell about the sources of the St.

Lawrence have never heard the name which it bears in the lower part of

its course. It rises near another father of waters,—the

Mississippi,—issuing from a remarkable spring far up in the woods,

called Lake Superior, fifteen hundred miles in circumference; and

several other springs there are thereabouts which feed it. It makes such

a noise in its tumbling down at one place as is heard all round the

world. Bouchette, the Surveyor-General of the Canadas, calls it “the

most splendid river on the globe”; says that it is two thousand statute

miles long (more recent geographers make it four or five hundred miles

longer); that at the Rivière du Sud it is eleven miles wide; at the

Traverse, thirteen; at the Paps of Matane, twenty-five; at the Seven

Islands, seventy-three; and at its mouth, from Cape Rosier to the Mingan

Settlements in Labrador, near one hundred and five (?) miles wide.

According to Captain Bayfield’s recent chart it is about _ninety-six_

geographical miles wide at the latter place, measuring at right angles

with the stream. It has much the largest estuary, regarding both length

and breadth, of any river on the globe. Humboldt says that the river

Plate, which has the broadest estuary of the South American rivers, is

ninety-two geographical miles wide at its mouth; also he found the

Orinoco to be more than three miles wide at five hundred and sixty miles

from its mouth; but he does not tell us that ships of six hundred tons

can sail up it so far, as they can up the St. Lawrence to Montreal,—an

equal distance. If he had described a fleet of such ships at anchor in a

city’s port so far inland, we should have got a very different idea of

the Orinoco. Perhaps Charlevoix describes the St. Lawrence truly as the

most _navigable_ river in the world. Between Montreal and Quebec it

averages about two miles wide. The tide is felt as far up as Three

Rivers, four hundred and thirty-two miles, which is as far as from

Boston to Washington. As far up as Cap aux Oyes, sixty or seventy miles

below Quebec, Kalm found a great part of the plants near the shore to be

marine, as glass-wort (_Salicornia_), seaside pease (_Pisum maritimum_),

sea-milkwort (_Glaux_), beach-grass (_Psamma arenarium_), seaside

plantain (_Plantago maritima_), the sea-rocket (_Bunias cakile_), &c.

The geographer Guyot observes that the Maranon is three thousand miles

long, and gathers its waters from a surface of a million and a half

square miles; that the Mississippi is also three thousand miles long,

but its basin covers only from eight to nine hundred thousand square

miles; that the St. Lawrence is eighteen hundred miles long, and its

basin covers more than a million square miles (Darby says five hundred

thousand); and speaking of the lakes, he adds, “These vast fresh-water

seas, together with the St. Lawrence, cover a surface of nearly one

hundred thousand square miles, and it has been calculated that they

contain about one half of all the fresh water on the surface of our

planet.” But all these calculations are necessarily very rude and

inaccurate. Its tributaries, the Ottawa, St. Maurice, and Saguenay, are

great rivers themselves. The latter is said to be more than one thousand

(?) feet deep at its mouth, while its cliffs rise perpendicularly an

equal distance above its surface. Pilots say there are no soundings till

one hundred and fifty miles up the St. Lawrence. The greatest sounding

in the river, given on Bayfield’s chart of the gulf and river, is two

hundred and twenty-eight fathoms. McTaggart, an engineer, observes that

“the Ottawa is larger than all the rivers in Great Britain, were they

running in one.” The traveller Grey writes: “A dozen Danubes, Rhines,

Taguses, and Thameses would be nothing to twenty miles of fresh water in

breadth (as where he happened to be), from ten to forty fathoms in

depth.” And again: “There is not perhaps in the whole extent of this

immense continent so fine an approach to it as by the river St.

Lawrence. In the Southern States you have, in general, a level country

for many miles inland; here you are introduced at once into a majestic

scenery, where everything is on a grand scale,—mountains, woods, lakes,

rivers, precipices, waterfalls.”

We have not yet the data for a minute comparison of the St. Lawrence

with the South American rivers; but it is obvious that, taking it in

connection with its lakes, its estuary, and its falls, it easily bears

off the palm from all the rivers on the globe; for though, as Bouchette

observes, it may not carry to the ocean a greater volume of water than

the Amazon and Mississippi, its surface and cubic mass are far greater

than theirs. But, unfortunately, this noble river is closed by ice from

the beginning of December to the middle of April. The arrival of the

first vessel from England when the ice breaks up is, therefore, a great

event, as when the salmon, shad, and alewives come up a river in the

spring to relieve the famishing inhabitants on its banks. Who can say

what would have been the history of this continent if, as has been

suggested, this river had emptied into the sea where New York stands!

After visiting the Museum and taking one more look at the wall, I made

haste to the Lord Sydenham steamer, which at five o’clock was to leave

for Montreal. I had already taken a seat on deck, but finding that I had

still an hour and a half to spare, and remembering that large map of

Canada which I had seen in the parlor of the restaurateur in my search

after pudding, and realizing that I might never see the like out of the

country, I returned thither, asked liberty to look at the map, rolled up

the mahogany table, put my handkerchief on it, stood on it, and copied

all I wanted before the maid came in and said to me standing on the

table, “Some gentlemen want the room, sir”; and I retreated without

having broken the neck of a single bottle, or my own, very thankful and

willing to pay for all the solid food I had got. We were soon abreast of

Cap Rouge, eight miles above Quebec, after we got underway. It was in

this place, then called “_Fort du France Roy_,” that the Sieur de

Roberval with his company, having sent home two of his three ships,

spent the winter of 1542-43. It appears that they fared in the following

manner (I translate from the original): “Each mess had only two loaves,

weighing each a pound, and half a pound of beef. They ate pork for

dinner, with half a pound of butter, and beef for supper, with about two

handfuls of beans, without butter. Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays

they ate salted cod, and sometimes green, for dinner, with butter; and

porpoise and beans for supper. Monsieur Roberval administered good

justice, and punished each according to his offence. One, named Michel

Gaillon, was hung for theft; John of Nantes was put in irons and

imprisoned for his fault; and others were likewise put in irons; and

many were whipped, both men and women; by which means they lived in

peace and tranquillity.” In an account of a voyage up this river,

printed in the Jesuit Relations in the year 1664, it is said: “It was an

interesting navigation for us in ascending the river from Cap Tourment

to Quebec, to see on this side and on that, for the space of eight

leagues, the farms and the houses of the company, built by our French,

all along these shores. On the right, the seigniories of Beauport, of

Notre Dames des Anges; and on the left, this beautiful Isle of Orleans.”

The same traveller names among the fruits of the country observed at the

Isles of Richelieu, at the head of Lake St. Peter, “kinds (_des

espèces_) of little apples or haws (_semelles_), and of pears, which

only ripen with the frost.”

Night came on before we had passed the high banks. We had come from

Montreal to Quebec in one night. The return voyage, against the stream,

takes but an hour longer. Jacques Cartier, the first white man who is

known to have ascended this river, thus speaks of his voyage from what

is now Quebec to the foot of Lake St. Peter, or about half-way to

Montreal: “From the said day, the 19th, even to the 28th of the said

month, [September, 1535] we had been navigating up the said river

without losing hour or day, during which time we had seen and found as

much country and lands as level as we could desire, full of the most

beautiful trees in the world,” which he goes on to describe. But we

merely slept and woke again to find that we had passed through all that

country which he was eight days in sailing through. He must have had a

troubled sleep. We were not long enough on the river to realize that it

had length; we got only the impression of its breadth, as if we had

passed over a lake a mile or two in breadth and several miles long,

though we might thus have slept through a European kingdom. Being at the

head of Lake St. Peter, on the above-mentioned 28th of September,

dealing with the natives, Carrier says: “We inquired of them by signs if

this was the route to Hochelaga [Montreal]; and they answered that it

was, and that there were yet three days’ journeys to go there.” He

finally arrived at Hochelaga on the 2d of October.

When I went on deck at dawn we had already passed through Lake St.

