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Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
And your law, -- is it just?
As just for you as it was for us. We wrought for others under this law, and got our lands so.
I repeat the question, Is your law just?
Not quite just, but necessary. Moreover, it is juster now than it was when we were born; we have made it milder and more equal.
I will none of your law, returns the youth; it encumbers me. I cannot understand, or so much as spare time to read that needless library of your laws. Nature has sufficiently provided me with rewards and sharp penalties, to bind me not to transgress. Like the Persian noble of old, I ask "that I may neither command nor obey." I do not wish to enter into your complex social system. I shall serve those whom I can, and they who can will serve me. I shall seek those whom I love, and shun those whom I love not, and what more can all your laws render me?
With equal earnestness and good faith, replies to this plaintiff an upholder of the establishment, a man of many virtues:
Your opposition is feather-brained and overfine. Young man, I have no skill to talk with you, but look at me; I have risen early and sat late, and toiled honestly, and painfully for very many years. I never dreamed about methods; I laid my bones to, and drudged for the good I possess; it was not got by fraud, nor by luck, but by work, and you must show me a warrant like these stubborn facts in your own fidelity and labor, before I suffer you, on the faith of a few fine words, to ride into my estate, and claim to scatter it as your own.
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