1
2
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 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-gatheren, 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.
3
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...
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a
prison. The proper place today, the only place which Massachusetts has provided for her
freer and less desponding spirits, is in her prisons, to be put out and locked out of the State
by her own act, as they have already put themselves out by their principles. It is there that
the fugitive slave, and the Mexican prisoner on parole, and the Indian come to plead the
wrongs of his race should find them; on that separate, but more free and honorable, ground,
where the State places those who are not with her, but against her- the only house in a slave
State in which a free man can abide with honor.
If any think that their influence would be lost there, and their voices no longer afflict the
ear of the State, that they would not be as an enemy within its walls, they do not know by
how much truth is stronger than error, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can
combat injustice who has experienced a little in his own person. Cast your whole vote, not a
strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to
the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole
weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the
State will not hesitate which to choose. If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this
year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and
enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition
of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.

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