Page:Anti-slavery and reform papers by Thoreau, Henry David.djvu/19

8 sympathies and predilections was the iniquity, as he conceived it, of the war then being waged by the United States on Mexico, in pursuance of their policy of annexing Texas, and fostering territorial disputes–an iniquity which made him declare that under such a Government the only place for an honest man was in prison. "Henry, why are you here?" said Emerson, in astonishment, when he visited his friend in the village prison. "Why are you not here?" was the emphatic rejoinder. On this, as on other occasions, the required tax was paid on Thoreau's behalf by one of his friends, an arrangement against which he protested, but which he was presumably unable to prevent.

But though this policy of territorial aggression, and still more (as we shall see) the sanction given by Massachusetts to the institution of slavery, were the ostensible causes of Thoreau's rebellion against the State, it can hardly be doubted that a man of so individualistic a temperament must in any event have been placed in antagonism, in theory at any rate, to the existing form of government; and Thoreau has expounded his anarchist doctrines with considerable frankness in his vigorous essays on "Civil Disobedience" and "Slavery in Massachusetts." "I heartily accept," he says, "the motto 'that government is best which governs least'; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically." He unhesitatingly asserts the entire independence of the individual, in all matters where conscience is concerned, as opposed to those of mere expediency. "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