Resistance to Civil Government, 3
inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power? Visit the Navy Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts--a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniment, though it may be,
"Not a drum was heard, nor a funeral note, As his corpse* to the rampart we hurried; Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot O'er the grave where our hero was buried." *[Misprinted as "corse" in original text.]
The mass of men serve the State thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others, as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders, serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God. A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it. A wise man will only be useful as a man, and will not submit to be "clay," and "stop a hole to keep the wind away," but leave that office to his dust at least:
Further reading: Charles Wolfe, "The Burial of Sir John Moore," Representative Poetry Online (University of Toronto Libraries), but also see "Henry Hall, "An Astonishing Discovery," The Critic: An Illustrated Monthly Review of Literature, Art, and Life (July 1906), 52. Jack Randall Crawford, The Tragedy of Hamlet: Prince of Denmark by William Shakespeare (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1917), 134. William Shakespeare, "King John," The Works of William Shakespeare, edited by William George Clark, William Aldis Wright, J. M. Jephson (London and Cambridge: MacMillan & C0, 1867), 353.
