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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: encourage its citizens to put 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 offense never contemplated by
its 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
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |
