“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison… 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…
There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor.”
Henry David Thoreau, Transcendentalist Unitarian writer, born on this day in 1817, who was imprisoned briefly for refusing to pay his poll tax as a protest against slavery.
Chorlton Unitarians 