University of Virginia Library

Metaphor For Liberalism

No, of course not. For Thoreau
revised the Jeffersonian dictum to
say: "That government is best
which governs not at all."
Government, Thoreau adds, is but
"an expedient by which men would
fain succeed in letting one another
alone."

Thoreau is thus a metaphor for
the heart of the old, classical
liberalism itself: of government
which constitutionally protects an
individual from the consciences of
ebullient men, government of men
who find their ethical life not in the
state but in their own houses - and
in their huts on Walden Pond.

But this lovely thought is only a
half-truth, and too much a dream
within our real life.

For we are not Thoreau: we
cannot call our citizens, as Thoreau
did, "a distinct race from me by
their principles and prejudices."
And we cannot say - or ought not
properly say, as did Thoreau - that
on one of the "highest hills"
around Concord, "the State was
nowhere to be seen" or "long as a
man is thought-free, fancy-free,
imagination-free," the state is then
"not seen."