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 bear 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 an 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