Peter, and saw islands ahead of us. Our boat advancing with a strong and

steady pulse over the calm surface, we felt as if we were permitted to

be awake in the scenery of a dream. Many vivacious Lombardy poplars

along the distant shores gave them a novel and lively, though

artificial, look, and contrasted strangely with the slender and graceful

elms on both shores and islands. The church of Varennes, fifteen miles

from Montreal, was conspicuous at a great distance before us, appearing

to belong to, and rise out of, the river; and now, and before, Mount

Royal indicated where the city was. We arrived about seven o’clock, and

set forth immediately to ascend the mountain, two miles distant, going

across lots in spite of numerous signs threatening the severest

penalties to trespassers, past an old building known as the Mac Tavish

property,—Simon Mac Tavish, I suppose, whom Silliman refers to as “in a

sense the founder of the Northwestern Company.” His tomb was behind in

the woods, with a remarkably high wall and higher monument. The family

returned to Europe. He could not have imagined how dead he would be in a

few years, and all the more dead and forgotten for being buried under

such a mass of gloomy stone, where not even memory could get at him

without a crowbar. Ah! poor man, with that last end of his! However, he

may have been the worthiest of mortals for aught that I know. From the

mountain-top we got a view of the whole city; the flat, fertile,

extensive island; the noble sea of the St. Lawrence swelling into lakes;

the mountains about St. Hyacinth, and in Vermont and New York; and the

mouth of the Ottawa in the west, overlooking that St. Ann’s where the

voyageur sings his “parting hymn,” and bids adieu to civilization,—a

name, thanks to Moore’s verses, the most suggestive of poetic

associations of any in Canada. We, too, climbed the hill which Cartier,

first of white men, ascended, and named Mont-real, (the 3d of October,

O. S., 1535,) and, like him, “we saw the said river as far as we could

see, _grand_, _large_, _et spacieux_, going to the southwest,” toward

that land whither Donnacona had told the discoverer that he had been a

month’s journey from Canada, where there grew “_force Canelle et

Girofle_,” much cinnamon and cloves, and where also, as the natives told

him, were three great lakes and afterward _une mer douce_,—a sweet

sea,—_de laquelle n’est mention avoir vu le bout_, of which there is no

mention to have seen the end. But instead of an Indian town far in the

interior of a new world, with guides to show us where the river came

from, we found a splendid and bustling stone-built city of white men,

and only a few squalid Indians offered to sell us baskets at the Lachine

Railroad Depot, and Hochelaga is, perchance, but the fancy name of an

engine company or an eating-house.

We left Montreal Wednesday, the 2d of October, late in the afternoon. In

the La Prairie cars the Yankees made themselves merry, imitating the

cries of the charette-drivers to perfection, greatly to the amusement of

some French-Canadian travellers, and they kept it up all the way to

Boston. I saw one person on board the boat at St. John’s, and one or two

more elsewhere in Canada, wearing homespun gray great-coats, or capotes,

with conical and comical hoods, which fell back between their shoulders

like small bags, ready to be turned up over the head when occasion

required, though a hat usurped that place now. They looked as if they

would be convenient and proper enough as long as the coats were new and

tidy, but would soon come to have a beggarly and unsightly look, akin to

rags and dust-holes. We reached Burlington early in the morning, where

the Yankees tried to pass off their Canada coppers, but the news-boys

knew better. Returning through the Green Mountains, I was reminded that

I had not seen in Canada such brilliant autumnal tints as I had

previously seen in Vermont. Perhaps there was not yet so great and

sudden a contrast with the summer heats in the former country as in

these mountain valleys. As we were passing through Ashburnham, by a new

white house which stood at some distance in a field, one passenger

exclaimed, so that all in the car could hear him, “There, there’s not so

good a house as that in all Canada!” I did not much wonder at his

remark, for there is a neatness, as well as evident prosperity, a

certain elastic easiness of circumstances, so to speak, when not rich,

about a New England house, as if the proprietor could at least afford to

make repairs in the spring, which the Canadian houses do not suggest.

Though of stone, they are no better constructed than a stone barn would

be with us; the only building, except the chateau, on which money and

taste are expended, being the church. In Canada an ordinary New England

house would be mistaken for the chateau, and while every village here

contains at least several gentlemen or “squires,” _there_ there is but

one to a seigniory.

I got home this Thursday evening, having spent just one week in Canada

and travelled eleven hundred miles. The whole expense of this journey,

including two guide-books and a map, which cost one dollar twelve and a

half cents, was twelve dollars seventy-five cents. I do not suppose that

I have seen all British America; that could not be done by a cheap

excursion, unless it were a cheap excursion to the Icy Sea, as seen by

Hearne or McKenzie, and then, no doubt, some interesting features would

be omitted. I wished to go a little way behind that word _Canadense_, of

which naturalists make such frequent use; and I should like still right

well to make a longer excursion on foot through the wilder parts of

Canada, which perhaps might be called _Iter Canadense_.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

ANTI-SLAVERY AND REFORM PAPERS.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS.[3]

Footnote 3:

An Address, delivered at the Anti-Slavery Celebration at Framingham,

July 4th, 1854.

I lately attended a meeting of the citizens of Concord, expecting, as

one among many, to speak on the subject of slavery in Massachusetts; but

I was surprised and disappointed to find that what had called my

townsmen together was the destiny of Nebraska, and not of Massachusetts,

and that what I had to say would be entirely out of order. I had thought

that the house was on fire, and not the prairie; but though several of

the citizens of Massachusetts are now in prison for attempting to rescue

a slave from her own clutches, not one of the speakers at that meeting

expressed regret for it, not one even referred to it. It was only the

disposition of some wild lands a thousand miles off, which appeared to

concern them. The inhabitants of Concord are not prepared to stand by

one of their own bridges, but talk only of taking up a position on the

highlands beyond the Yellowstone River. Our Buttricks and Davises and

Hosmers are retreating thither, and I fear that they will leave no

Lexington Common between them and the enemy. There is not one slave in

Nebraska; there are perhaps a million slaves in Massachusetts.

They who have been bred in the school of politics fail now and always to

face the facts. Their measures are half measures and make-shifts merely.

They put off the day of settlement indefinitely, and meanwhile the debt

accumulates. Though the Fugitive Slave Law had not been the subject of

discussion on that occasion, it was at length faintly resolved by my

townsmen, at an adjourned meeting, as I learn, that the compromise

compact of 1820 having been repudiated by one of the parties,

“Therefore, ... the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 must be repealed.” But

this is not the reason why an iniquitous law should be repealed. The

fact which the politician faces is merely, that there is less honor

among thieves than was supposed, and not the fact that they are thieves.

As I had no opportunity to express my thoughts at that meeting, will you

allow me to do so here?

Again it happens that the Boston Court-House is full of armed men,

holding prisoner and trying a MAN, to find out if he is not really a

SLAVE. Does any one think that justice or God awaits Mr. Loring’s

decision? For him to sit there deciding still, when this question is

already decided from eternity to eternity, and the unlettered slave

himself, and the multitude around have long since heard and assented to

the decision, is simply to make himself ridiculous. We may be tempted to

ask from whom he received his commission, and who he is that received

it; what novel statutes he obeys, and what precedents are to him of

authority. Such an arbiter’s very existence is an impertinence. We do

not ask him to make up his mind, but to make up his pack.

I listen to hear the voice of a Governor, Commander-in-Chief of the

forces of Massachusetts. I hear only the creaking of crickets and the

hum of insects which now fill the summer air. The Governor’s exploit is

to review the troops on muster days. I have seen him on horseback, with

his hat off, listening to a chaplain’s prayer. It chances that that is

all I have ever seen of a Governor. I think that I could manage to get

along without one. If _he_ is not of the least use to prevent my being

kidnapped, pray of what important use is he likely to be to me? When

freedom is most endangered, he dwells in the deepest obscurity. A

distinguished clergyman told me that he chose the profession of a

clergyman, because it afforded the most leisure for literary pursuits. I

would recommend to him the profession of a governor.

Three years ago, also, when the Simms tragedy was acted, I said to

myself, there is such an officer, if not such a man, as the Governor of

Massachusetts,—what has he been about the last fortnight? Has he had as

much as he could do to keep on the fence during this moral earthquake?

It seemed to me that no keener satire could have been aimed at, no more

cutting insult have been offered to that man, than just what

happened,—the absence of all inquiry after him in that crisis. The worst

and the most I chance to know of him is, that he did not improve that

opportunity to make himself known, and worthily known. He could at least

have _resigned_ himself into fame. It appeared to be forgotten that

there was such a man or such an office. Yet no doubt he was endeavoring

to fill the gubernatorial chair all the while. He was no Governor of

mine. He did not govern me.

But at last, in the present case, the Governor was heard from. After he

and the United States government had perfectly succeeded in robbing a

poor innocent black man of his liberty for life, and, as far as they

could, of his Creator’s likeness in his breast, he made a speech to his

accomplices, at a congratulatory supper!

I have read a recent law of this State, making it penal for any officer

of the “Commonwealth” to “detain or aid in the ... detention,” anywhere

within its limits, “of any person, for the reason that he is claimed as

a fugitive slave.” Also, it was a matter of notoriety that a writ of

replevin to take the fugitive out of the custody of the United States

Marshal could not be served, for want of sufficient force to aid the

officer.

