How does Thoreau use rhetorical questions in his argument in "Civil Disobedience"?

Among other rhetorical devices, Henry David Thoreau makes extensive use of rhetorical questions to further his argument in "Civil Disobedience."  For example, in the second paragraph of the essay, Throeau asks:

This American government- what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity?

This passage highlights a difference that Thoreau identifies between the aims of "American government" not to...

Among other rhetorical devices, Henry David Thoreau makes extensive use of rhetorical questions to further his argument in "Civil Disobedience."  For example, in the second paragraph of the essay, Throeau asks:

This American government- what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity?

This passage highlights a difference that Thoreau identifies between the aims of "American government" not to become "[]impaired" through history and its actual practice which "each instant" impairs "some of its integrity." By setting up this distinction, he sets the stage for his analysis in the paragraph that follows of America's failings.

Several paragraphs later, Thoreau addresses the issue of majority rule and asks a sequence of rhetorical questions:

Can there not be a government in which 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 legislation? Why has every man a conscience, then?

Again, the goal is to point out the difference between the professed aims of government and its actual practice.  Pointing out that "conscience," which ought to guide the "majorities" does not articulate itself in "legislation."  Thus, majority rule fails because of the mediation of the legislative apparatus.

Finally, when honing in on Northern hypocrisy regarding slavery in America, Thoreau inquires:

What is the price-current of an honest man and patriot today?

This question both alludes to the practice of slavery--trafficking in human ownership--through the figure of "the price-current of an honest man" and implies that there are scarcely any "honest [men]" and "patriot[s]" in his antebellum America.  Just like the two other rhetorical questions, Thoreau uses this one to highlight the distance between ideals and reality.