presents its tax bill, it will soon take and waste all my
property, and so harass me and my children without end.
This is hard. This makes it impossible for a man to live
honestly, and at the same time comfortably, in outward
respects. It will not be worth the while to accumulate
property; that would be sure to go again. You must hire or
squat somewhere, and raise but a small crop, and eat that
soon. You must live within yourself, and depend upon
yourself always tucked up and ready for a start, and not
have many affairs. A man may grow rich in Turkey even, if
he will be in all respects a good subject of the Turkish
government. Confucius said: "If a state is governed by the
principles of reason, poverty and misery are subjects of
shame; if a state is not governed by the principles of
reason, riches and honors are subjects of shame." No: until
I want the protection of Massachusetts to be extended to me
in some distant Southern port, where my liberty is
endangered, or until I am bent solely on building up an
estate at home by peaceful enterprise, I can afford to
refuse allegiance to Massachusetts, and her right to my
property and life. It costs me less in every sense to incur
the penalty of disobedience to the State than it would to obey.
I should feel as if I were worth less in that case.

Some years ago, the State met me in behalf of the
Church, and commanded me to pay a certain sum toward the
support of a clergyman whose preaching my father attended,
but never I myself. "Pay," it said, "or be locked up in the
jail." I declined to pay. But, unfortunately, another man
saw fit to pay it. I did not see why the schoolmaster