I had thought that the Governor was, in some sense, the executive

officer of the State; that it was his business, as a Governor, to see

that the laws of the State were executed; while, as a man, he took care

that he did not, by so doing, break the laws of humanity; but when there

is any special important use for him, he is useless, or worse than

useless, and permits the laws of the State to go unexecuted. Perhaps I

do not know what are the duties of a Governor; but if to be a Governor

requires to subject one’s self to so much ignominy without remedy, if it

is to put a restraint upon my manhood, I shall take care never to be

Governor of Massachusetts. I have not read far in the statutes of this

Commonwealth. It is not profitable reading. They do not always say what

is true; and they do not always mean what they say. What I am concerned

to know is, that that man’s influence and authority were on the side of

the slaveholder, and not of the slave,—of the guilty, and not of the

innocent,—of injustice, and not of justice. I never saw him of whom I

speak; indeed, I did not know that he was Governor until this event

occurred I heard of him and Anthony Burns at the same time, and thus,

undoubtedly, most will hear of him. So far am I from being governed by

him. I do not mean that it was anything to his discredit that I had not

heard of him, only that I heard what I did. The worst I shall say of him

is, that he proved no better than the majority of his constituents would

be likely to prove. In my opinion, he was not equal to the occasion.

The whole military force of the State is at the service of a Mr. Suttle,

a slaveholder from Virginia, to enable him to catch a man whom he calls

his property; but not a soldier is offered to save a citizen of

Massachusetts from being kidnapped! Is this what all these soldiers, all

this _training_, has been for these seventy-nine years past? Have they

been trained merely to rob Mexico and carry back fugitive slaves to

their masters?

These very nights, I heard the sound of a drum in our streets. There

were men _training_ still; and for what? I could with an effort pardon

the cockerels of Concord for crowing still, for they, perchance, had not

been beaten that morning; but I could not excuse this rub-a-dub of the

“trainers.” The slave was carried back by exactly such as these; i. e.

by the soldier, of whom the best you can say in this connection is, that

he is a fool made conspicuous by a painted coat.

Three years ago, also, just a week after the authorities of Boston

assembled to carry back a perfectly innocent man, and one whom they knew

to be innocent, into slavery, the inhabitants of Concord caused the

bells to be rung and the cannons to be fired, to celebrate their

liberty,—and the courage and love of liberty of their ancestors who

fought at the bridge. As if _those_ three millions had fought for the

right to be free themselves, but to hold in slavery three millions

others. Now-a-days, men wear a fool’s-cap, and call it a liberty-cap. I

do not know but there are some, who, if they were tied to a

whipping-post, and could but get one hand free, would use it to ring the

bells and fire the cannons to celebrate _their_ liberty. So some of my

townsmen took the liberty to ring and fire. That was the extent of their

freedom; and when the sound of the bells died away, their liberty died

away also; when the powder was all expended, their liberty went off with

the smoke.

The joke could be no broader, if the inmates of the prisons were to

subscribe for all the powder to be used in such salutes, and hire the

jailers to do the firing and ringing for them, while they enjoyed it

through the grating.

This is what I thought about my neighbors.

Every humane and intelligent inhabitant of Concord, when he or she heard

those bells and those cannons, thought not with pride of the events of

the 19th of April, 1775, but with shame of the events of the 12th of

April, 1851. But now we have half buried that old shame under a new one.

Massachusetts sat waiting Mr. Loring’s decision, as if it could in any

way affect her own criminality. Her crime, the most conspicuous and

fatal crime of all, was permitting him to be the umpire in such a case.

It was really the trial of Massachusetts. Every moment that she

hesitated to set this man free, every moment that she now hesitates to

atone for her crime, she is convicted. The Commissioner on her case is

God; not Edward G. God, but simple God.

I wish my countrymen to consider, that whatever the human law may be,

neither an individual nor a nation can ever commit the least act of

injustice against the obscurest individual, without having to pay the

penalty for it. A government which deliberately enacts injustice, and

persists in it, will at length even become the laughing-stock of the

world.

Much has been said about American slavery, but I think that we do not

even yet realize what slavery is. If I were seriously to propose to

Congress to make mankind into sausages, I have no doubt that most of the

members would smile at my proposition, and if any believed me to be in

earnest, they would think that I proposed something much worse than

Congress had ever done. But if any of them will tell me that to make a

man into a sausage would be much worse,—would be any worse,—than to make

him into a slave,—than it was to enact the Fugitive Slave Law,—I will

accuse him of foolishness, of intellectual incapacity, of making a

distinction without a difference. The one is just as sensible a

proposition as the other.

I hear a good deal said about trampling this law under foot. Why, one

need not go out of his way to do that. This law rises not to the level

of the head or the reason; its natural habitat is in the dirt. It was

born and bred, and has its life, only in the dust and mire, on a level

with the feet; and he who walks with freedom, and does not with Hindoo

mercy avoid treading on every venomous reptile, will inevitably tread on

it, and so trample it under foot,—and Webster, its maker, with it, like

the dirt-bug and its ball.

Recent events will be valuable as a criticism on the administration of

justice in our midst, or, rather, as showing what are the true resources

of justice in any community. It has come to this, that the friends of

liberty, the friends of the slave, have shuddered when they have

understood that his fate was left to the legal tribunals of the country

to be decided. Free men have no faith that justice will be awarded in

such a case. The judge may decide this way or that; it is a kind of

accident, at best. It is evident that he is not a competent authority in

so important a case. It is no time, then, to be judging according to his

precedents, but to establish a precedent for the future. I would much

rather trust to the sentiment of the people. In their vote, you would

get something of some value, at least, however small; but in the other

case, only the trammelled judgment of an individual, of no significance,

be it which way it might.

It is, to some extent, fatal to the courts, when the people are

compelled to go behind them. I do not wish to believe that the courts

were made for fair weather, and for very civil cases merely; but think

of leaving it to any court in the land to decide whether more than three

millions of people, in this case, a sixth part of a nation, have a right

to be freemen or not? But it has been left to the courts of _justice_,

so called,—to the Supreme Court of the land,—and, as you all know,

recognizing no authority but the Constitution, it has decided that the

three millions are, and shall continue to be slaves. Such judges as

these are merely the inspectors of a pick-lock and murderer’s tools, to

tell him whether they are in working order or not, and there they think

that their responsibility ends. There was a prior case on the docket,

which they, as judges appointed by God, had no right to skip; which

having been justly settled, they would have been saved from this

humiliation. It was the case of the murderer himself.

The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law

free. They are the lovers of law and order, who observe the law when the

government breaks it.

Among human beings, the judge whose words seal the fate of a man

furthest into eternity is not he who merely pronounces the verdict of

the law, but he, whoever he may be, who, from a love of truth, and

unprejudiced by any custom or enactment of men, utters a true opinion or

_sentence_ concerning him. He it is that _sentences_ him. Whoever can

discern truth has received his commission from a higher source than the

chiefest justice in the world, who can discern only law. He finds

himself constituted judge of the judge. Strange that it should be

necessary to state such simple truths!

I am more and more convinced that, with reference to any public

question, it is more important to know what the country thinks of it,

than what the city thinks. The city does not _think_ much. On any moral

question, I would rather have the opinion of Boxboro than of Boston and

New York put together. When the former speaks, I feel as if somebody

_had_ spoken, as if _humanity_ was yet, and a reasonable being had

asserted its rights,—as if some unprejudiced men among the country’s

hills had at length turned their attention to the subject, and by a few

sensible words redeemed the reputation of the race. When, in some

obscure country town, the farmers come together to a special

town-meeting, to express their opinion on some subject which is vexing

the land, that, I think, is the true Congress, and the most respectable

one that is ever assembled in the United States.

It is evident that there are, in this Commonwealth at least, two

parties, becoming more and more distinct,—the party of the city, and the

party of the country. I know that the country is mean enough, but I am

glad to believe that there is a slight difference in her favor. But as

yet, she has few, if any organs, through which to express herself. The

editorials which she reads, like the news, come from the seaboard. Let

us, the inhabitants of the country, cultivate self-respect. Let us not

send to the city for aught more essential than our broadcloths and

groceries; or, if we read the opinions of the city, let us entertain

opinions of our own.

Among measures to be adopted, I would suggest to make as earnest and

vigorous an assault on the press as has already been made, and with

effect, on the church. The church has much improved within a few years;

but the press is almost, without exception, corrupt. I believe that, in

this country, the press exerts a greater and a more pernicious influence

than the church did in its worst period. We are not a religious people,

but we are a nation of politicians. We do not care for the Bible, but we

do care for the newspaper. At any meeting of politicians,—like that at

Concord the other evening, for instance,—how impertinent it would be to

quote from the Bible! how pertinent to quote from a newspaper or from

the Constitution! The newspaper is a Bible which we read every morning

and every afternoon, standing and sitting, riding and walking. It is a

Bible which every man carries in his pocket, which lies on every table

and counter, and which the mail, and thousands of missionaries, are

continually dispersing. It is, in short, the only book which America has

printed, and which America reads. So wide is its influence. The editor

is a preacher whom you voluntarily support. Your tax is commonly one

cent daily, and it costs nothing for pew hire. But how many of these

preachers preach the truth? I repeat the testimony of many an

intelligent foreigner, as well as my own convictions, when I say, that

probably no country was ever ruled by so mean a class of tyrants as,

with a few noble exceptions, are the editors of the periodical press in

_this_ country. And as they live and rule only by their servility, and

appealing to the worse, and not the better, nature of man, the people

who read them are in the condition of the dog that returns to his vomit.

The _Liberator_ and the _Commonwealth_ were the only papers in Boston,

as far as I know, which made themselves heard in condemnation of the

cowardice and meanness of the authorities of that city, as exhibited in

’51. The other journals, almost without exception, by their manner of

referring to and speaking of the Fugitive Slave Law, and the carrying

back of the slave Simms, insulted the common sense of the country, at

least. And, for the most part, they did this, one would say, because

they thought so to secure the approbation of their patrons, not being

aware that a sounder sentiment prevailed to any extent in the heart of

the Commonwealth. I am told that some of them have improved of late; but

they are still eminently time-serving. Such is the character they have

won.

But, thank fortune, this preacher can be even more easily reached by the

weapons of the reformer than could the recreant priest. The free men of

New England have only to refrain from purchasing and reading these

sheets, have only to withhold their cents, to kill a score of them at

once. One whom I respect told me that he purchased Mitchell’s _Citizen_

in the cars, and then threw it out the window. But would not his

contempt have been more fatally expressed if he had not bought it?

Are they Americans? are they New-Englanders? are they inhabitants of

Lexington and Concord and Framingham, who read and support the Boston

_Post, Mail, Journal, Advertiser, Courier_, and _Times?_ Are these the

Flags of our Union? I am not a newspaper reader, and may omit to name

the worst.

Could slavery suggest a more complete servility than some of these

journals exhibit? Is there any dust which their conduct does not lick,

and make fouler still with its slime? I do not know whether the Boston

_Herald_ is still in existence, but I remember to have seen it about the

streets when Simms was carried off. Did it not act its part well,—serve

its master faithfully? How could it have gone lower on its belly? How

can a man stoop lower than he is low? do more than put his extremities

in the place of the head he has? than make his head his lower extremity?

When I have taken up this paper with my cuffs turned up, I have heard

the gurgling of the sewer through every column. I have felt that I was

handling a paper picked out of the public gutters, a leaf from the

gospel of the gambling-house, the groggery, and the brothel, harmonizing

with the gospel of the Merchants’ Exchange.

The majority of the men of the North, and of the South and East and

West, are not men of principle. If they vote, they do not send men to

Congress on errands of humanity; but while their brothers and sisters

are being scourged and hung for loving liberty, while—I might here

insert all that slavery implies and is,—it is the mismanagement of wood

and iron and stone and gold which concerns them. Do what you will, O

Government, with my wife and children, my mother and brother, my father

and sister, I will obey your commands to the letter. It will indeed

grieve me if you hurt them, if you deliver them to overseers to be

hunted by hounds or to be whipped to death; but, nevertheless, I will

peaceably pursue my chosen calling on this fair earth, until perchance,

one day, when I have put on mourning for them dead, I shall have

persuaded you to relent. Such is the attitude, such are the words of

Massachusetts.

Rather than do thus, I need not say what match I would touch, what

system endeavor to blow up; but as I love my life, I would side with the

light, and let the dark earth roll from under me, calling my mother and

my brother to follow.

I would remind my countrymen, that they are to be men first, and

Americans only at a late and convenient hour. No matter how valuable law

may be to protect your property, even to keep soul and body together, if

it do not keep you and humanity together.

I am sorry to say, that I doubt if there is a judge in Massachusetts who

is prepared to resign his office, and get his living innocently,

whenever it is required of him to pass sentence under a law which is

merely contrary to the law of God. I am compelled to see that they put

themselves, or rather, are by character, in this respect, exactly on a

level with the marine who discharges his musket in any direction he is

ordered to. They are just as much tools, and as little men. Certainly,

they are not the more to be respected, because their master enslaves

their understandings and consciences, instead of their bodies.

The judges and lawyers,—simply as such, I mean,—and all men of

expediency, try this case by a very low and incompetent standard. They

consider, not whether the Fugitive Slave Law is right, but whether it is

what they call _constitutional_. Is virtue constitutional, or vice? Is

equity constitutional, or iniquity? In important moral and vital

questions, like this, it is just as impertinent to ask whether a law is

constitutional or not, as to ask whether it is profitable or not. They

persist in being the servants of the worst of men, and not the servants

of humanity. The question is, not whether you or your grandfather,

seventy years ago, did not enter into an agreement to serve the Devil,

and that service is not accordingly now due; but whether you will not

now, for once and at last, serve God,—in spite of your own past

recreancy, or that of your ancestor,—by obeying that eternal and only

just CONSTITUTION, which He, and not any Jefferson or Adams, has written

in your being.

The amount of it is, if the majority vote the Devil to be God, the

minority will live and behave accordingly,—and obey the successful

candidate, trusting that, some time or other, by some Speaker’s

casting-vote, perhaps, they may reinstate God. This is the highest

principle I can get out or invent for my neighbors. These men act as if

they believed that they could safely slide down a hill a little way—or a

good way—and would surely come to a place, by and by, where they could

begin to slide up again. This is expediency, or choosing that course

which offers the slightest obstacles to the feet, that is, a down-hill

one. But there is no such thing as accomplishing a righteous reform by

the use of “expediency.” There is no such thing as sliding up hill. In

morals, the only sliders are backsliders.

Thus we steadily worship Mammon, both school and state and church, and

on the seventh day curse God with a tintamar from one end of the Union

to the other.

Will mankind never learn that policy is not morality,—that it never

secures any moral right, but considers merely what is expedient? chooses

the available candidate,—who is invariably the Devil,—and what right

have his constituents to be surprised, because the Devil does not behave

like an angel of light? What is wanted is men, not of policy, but of

probity,—who recognize a higher law than the Constitution, or the

decision of the majority. The fate of the country does not depend on how

you vote at the polls,—the worst man is as strong as the best at that

game; it does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the

ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your

chamber into the street every morning.

What should concern Massachusetts is not the Nebraska Bill, nor the

Fugitive Slave Bill, but her own slaveholding and servility. Let the

State dissolve her union with the slaveholder. She may wriggle and

hesitate, and ask leave to read the Constitution once more; but she can

find no respectable law or precedent which sanctions the continuance of

such a Union for an instant.

Let each inhabitant of the State dissolve his union with her, as long as

she delays to do her duty.

The events of the past month teach me to distrust Fame. I see that she

does not finely discriminate, but coarsely hurrahs. She considers not

the simple heroism of an action, but only as it is connected with its

apparent consequences. She praises till she is hoarse the easy exploit

of the Boston tea party, but will be comparatively silent about the

braver and more disinterestedly heroic attack on the Boston Court-House,

simply because it was unsuccessful!

Covered with disgrace, the State has sat down coolly to try for their

lives and liberties the men who attempted to do its duty for it. And

this is called _justice_! They who have shown that they can behave

particularly well may perchance be put under bonds for _their good

behavior_. They whom truth requires at present to plead guilty are, of

all the inhabitants of the State, pre-eminently innocent. While the

Governor, and the Mayor, and countless officers of the Commonwealth are

at large, the champions of liberty are imprisoned.

Only they are guiltless, who commit the crime of contempt of such a

court. It behooves every man to see that his influence is on the side of

justice, and let the courts make their own characters. My sympathies in

this case are wholly with the accused, and wholly against their accusers

and judges. Justice is sweet and musical; but injustice is harsh and

discordant. The judge still sits grinding at his organ, but it yields no

music, and we hear only the sound of the handle. He believes that all

the music resides in the handle, and the crowd toss him their coppers

the same as before.

Do you suppose that that Massachusetts which is now doing these

things,—which hesitates to crown these men, some of whose lawyers, and

even judges, perchance, may be driven to take refuge in some poor

quibble, that they may not wholly outrage their instinctive sense of

justice,—do you suppose that she is anything but base and servile? that

she is the champion of liberty?

