I have paid no poll tax for six years. I was put into
a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as
I stood considering the walls of solid stone, two or
three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot
thick, and the iron grating which strained the light,
I could not help being struck with the foolishness of
that institution which treated me as if I were mere
flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up. I wondered
that it should have concluded at length that this
was the best use it could put me to, and had never
thought to avail itself of my services in some way. I
saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and
my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to
climb or break through before they could get to be as
free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined,
and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and
mortar. I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had
paid my tax. They plainly did not know how to treat
me, but behaved like persons who are underbred. In
every threat and in every compliment there was a
blunder; for they thought that my chief desire was
to stand the other side of that stone wall. I could
not but smile to see how industriously they locked
the door on my meditations, which followed them out
again without let or hindrance, and they were really
all that was dangerous. As they could not reach me,
they had resolved to punish my body; just as boys,
if they cannot come at some person against whom
they have a spite, will abuse his dog. I saw that
the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a
lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did
not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all
my remaining respect for it, and pitied it.

        -- Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience"