Civil Disobediance

          Both "Gandhi's review of Civil Disobedience" and "Walden", were inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson. They both had a calm tone to them. Neither Gandhi or Thoreau supported the way the government oppressed the people such as 114-118 in Civil Disobedience, Thoreau had mentioned "Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. The proper place today, the only place which Massachusetts has provided for her freer and less desponding spirits, is in her prisons, to be put out and locked out of the State by her own act, as they have already put themselves out by their principles." Here he is basically saying that prison is not a place of punishment, but a place to rest and think.
          Thoreau has been arrested for, refusing to pay their poll tax, as stated in Civil Disobedience 144-149 "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." In this state of mind being thrown in jail was pointless.