Show me a free state, and a court truly of justice, and I will fight for

them, if need be; but show me Massachusetts, and I refuse her my

allegiance, and express contempt for her courts.

The effect of a good government is to make life more valuable,—of a bad

one, to make it less valuable. We can afford that railroad, and all

merely material stock, should lose some of its value, for that only

compels us to live more simply and economically; but suppose that the

value of life itself should be diminished! How can we make a less demand

on man and nature, how live more economically in respect to virtue and

all noble qualities, than we do? I have lived for the last month,—and I

think that every man in Massachusetts capable of the sentiment of

patriotism must have had a similar experience,—with the sense of having

suffered a vast and indefinite loss. I did not know at first what ailed

me. At last it occurred to me that what I had lost was a country. I had

never respected the government near to which I lived, but I had

foolishly thought that I might manage to live here, minding my private

affairs, and forget it. For my part, my old and worthiest pursuits have

lost I cannot say how much of their attraction, and I feel that my

investment in life here is worth many per cent less since Massachusetts

last deliberately sent back an innocent man, Anthony Burns, to slavery.

I dwelt before, perhaps, in the illusion that my life passed somewhere

only _between_ heaven and hell, but now I cannot persuade myself that I

do not dwell _wholly within_ hell. The site of that political

organization called Massachusetts is to me morally covered with volcanic

scoriæ and cinders, such as Milton describes in the infernal regions. If

there is any hell more unprincipled than our rulers, and we, the ruled,

I feel curious to see it. Life itself being worth less, all things with

it, which minister to it, are worth less. Suppose you have a small

library, with pictures to adorn the walls,—a garden laid out around,—and

contemplate scientific and literary pursuits, and discover all at once

that your villa, with all its contents, is located in hell, and that the

justice of the peace has a cloven foot and a forked tail,—do not these

things suddenly lose their value in your eyes?

I feel that, to some extent, the State has fatally interfered with my

lawful business. It has not only interrupted me in my passage through

Court Street on errands of trade, but it has interrupted me and every

man on his onward and upward path, on which he had trusted soon to leave

Court Street far behind. What right had it to remind me of Court Street?

I have found that hollow which even I had relied on for solid.

I am surprised to see men going about their business as if nothing had

happened. I say to myself, “Unfortunates! they have not heard the news.”

I am surprised that the man whom I just met on horseback should be so

earnest to overtake his newly bought cows running away,—since all

property is insecure, and if they do not run away again, they may be

taken away from him when he gets them. Fool! does he not know that his

seed-corn is worth less this year,—that all beneficent harvests fail as

you approach the empire of hell? No prudent man will build a stone house

under these circumstances, or engage in any peaceful enterprise which it

requires a long time to accomplish. Art is as long as ever, but life is

more interrupted and less available for a man’s proper pursuits. It is

not an era of repose. We have used up all our inherited freedom. If we

would save our lives, we must fight for them.

I walk toward one of our ponds; but what signifies the beauty of nature

when men are base? We walk to lakes to see our serenity reflected in

them; when we are not serene, we go not to them. Who can be serene in a

country where both the rulers and the ruled are without principle? The

remembrance of my country spoils my walk. My thoughts are murder to the

State, and involuntarily go plotting against her.

But it chanced the other day that I scented a white water-lily, and a

season I had waited for had arrived. It is the emblem of purity. It

bursts up so pure and fair to the eye, and so sweet to the scent, as if

to show us what purity and sweetness reside in, and can be extracted

from, the slime and muck of earth. I think I have plucked the first one

that has opened for a mile. What confirmation of our hopes is in the

fragrance of this flower! I shall not so soon despair of the world for

it, notwithstanding slavery, and the cowardice and want of principle of

Northern men. It suggests what kind of laws have prevailed longest and

widest, and still prevail, and that the time may come when man’s deeds

will smell as sweet. Such is the odor which the plant emits. If Nature

can compound this fragrance still annually, I shall believe her still

young and full of vigor, her integrity and genius unimpaired, and that

there is virtue even in man, too, who is fitted to perceive and love it.

It reminds me that Nature has been partner to no Missouri Compromise. I

scent no compromise in the fragrance of the water-lily. It is not a

_Nymphæa_ DOUGLASSII. In it, the sweet, and pure, and innocent are

wholly sundered from the obscene and baleful. I do not scent in this the

time-serving irresolution of a Massachusetts Governor, nor of a Boston

Mayor. So behave that the odor of your actions may enhance the general

sweetness of the atmosphere, that when we behold or scent a flower, we

may not be reminded how inconsistent your deeds are with it; for all

odor is but one form of advertisement of a moral quality, and if fair

actions had not been performed, the lily would not smell sweet. The foul

slime stands for the sloth and vice of man, the decay of humanity; the

fragrant flower that springs from it, for the purity and courage which

are immortal.

Slavery and servility have produced no sweet-scented flower annually, to

charm the senses of men, for they have no real life: they are merely a

decaying and a death, offensive to all healthy nostrils. We do not

complain that they _live_, but that they do not _get buried_. Let the

living bury them; even they are good for manure.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

PRAYERS.

Not with fond shekels of the tested gold,

Nor gems whose rates are either rich or poor,

As fancy values them: but with true prayers,

That shall be up at heaven, and enter there

Ere sunrise; prayers from preserved souls,

From fasting maids, whose minds are dedicate

To nothing temporal.

SHAKESPEARE.

Pythagoras said that the time when men are honestest, is when they

present themselves before the gods. If we can overhear the prayer, we

shall know the man. But prayers are not made to be overheard, or to be

printed, so that we seldom have the prayer otherwise than it can be

inferred from the man and his fortunes, which are the answer to the

prayer, and always accord with it. Yet there are scattered about in the

earth a few records of these devout hours, which it would edify us to

read, could they be collected in a more catholic spirit than the

wretched and repulsive volumes which usurp that name. Let us not have

the prayers of one sect, nor of the Christian Church, but of men in all

ages and religions, who have prayed well. The prayer of Jesus is, as it

deserves, become a form for the human race. Many men have contributed a

single expression, a single word to the language of devotion, which is

immediately caught and stereotyped in the prayers of their church and

nation. Among the remains of Euripides, we have this prayer: “Thou God

of all! infuse light into the souls of men, whereby they may be enabled

to know what is the root from whence all their evils spring, and by what

means they may avoid them.” In the Phædrus of Plato, we find this

petition in the mouth of Socrates: “O gracious Pan! and ye other gods

who preside over this place! grant that I may be beautiful within; and

that those external things which I have may be such as may best agree

with a right internal disposition of mind; and that I may account him to

be rich, who is wise and just.” Wacic the Caliph, who died A. D. 845,

ended his life, the Arabian historians tell us, with these words: “O

thou whose kingdom never passes away, pity one whose dignity is so

transient.” But what led us to these remembrances was the happy accident

which, in this undevout age, lately brought us acquainted with two or

three diaries, which attest, if there be need of attestation, the

eternity of the sentiment and its equality to itself through all the

variety of expression. The first is the prayer of a deaf and dumb boy.

“When my long-attached friend comes to me, I have pleasure to

converse with him, and I rejoice to pass my eyes over his

countenance; but soon I am weary of spending my time causelessly

and unimproved, and I desire to leave him (_but not in

rudeness_), because I wish to be engaged in my business. But

thou, O my Father, knowest I always delight to commune with thee

in my lone and silent heart; I am never full of thee; I am never

weary of thee; I am always desiring thee. I hunger with strong

hope and affection for thee, and I thirst for thy grace and

spirit.

“When I go to visit my friends, I must put on my best garments,

and I must think of my manner to please them. I am tired to stay

long, because my mind is not free, and they sometimes talk

gossip with me. But, O my Father, thou visitest me in my work,

and I can lift up my desires to thee, and my heart is cheered

and at rest with thy presence, and I am always alone with thee,

_and thou dost not steal my time by foolishness_. I always ask

in my heart, Where can I find thee?”

The next is a voice out of a solitude as strict and sacred as that in

which nature had isolated this eloquent mute.

“My Father, when I cannot be cheerful or happy, I can be true

and obedient, and I will not forget that joy has been, and may

still be. If there is no hour of solitude granted me, still I

will commune with thee. If I may not search out and pierce my

thought, so much the more may my living praise thee. At whatever

price, I must be alone with thee; this must be the demand I

make. These _duties_ are not the life, but the means which

enable us to show forth the life. So must I take up this cross,

and bear it willingly. Why should I feel reproved when a busy

one enters the room? I am not idle, though I sit with folded

hands; but instantly I must seek some cover. For that shame I

reprove myself. Are they only the valuable members of society

who labor to dress and feed it? Shall we never ask the aim of

all this hurry and foam, of this aimless activity? Let the

purpose for which I live be always before me; let every thought

and word go to confirm and illuminate that end; namely, that I

must become near and dear to thee; that now I am beyond the

reach of all but thee.

