f right and justice and the desire to promote the public
welfare grow, individualism grows also. Each individual, thrown
upon his own resources, learns to think and question and judge. In
democratic states he learns to take upon himself the responsibility
for his acts, and at length the view becomes prevalent that law
exists for the benefit of society. The individual, in judging
himself and his attitude toward society, feels that the law must be
obeyed because obedience promotes the public welfare. Even when he
believes that a law is unwise, or even unjust, he hesitates to
violate it, not only because he might be punished therefor, but
primarily because it has become wrong, according to his conscience,
to violate a law that has been adopted by the representatives of
his fellow citizens as just and beneficial. Thus the individual,
in later even more than in earlier times, obeys the laws not merely
from selfish, but from social and religious motives.

_Questions for Further Consideration_.

Can you name any modern laws that you think have been framed in the
interests of a special social class?

Do you think that the people of to-day are recreant in their
respect for or adherence to law?

What do you consider to be the value of such institutions as those
at West Point and Annapolis in their influence on the enforcement
of law and discipline?

When we speak of "Government of the people, by the people, and for
the people," whom exactly do we mean by "people"? Does the word
have the same meaning in each of these phrases?

Is it ever right to violate a law of the land? Some people contend
that an individual ought to break a human law, provided that it is
contrary to divine law. What is divine law? Who decides? Shall
the individual decide, or is that the duty of the community? Or of
the clergy? Was it right for the Abolitionists to violate the
provisions of the fugitive slave law? Were this handful of men,
able and conscientious as they were, as likely to be right
regarding the welfare of society as the large majority of citizens
whose representatives had enacted the fugitive slave law? If a
person believes our tariff laws to be unjust, is it right for him
to smuggle goods?

Under what circumstances, if any, is it one's duty to disobey a law
of the state? Would the fact that an individual believed it his
duty to violate the law justify a judge in declining to punish him?
Thoreau declined to pay a tax t