why has every man a conscience?

"I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong."

~ Muhammed Ali


"I ain't marching anymore."

~ Phil Ochs

------------------- [excerpt from Civil Disobedience, by Henry David Thoreau, 1849] -----------------

     Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience? -- in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable?  

Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislation?  Why has every man a conscience, then?  

I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.  


It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.  The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.  It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience.  

Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.  


A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart.  


They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined.  Now, what are they?  Men at all? or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power?

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