“How can we not be reconciled to thy will? I will know the joy

of giving to my friend the dearest treasure I have. I know that

sorrow comes not at once only. We cannot meet it, and say, now

it is overcome, but again, and yet again its flood pours over

us, and as full as at first.

“If but this tedious battle could be fought,

Like Sparta’s heroes at one rocky pass,

‘One day be spent in dying,’ men had sought

The spot and been cut down like mower’s grass.”

The next is all in metrical form. It is the aspiration of a different

mind, in quite other regions of power and duty, yet they all accord at

last.

“Great God, I ask thee for no meaner pelf

Than that I may not disappoint myself,

That in my action I may soar as high

As I can now discern with this clear eye.

“And next in value, which thy kindness lends,

That I may greatly disappoint my friends,

Howe’er they think or hope that it may be,

They may not dream how thou’st distinguished me.

“That my weak hand may equal my firm faith,

And my life practise more than my tongue saith;

That my low conduct may not show,

Nor my relenting lines,

That I thy purpose did not know,

Or overrated thy designs.”

The last of the four orisons is written in a singularly calm and

healthful spirit, and contains this petition:—

“My Father! I now come to thee with a desire to thank thee for

the continuance of our love, the one for the other. I feel that

without thy love in me, I should be alone here in the flesh. I

cannot express my gratitude for what thou hast been and

continuest to be to me. But thou knowest what my feelings are.

When naught on earth seemeth pleasant to me, thou dost make

thyself known to me, and teach me that which is needful for me,

and dost cheer my travels on. I know that thou hast not created

me and placed me here on earth, amidst its toils and troubles,

and the follies of those around me, and told me to be like

thyself, when I see so little of thee here to profit by; thou

hast not done this, and then left me to myself, a poor, weak

man, scarcely able to earn my bread. No; thou art my Father, and

I will love thee, for thou didst first love me, and lovest me

still. We will ever be parent and child. Wilt thou give me

strength to persevere in this great work of redemption. Wilt

thou show me the true means of accomplishing it.... I thank thee

for the knowledge that I have attained of thee by thy sons who

have been before me, and especially for him who brought me so

perfect a type of thy goodness and love to men.... I know that

thou wilt deal with me as I deserve. I place myself, therefore

in thy hand, knowing that thou wilt keep me from all harm so

long as I consent to live under thy protecting care.”

Let these few scattered leaves, which a chance, as men say, but which to

us shall be holy, brought under our eye nearly at the same moment, stand

as an example of innumerable similar expressions which no mortal witness

has reported, and be a sign of the times. Might they be suggestion to

many a heart of yet higher secret experiences which are ineffable! But

we must not tie up the rosary on which we have strung these few white

beads, without adding a pearl of great price from that book of prayer,

the “Confessions of Saint Augustine.”

“And being admonished to reflect upon myself, I entered into the

very inward parts of my soul, by thy conduct; and I was able to

do it, because now thou wert become my helper. I entered and

discerned with the eye of my soul (such as it was), even beyond

my soul and mind itself the Light unchangeable. Not this vulgar

light which all flesh may look upon, nor as it were a greater of

the same kind, as though the brightness of this should be

manifold greater and with its greatness take up all space. Not

such was this light, but other, yea, far other from all these.

Neither was it so above my understanding, as oil swims above

water, or as the heaven is above the earth. But it is above me,

because it made me; and I am under it, because I was made by it.

He that knows truth or verity, knows what that Light is, and he

that knows it, knows eternity, and it is known by charity. O

eternal Verity! and true Charity! and dear Eternity! thou art my

God, to thee do I sigh day and night. Thee when I first knew,

thou liftedst me up that I might see there was what I might see,

and that I was not yet such as to see. And thou didst beat back

my weak sight upon myself, shooting out beams upon me after a

vehement manner, and I even trembled between love and horror,

and I found myself to be far off, and even in the very region of

dissimilitude from thee.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE.[4]

Footnote 4:

Æsthetic Papers, No. I. Boston, 1849.

I heartily accept the motto,—“That government is best which governs

least”; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and

systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I

believe,—“That government is best which governs not at all”; and when

men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they

will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments

are usually, and all governments 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 government. 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; for, in the outset, the people

would not have consented to this measure.

This American government,—what is it but a tradition, though a recent

one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each

instant losing some of its 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. 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 government which

they have. Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on,

even impose on themselves, for their own advantage. It is excellent, we

must all allow. Yet this government 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 character inherent in the American people has done all

that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the

government had not sometimes got in its way. For government is an

expedient by 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 mischievous persons who put obstructions on the railroads.

But, to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call

themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but

_at once_ a better government. Let every man make known what kind of

government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward

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 government 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 government 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 that 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 hill

and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common

sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and

produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a

damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably

inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? or small movable 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 government 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, not a funeral note,

As his corse to the rampart we hurried;

Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot

O’er the grave where our hero we buried.”

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as

machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the

militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, &c. In most cases there

is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but

they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and

wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as

well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt.

They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as

these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others,—as most

legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders,—serve

the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral

distinctions, they are as likely to serve the Devil, without _intending_

it, as God. A 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. A wise man will only be useful as a man, and

will not submit to be “clay,” and “stop a hole to keep the wind away,”

but leave that office to his dust at least:—

“I am too high-born to be propertied,

To be a secondary at control,

Or useful serving-man and instrument

To any sovereign state throughout the world.”

He who gives himself entirely to his fellow-men appears to them useless

and selfish; but he who gives himself partially to them is pronounced a

benefactor and philanthropist.

How does it become a man to behave toward this American government

to-day? 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.

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. But such was the case, they think, in the Revolution

of ’75. If one were to tell me that this was a bad government because it

taxed certain foreign commodities brought to its ports, it is most

probable that I should not make an ado about it, for I can do without

them. All machines have their friction; and possibly this does enough

good to counterbalance the evil. At any rate, it is a great evil to make

a stir about it. But when the friction comes to have its machine, and

oppression and robbery are organized, I say, let us not have such a

machine any longer. In other words, when a sixth of the population of a

nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and

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

the fact, that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the

invading army.

Paley, a common authority with many on moral questions, in his chapter

on the “Duty of Submission to Civil Government,” resolves all civil

obligation into expediency; and he proceeds to say, “that so long as the

interest of the whole society requires it, that is, so long as the

established government cannot be resisted or changed without public

inconveniency, it is the will of God that the established government be

obeyed, and no longer..... This principle being admitted, the justice of

every particular case of resistance is reduced to a computation of the

quantity of the danger and grievance on the one side, and of the

probability and expense of redressing it on the other.” Of this, he

says, every man shall judge for himself. But Paley appears never to have

contemplated those cases to which the rule of expediency does not apply,

in which a people, as well as an individual, must do justice, cost what

it may. If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must

restore it to him though I drown myself. This, according to Paley, would

be inconvenient. But he that would save his life, in such a case, shall

lose it. This people must cease to hold slaves, and to make war on

Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people.

In their practice, nations agree with Paley; but does any one think that

Massachusetts does exactly what is right at the present crisis?

“A drab of state, a cloth-o’-silver slut,

To have her train borne up, and her soul trail in the dirt.”

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_. I quarrel not

with far-off foes, but with those who, near at home, co-operate with,

and do the bidding of, those far away, and without whom the latter would

be harmless. We are accustomed to say, that the mass of men are

unprepared; but improvement is slow, because the few are not materially

wiser or better than the many. It is not so important that many should

be as good as you, as that there be some absolute goodness somewhere;

for that will leaven the whole lump. 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 children of Washington

and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that

they know not what to do, and do nothing; 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. What is the price-current of

an honest man and patriot to-day? 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, that 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. There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one

virtuous man. But it is easier to deal with the real possessor of a

thing than with the temporary guardian of it.

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; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the

voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I

am not vitally concerned that that right should prevail. I 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 his 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 reason 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, as my

neighbor says, has a bone in 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 this

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 for 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 the 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,

_un_moral, 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, are undoubtedly

its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious

obstacles to reform. Some are petitioning the State to dissolve the

Union, to disregard the requisitions of the President. Why do they not

dissolve it themselves,—the union between themselves and the State,—and

refuse to pay their quota into its treasury? Do not they stand in the

same relation to the State, that the State does to the Union? And have

not the same reasons prevented the State from resisting the Union, which

have prevented them from resisting the State?

