m concerned to trace the effects of
my allegiance. In fact, I quietly declare war with the State, after my
fashion, though I will still make what use and get what advantage of her
I can, as is usual in such cases.

If others pay the tax which is demanded of me, from a sympathy with the
State, they do but what they have already done in their own case, or
rather they abet injustice to a greater extent than the State requires.
If they pay the tax from a mistaken interest in the individual taxed, to
save his property, or prevent his going to jail, it is because they have
not considered wisely how far they let their private feelings interfere
with the public good.

This, then, is my position at present. But one cannot be too much on his
guard in such a case, lest his action be biased by obstinacy or an
undue regard for the opinions of men. Let him see that he does only what
belongs to himself and to the hour.

I think sometimes, Why, this people mean well; they are only ignorant;
they would do better if they knew how: why give your neighbors this pain
to treat you as they are not inclined to? But I think, again, This is
no reason why I should do as they do, or permit others to suffer much
greater pain of a different kind. Again, I sometimes say to myself, When
many millions of men, without heat, without ill-will, without personal
feeling of any kind, demand of you a few shillings only, without the
possibility, such is their constitution, of retracting or altering their
present demand, and without the possibility, on your side, of appeal
to any other millions, why expose yourself to this overwhelming brute
force? You do not resist cold and hunger, the winds and the waves, thus
obstinately; you quietly submit to a thousand similar necessities. You
do not put your head into the fire. But just in proportion as I regard
this as not wholly a brute force, but partly a human force, and consider
that I have relations to those millions as to so many millions of
men, and not of mere brute or inanimate things, I see that appeal is
possible, first and instantaneously, from them to the Maker of
them, and, secondly, from them to themselves. But, if I put my head
deliberately into the fire, there is no appeal to fire or to the Maker
of fire, and I have only myself to blame. If I could convince myself
that I have any right to be satisfied with men as they are, and to
treat them accordingly, and not according, in some respects, to my
requi