ar: "I have heard some of my townsmen say, ‘ I should like to have them order me out to … march down to Mexico, — see if I would go;’ and yet these very men have each, directly by their allegiance, and so indirectly, at least, by their money, furnished a substitute … [There are] those who, while they disapprove of the character and measures of a government, yield to it their allegiance and support." (227-8) People are afraid of having their flesh locked in a cell, but this didn’t bother Thoreau. He found it amusing that they locked him up for his tax evasion, for "they thought that my chief desire was to stand on the other side of that stone wall." (233) Another interesting illustration of this theory is stated best in his words, "If you use money which has the image of Caesar on it, and which he has made current and valuable, … [then] … you are men of the State." (232) He firmly believes that you should only support personal sentiments, which is a profoundly admirable position. On the Duty of Civil Disobedience is an opinionated yet sincere treatise on the efficaciousness and assumed power of the United States’ democratic government. The three main points proposed in this discourse vary in sensiblity from tangible to impalpable. Unfortunately, it is a very difficult and, for some, uninteresting and exasperating reading because in many parts of his essay, Thoreau, through ramblings and descriptions, unwittingly contradicts himself many times. Because of this, he is, by many, disregarded as a great philosopher and considered a hypocrite, and one has to look deep to discover the real meaning behind his grand words and complex sentences....