How can a man be satisfied to entertain an opinion merely, and enjoy

_it_? Is there any enjoyment in it, if his opinion is that he is

aggrieved? 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,

the perception and the performance of right, changes things and

relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly

with anything which was. It not only divides states and churches, it

divides families; ay, it divides the _individual_, separating the

diabolical in him from the divine.

Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we

endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall

we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as

this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the

majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the

remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the

government itself that the remedy _is_ worse than the evil. _It_ makes

it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform?

Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist

before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to be on the

alert to point out its faults, and _do_ better than it would have them?

Why does it always crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and

Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?

One would think, that a deliberate and practical denial of its authority

was the only offence never contemplated by government; else, why has it

not assigned its definite, its suitable and proportionate penalty? If a

man who has no property refuses but once to earn nine shillings for the

State, he is put in prison for a period unlimited by any law that I

know, and determined only by the discretion of those who placed him

there; but if he should steal ninety times nine shillings from the

State, he is soon permitted to go at large again.

If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of

government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear

smooth,—certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a

spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then

perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the

evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent

of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a

counter friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at

any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.

As for adopting the ways which the State has provided for remedying the

evil, I know not of such ways. They take too much time, and a man’s life

will be gone. I have other affairs to attend to. I came into this world,

not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be

it good or bad. A man has not everything to do, but something; and

because he cannot do _everything_, it is not necessary that he should do

_something_ wrong. It is not my business to be petitioning the Governor

or the Legislature any more than it is theirs to petition me; and, if

they should not hear my petition, what should I do then? But in this

case the State has provided no way: its very Constitution is the evil.

This may seem to be harsh and stubborn and unconciliatory; but it is to

treat with the utmost kindness and consideration the only spirit that

can appreciate or deserves it. So is all change for the better, like

birth and death, which convulse the body.

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. I think that it is enough if they have God on their side,

without waiting for that other one. Moreover, any man more right than

his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.

I meet this American government, or its representative, the State

government, directly, and face to face, once a-year—no more—in the

person of its tax-gatherer; this is the only mode in which a man

situated as I am necessarily meets it; and it then says distinctly,

Recognize me; and the simplest, the most effectual, and, in the present

posture of affairs, the indispensablest mode of treating with it on this

head, of expressing your little satisfaction with and love for it, is to

deny it then. My civil neighbor, the tax-gatherer, is the very man I

have to deal with,—for it is, after all, with men and not with parchment

that I quarrel,—and he has voluntarily chosen to be an agent of the

government. How shall he ever know well what he is and does as an

officer of the government, or as a man, until he is obliged to consider

whether he shall treat me, his neighbor, for whom he has respect, as a

neighbor and well-disposed man, or as a maniac and disturber of the

peace, and see if he can get over this obstruction to his neighborliness

without a ruder and more impetuous thought or speech corresponding with

his action. I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if

ten men whom I could name,—if ten _honest_ men only,—ay, if _one_ HONEST

man, in this State of Massachusetts, _ceasing to hold slaves_, were

actually to withdraw from this copartnership, and be locked up in the

county jail therefor, it would be the abolition of slavery in America.

For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once

well done is done forever. But we love better to talk about it: that we

say is our mission. Reform keeps many scores of newspapers in its

service, but not one man. If my esteemed neighbor, the State’s

ambassador, who will devote his days to the settlement of the question

of human rights in the Council Chamber, instead of being threatened with

the prisons of Carolina, were to sit down the prisoner of Massachusetts,

that State which is so anxious to foist the sin of slavery upon her

sister,—though at present she can discover only an act of inhospitality

to be the ground of a quarrel with her,—the Legislature would not wholly

waive the subject the following winter.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a

just man is also a prison. The proper place to-day, the only place which

Massachusetts has provided for her freer and less desponding 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. It is

there that the fugitive slave, and the Mexican prisoner on parole, and

the Indian come to plead the wrongs of his race, should find them; on

that separate, but more free and honorable ground, where the State

places those who are not _with_ her, but _against_ her,—the only house

in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor. If any think

that their influence would be lost there, and their voices no longer

afflict the ear of the State, that they would not be as an enemy within

its walls, they do not know by how much truth is stronger than error,

nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who

has experienced a little in his own person. Cast your whole vote, not a

strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. 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. If a thousand men were not to pay

their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody

measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit

violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a

peaceable revolution, if any such is possible. If the tax-gatherer, or

any other public officer, asks me, as one has done, “But what shall I

do?” my answer is, “If you really wish to do anything, resign your

office.” When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has

resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished. But even

suppose blood should flow. Is there not a sort of blood shed when the

conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man’s real manhood and

immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death. I see this

blood flowing now.

I have contemplated the imprisonment of the offender, rather than the

seizure of his goods,—though both will serve the same purpose,—because

they who assert the purest right, and consequently are most dangerous to

a corrupt State, commonly have not spent much time in accumulating

property. To such the State renders comparatively small service, and a

slight tax is wont to appear exorbitant, particularly if they are

obliged to earn it by special labor with their hands. If there were one

who lived wholly without the use of money, the State itself would

hesitate to demand it of him. But the rich man,—not to make any

invidious comparison,—is always sold to the institution which makes him

rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue; for money

comes between a man and his objects, and obtains them for him; and it

was certainly no great virtue to obtain it. It puts to rest many

questions which he would otherwise be taxed to answer; while the only

new question which it puts is the hard but superfluous one, how to spend

it. Thus his moral ground is taken from under his feet. The

opportunities of living are diminished in proportion as what are called

the “means” are increased. The best thing a man can do for his culture

when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he

entertained when he was poor. Christ answered the Herodians according to

their condition. “Show me the tribute-money,” said he;—and one took a

penny out of his pocket;—if you use money which has the image of Cæsar

on it, and which he has made current and valuable, that is, _if you are

men of the State_, and gladly enjoy the advantages of Cæsar’s

government, then pay him back some of his own when he demands it;

“Render therefore to Cæsar that which is Cæsar’s, and to God those

things which are God’s,”—leaving them no wiser than before as to which

was which; for they did not wish to know.

When I converse with the freest of my neighbors, I perceive that,

whatever they may say about the magnitude and seriousness of the

question, and their regard for the public tranquillity, the long and the

short of the matter is, that they cannot spare the protection of the

existing government, and they dread the consequences to their property

and families of disobedience to it. For my own part, I should not like

to think that I ever rely on the protection of the State. But, if I deny

the authority of the State when it presents its tax-bill, it will soon

take and waste all my property, and so harass me and my children without

end. This is hard. This makes it impossible for a man to live honestly,

and at the same time comfortably, in outward respects. It will not be

worth the while to accumulate property; that would be sure to go again.

You must hire or squat somewhere, and raise but a small crop, and eat

that soon. You must live within yourself, and depend upon yourself

always tucked up and ready for a start, and not have many affairs. A man

may grow rich in Turkey even, if he will be in all respects a good

subject of the Turkish government. Confucius said: “If a state is

governed by the principles of reason, poverty and misery are subjects of

shame; if a state is not governed by the principles of reason, riches

and honors are the subjects of shame.” No: until I want the protection

of Massachusetts to be extended to me in some distant Southern port,

where my liberty is endangered, or until I am bent solely on building up

an estate at home by peaceful enterprise, I can afford to refuse

allegiance to Massachusetts, and her right to my property and life. It

costs me less in every sense to incur the penalty of disobedience to the

State, than it would to obey. I should feel as if I were worth less in

that case.

Some years ago, the State met me in behalf of the Church, and commanded

me to pay a certain sum toward the support of a clergyman whose

preaching my father attended, but never I myself. “Pay,” it said, “or be

locked up in the jail.” I declined to pay. But, unfortunately, another

man saw fit to pay it. I did not see why the schoolmaster should be

taxed to support the priest, and not the priest the schoolmaster; for I

was not the State’s schoolmaster, but I supported myself by voluntary

subscription. I did not see why the lyceum should not present its

tax-bill, and have the State to back its demand, as well as the Church.

However, at the request of the selectmen, I condescended to make some

such statement as this in writing:—“Know all men by these presents, that

I, Henry Thoreau, do not wish to be regarded as a member of any

incorporated society which I have not joined.” This I gave to the town

clerk; and he has it. The State, having thus learned that I did not wish

to be regarded as a member of that church, has never made a like demand

on me since; though it said that it must adhere to its original

presumption that time. If I had known how to name them, I should then

have signed off in detail from all the societies which I never signed on

to; but I did not know where to find a complete list.

