We are Men First, We are Men Last. The Light of Any Society, is connected to Conscience. Each Individual Matters, Or None at All. I believe in the need of a standing army in a Society that stands on Principle, though few do. I believe War to be more towards the Last Resort, rather than the First, and that once started, not ended before It's proper time. There I depart from Thoreau. There are times when War is Necessary in an imperfect world, less We were All Slaves, to the cruelest among us.
After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest.
But a government in which the majority rule in all cases can not be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a government in which the majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience? — in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation on conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience.
Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents on injustice. A common and natural result of an undue respect for the law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power? Visit the Navy Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts — a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniment, though it may be,
"Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O'er the grave where out hero was buried."
The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgement or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. - Henry David Thoreau.
Henry David Thoreau: On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
, took over just about everything from everyone that was previously there. In so doing they imposed their culture, their laws (important bit) and their political will on the landmass of the eastern United States as we now know it. English law - I think this is right - was implemented in the colonies. English law is heavily influenced by common law. While contemporary US law tips its hat towards English common law in many ways that has been superseded by US law. But back to the colonies. English common law goes back to the times post-Roman settlement in Britain. As you would be aware when the Romans settled Britain they brought with them their sophisticated system of laws which they imposed on the Britons. Britain became Romanised for about three hundred years. When the Romans left Britain they left behind a Romanised Britain. And then the invasions started. 
