Thoreau asserts that because governments are typically more harmful than helpful, they therefore cannot be justified. According to Thoreau governments are inexpedient. 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.” These statements portray his distrust for the United State government. Thoreau began his essay through the statement: “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 states: “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.” Instead, he argues in the essay that American citizens should really follow their own consciences, and that those who opposed slavery or the Mexican-American War should stop paying taxes, because paying taxes to a government that supported those things was basically offering them support. Civil Disobedience argued that what a person believed to be right is more important than what was mandated by the government. That’s where the ‘civil’ part of ‘civil disobedience’ comes in. Though, Thoreau begins the essay expressing his serious displeasure with the American government, he wasn’t advocating for true anarchy. The incarceration may have been brief but it has had enduring effects through “Civil Disobedience.” Without his knowledge or consent, however, relatives settled the “debt” and a disgruntled Thoreau was released after only one night. He was supposed to remain in jail until a fine was paid which he also declined to pay. Thoreau declined to pay the tax and so, in July 1846, he was arrested and jailed. There were no income taxes and Thoreau did not own enough land to worry about property taxes but there was the hated poll tax – a capital tax levied equally on all adults within a community. Thoreau detested slavery and because tax revenues contributed to the support of it, Thoreau decided to become a tax rebel. It is Thoreau’s extremely personal response to being imprisoned for breaking the law. But “Civil Disobedience” is not an essay of abstract theory. “Civil Disobedience” is an analysis of the individual’s relationship to the state that focuses on why men obey governmental law even when they believe it to be unjust. “Resistance to Civil Government” or simply referred to as “Civil Disobedience” is an essay written by Thoreau and first published in 1849. Henry David Thoreau, born on July the 12 th, 1817 was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resistor, development critic, surveyor, historian and a leading transcendentalist.
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