I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on

this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of

solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot

thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I could not help

being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me

as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up. I wondered

that it should have concluded at length that this was the best use it

could put me to, and had never thought to avail itself of my services in

some way. I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my

townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break

through, before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a

moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and

mortar. I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax. They

plainly did not know how to treat me, but behaved like persons who are

underbred. In every threat and in every compliment there was a blunder;

for they thought that my chief desire was to stand the other side of

that stone wall. I could not but smile to see how industriously they

locked the door on my meditations, which followed them out again without

let or hindrance, and _they_ were really all that was dangerous. As they

could not reach me, they had resolved to punish my body; just as boys,

if they cannot come at some person against whom they have a spite, will

abuse his dog. I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid

as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its

friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and

pitied it.

Thus the State never intentionally confronts a man’s sense, intellectual

or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior

wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to

be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the

strongest. What force has a multitude? They only can force me who obey a

higher law than I. They force me to become like themselves. I do not

hear of _men_ being _forced_ to live this way or that by masses of men.

What sort of life were that to live? When I meet a government which says

to me, “Your money or your life,” why should I be in haste to give it my

money? It may be in a great strait, and not know what to do: I cannot

help that. It must help itself; do as I do. It is not worth the while to

snivel about it. I am not responsible for the successful working of the

machinery of society. I am not the son of the engineer. I perceive that,

when an acorn and a chestnut fall side by side, the one does not remain

inert to make way for the other, but both obey their own laws, and

spring and grow and flourish as best they can, till one, perchance,

overshadows and destroys the other. If a plant cannot live according to

its nature, it dies; and so a man.

The night in prison was novel and interesting enough. The

prisoners in their shirt-sleeves were enjoying a chat and the

evening air in the doorway, when I entered. But the jailer said,

“Come, boys, it is time to lock up”; and so they dispersed, and

I heard the sound of their steps returning into the hollow

apartments. My room-mate was introduced to me by the jailer, as

“a first-rate fellow and a clever man.” When the door was

locked, he showed me where to hang my hat, and how he managed

matters there. The rooms were whitewashed once a month; and this

one, at least, was the whitest, most simply furnished, and

probably the neatest apartment in the town. He naturally wanted

to know where I came from, and what brought me there; and, when

I had told him, I asked him in my turn how he came there,

presuming him to be an honest man, of course; and, as the world

goes, I believe he was. “Why,” said he, “they accuse me of

burning a barn; but I never did it.” As near as I could

discover, he had probably gone to bed in a barn when drunk, and

smoked his pipe there; and so a barn was burnt. He had the

reputation of being a clever man, had been there some three

months waiting for his trial to come on, and would have to wait

as much longer; but he was quite domesticated and contented,

since he got his board for nothing, and thought that he was well

treated.

He occupied one window, and I the other; and I saw, that, if one

stayed there long, his principal business would be to look out

the window. I had soon read all the tracts that were left there,

and examined where former prisoners had broken out, and where a

grate had been sawed off, and heard the history of the various

occupants of that room; for I found that even here there was a

history and a gossip which never circulated beyond the walls of

the jail. Probably this is the only house in the town where

verses are composed, which are afterward printed in a circular

form, but not published. I was shown quite a long list of verses

which were composed by some young men who had been detected in

an attempt to escape, who avenged themselves by singing them.

I pumped my fellow-prisoner as dry as I could, for fear I should

never see him again; but at length he showed me which was my

bed, and left me to blow out the lamp.

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 is one of its

peculiar institutions; for it is a shire town. I began to

comprehend what its inhabitants were about.

In the morning, our breakfasts were put through the hole in the

door, in small oblong-square tin pans, made to fit, and holding

a pint of chocolate, with brown bread, and an iron spoon. When

they called for the vessels again, I was green enough to return

what bread I had left; but my comrade seized it, and said that I

should lay that up for lunch or dinner. Soon after he was let

out to work at haying in a neighboring field, whither he went

every day, and would not be back till noon; so he bade me

good-day, saying that he doubted if he should see me again.

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, such as he observed who went in a youth, and

emerged a tottering and gray-headed man; 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; that they were a

distinct race from me by their prejudices and superstitions, as

the Chinamen and Malays are; that, in their sacrifices to

humanity, they ran no risks, not even to their property; that,

after all, they were not so noble but they treated the thief as

he had treated them, and 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. This

may be to judge my neighbors harshly; for I believe that many of

them are not aware that they have such an institution as the

jail in their village.

It was formerly the custom in our village, when a poor debtor

came out of jail, for his acquaintances to salute him, looking

through their fingers, which were crossed to represent the

grating of a jail window, “How do ye do?” My neighbors did not

thus salute me, but first looked at me, and then at one another,

as if I had returned from a long journey. 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.

This is the whole history of “My Prisons.”

I have never declined paying the highway tax, because I am as desirous

of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject; and, as for

supporting schools, I am doing my part to educate my fellow-countrymen

now. It is for no particular item in the tax-bill that I refuse to pay

it. I simply wish to refuse allegiance to the State, to withdraw and

stand aloof from it effectually. I do not care to trace the course of my

dollar, if I could, till it buys a man or a musket to shoot one

with,—the dollar is innocent,—but I am concerned to trace the effects of

my allegiance. In fact, I quietly declare war with the State, after my

fashion, though I will still make what use and get what advantage of her

I can, as is usual in such cases.

If others pay the tax which is demanded of me, from a sympathy with the

State, they do but what they have already done in their own case, or

rather they abet injustice to a greater extent than the State requires.

If they pay the tax from a mistaken interest in the individual taxed, to

save his property, or prevent his going to jail, it is because they have

not considered wisely how far they let their private feelings interfere

with the public good.

This, then, is my position at present. But one cannot be too much on his

guard in such a case, lest his action be biassed by obstinacy, or an

undue regard for the opinions of men. Let him see that he does only what

belongs to himself and to the hour.

I think sometimes, Why, this people mean well; they are only ignorant;

they would do better if they knew how: why give your neighbors this pain

to treat you as they are not inclined to? But I think again, this is no

reason why I should do as they do, or permit others to suffer much

greater pain of a different kind. Again, I sometimes say to myself, When

many millions of men, without heat, without ill will, without personal

feeling of any kind, demand of you a few shillings only, without the

possibility, such is their constitution, of retracting or altering their

present demand, and without the possibility, on your side, of appeal to

any other millions, why expose yourself to this overwhelming brute

force? You do not resist cold and hunger, the winds and the waves, thus

obstinately; you quietly submit to a thousand similar necessities. You

do not put your head into the fire. But just in proportion as I regard

this as not wholly a brute force, but partly a human force, and consider

that I have relations to those millions as to so many millions of men,

and not of mere brute or inanimate things, I see that appeal is

possible, first and instantaneously, from them to the Maker of them,

and, secondly, from them to themselves. But, if I put my head

deliberately into the fire, there is no appeal to fire or to the Maker

of fire, and I have only myself to blame. If I could convince myself

that I have any right to be satisfied with men as they are, and to treat

them accordingly, and not according, in some respects, to my

requisitions and expectations of what they and I ought to be, then, like

a good Mussulman and fatalist, I should endeavor to be satisfied with

things as they are, and say it is the will of God. And, above all, there

is this difference between resisting this and a purely brute or natural

force, that I can resist this with some effect; but I cannot expect,

like Orpheus, to change the nature of the rocks and trees and beasts.

I do not wish to quarrel with any man or nation. I do not wish to split

hairs, to make fine distinctions, or set myself up as better than my

neighbors. I seek rather, I may say, even an excuse for conforming to

the laws of the land. I am but too ready to conform to them. Indeed, I

have reason to suspect myself on this head; and each year, as the

tax-gatherer comes round, I find myself disposed to review the acts and

position of the general and State governments, and the spirit of the

people, to discover a pretext for conformity.

“We must affect our country as our parents;

And if at any time we alienate

Our love or industry from doing it honor,

We must respect effects and teach the soul

Matter of conscience and religion,

And not desire of rule or benefit.”

I believe that the State will soon be able to take all my work of this

sort out of my hands, and then I shall be no better a patriot than my

fellow-countrymen. Seen from a lower point of view, the Constitution,

with all its faults, is very good; the law and the courts are very

respectable; even this State and this American government are, in many

respects, very admirable and rare things, to be thankful for, such as a

great many have described them; but seen from a point of view a little

higher, they are what I have described them; seen from a higher still,

and the highest, who shall say what they are, or that they are worth

looking at or thinking of at all?

However, the government does not concern me much, and I shall bestow the

fewest possible thoughts on it. It is not many moments that I live under

a government, even in this world. If a man is thought-free, fancy-free,

imagination-free, that which _is not_ never for a long time appearing

_to be_ to him, unwise rulers or reformers cannot fatally interrupt him.