Thoreau points out numerous negative features of the US democratic system. One of its key problems is that, through representative democracy, a few individuals (state and national legislators) make decisions on behalf of others. The government is “the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will.” The American people have thereby given up much of their rights and responsibilities in carrying out governance. This allows a few people to exercise their preferences without requesting further permission, as in the case of the Mexican War, which he sees as “the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool.” As he advocates for minimal government, he claims that American people would have accomplished even more than they have if the government did not get in the way of popular will.

The consequences of democratic government include the possibility—even the likelihood—that the majority of citizens will be wrong. This theme is closely related to the idea of injustice as perpetrated by laws, but Thoreau raises significantly different points. In contrast to his dissection of the merits of individual laws, here Thoreau argues against the underlying principle of majority rule. The fact that a large number of people supports an idea, he states, does not necessarily make that idea correct. For individuals to come together so that they constitute a majority is rendered more difficult when society blindly follows what any majority has already ordained.

Thoreau uses this line of argument to show how slavery might be overturned. His argument is not based in the existing constitutional right to petition the government, through which any individual could attempt to influence their representative (the person involved in making and changing the laws). Thoreau’s point is that a majority is composed of individuals who can practice direct democracy and thus have a combined, cumulative effect. One man, then ten, a hundred, and a thousand men could come together and give up slaveholding. Their individual actions, when taken together, could form a new majority and cause “the abolition of slavery in America.”