Answer:
The best answer to the question: What does "Civil Disobedience" suggest about the public opinion of tax evasion in Thoreau´s time?, would be, C: If allowed to continue, tax evasion was a serious offense.
Explanation:
It must be first remembered that when Henry David Thoreau wrote his famous essay "The Rights and Duties of the Individual in Relation to Government", which was later known as "Civil Disobedience", the United States was smack in the middle of confrontations with Mexico in the infamous Mexican-American War, to which Thoreau opposed vehemently, as well as to any form of slavery, or imperialism. As such, in his essay Thoreau invites people to place their conscience and doing what is morally right individually, over the rights of government and the principles of the majority. He does not invite to anarchy, or to the destruction of government, but to an individual effort to manage bigger changes in the structures of government. He actually invites people to actively oppose oppression and unjust measures of government through this "civil disobedience", which are small exercises that will eventually limit government power. In order to fulfill his own principle, Thoreau decided to go against one of the main principles in American life, which was, paying taxes to the government. In doing so, he ended up in jail and he was criticized for this because people of his time believed that paying taxes was a basic duty of any citizen and not doing so was considered a serious crime. This is why the answer would be C.
