Thoreau and civil disobedience

On the 23rd or 24th of July 1846, Henry David Thoreau was stopped by the Concord (MA) tax collector and asked to pay his poll tax. Thoreau refused, and as a result ended up in jail. He was released the next day, when an anonymous person paid the tax on his behalf, but Thoreau wasn’t thankful at all, he was angry. The episode became a famous (or infamous, depending on whom you ask) example of civil disobedience, and eventually led Thoreau to write an essay about it, first published with the title “Resistance to Civil Government” in 1849, as part of Elizabeth Peabody’s “Aesthetic Papers.”

Previously, I have defended Thoreau against Hanna Arendt’s criticism (as articulated by Katie Fitzpatrick in Aeon magazine) of his supposedly self-absorbed and ineffective approach to social activism. Here I wish to examine “Resistance to Civil Government” a bit more closely, partly in light of what seem to me striking similarities between Thoreau’s take and the Stoic view of social justice.

Thoreau begins with a declaration that, in modern terms, would put him squarely into the libertarian camp (for which, honestly, I don’t have a lot of sympathy):

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.

It is, however, immediately clear that he referring chiefly to the US Government’s foreign policy in 1846, and particularly to the Mexican war that was unfolding at the time. Indeed, he qualifies his initial statement in this manner:

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.

Hard to disagree with such a call. Thoreau then begins to examine the relationship between individual citizens and their government, as well as the relationship between morality and the law:

Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.