Lysander Spooner
American individualist anarchist and legal theorist (1808 to 1887); author of No Treason.
Lysander Spooner did not write this page.
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Our reading
So far as the Constitution was a contract, it died with its makers and cannot bind their children
Their wordsAnd the Constitution, so far as it was their contract, died with them. They had no natural power or right to make it obligatory upon their children.
↗No Treason, No. VI: The Constitution of No Authority (1870)gutenberg.org All 16 from this book
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Our reading
If later generations are bound by the Constitution, they are slaves of their dead grandfathers
Their wordsIf they had intended to bind their posterity to live under it, they should have said that their object was, not "to secure to them the blessings of liberty," but to make slaves of them; for if their "posterity" are bound to live under it, they are nothing less than the slaves of their foolish, tyrannical, and dead grandfathers.
↗No Treason, No. VI: The Constitution of No Authority (1870)gutenberg.org All 16 from this book
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Their wordsLegally speaking, therefore, the act of voting utterly fails to pledge any one to support the government. It utterly fails to prove that the government rests upon the voluntary support of anybody.
↗No Treason, No. VI: The Constitution of No Authority (1870)gutenberg.org All 16 from this book
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Their wordsIn short, men's voluntary support of the Constitution is doubtless, in most cases, wholly contingent upon the question whether, by means of the Constitution, they can make themselves masters, or are to be made slaves. Such contingent consent as that is, in law and reason, no consent at all.
↗No Treason, No. VI: The Constitution of No Authority (1870)gutenberg.org All 16 from this book
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Their wordsThe fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: "Your money, or your life." And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat.
↗No Treason, No. VI: The Constitution of No Authority (1870)gutenberg.org All 16 from this book
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Their wordsThat no government, so called, can reasonably be trusted for a moment, or reasonably be supposed to have honest purposes in view, any longer than it depends wholly upon voluntary support.
↗No Treason, No. VI: The Constitution of No Authority (1870)gutenberg.org All 16 from this book
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Their wordsIt is a general principle of law and reason, that a written instrument binds no one until he has signed it.
↗No Treason, No. VI: The Constitution of No Authority (1870)gutenberg.org All 16 from this book
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Their wordsA man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years. Neither are a people any the less slaves because permitted periodically to choose new masters.
↗No Treason, No. VI: The Constitution of No Authority (1870)gutenberg.org All 16 from this book
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Their wordsIt is, to all moral intents and purposes, as destitute of obligation as the compacts which robbers and thieves and pirates enter into with each other, but never sign.
↗No Treason, No. VI: The Constitution of No Authority (1870)gutenberg.org All 16 from this book
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Their wordsThe secret ballot makes a secret government; and a secret government is a secret band of robbers and murderers. Open despotism is better than this.
↗No Treason, No. VI: The Constitution of No Authority (1870)gutenberg.org All 16 from this book
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Their wordsOn general principles of law and reason, the oaths which these pretended agents of the people take "to support the Constitution," are of no validity or obligation.
↗No Treason, No. VI: The Constitution of No Authority (1870)gutenberg.org All 16 from this book
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Their wordsFinally, if these debts had been created for the most innocent and honest purposes, and in the most open and honest manner, by the real parties to the contracts, these parties could thereby have bound nobody but themselves, and no property but their own.
↗No Treason, No. VI: The Constitution of No Authority (1870)gutenberg.org All 16 from this book
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Their wordsAs a necessary consequence, those who stand ready to furnish this money, are the real rulers.
↗No Treason, No. VI: The Constitution of No Authority (1870)gutenberg.org All 16 from this book
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Their wordsThere was no difference of principle—but only of degree—between the slavery they boast they have abolished, and the slavery they were fighting to preserve; for all restraints upon men's natural liberty, not necessary for the simple maintenance of justice, are of the nature of slavery, and differ from each other only in degree.
↗No Treason, No. VI: The Constitution of No Authority (1870)gutenberg.org All 16 from this book
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Their wordsThe only idea they have ever manifested as to what is a government of consent, is this—that it is one to which everybody must consent, or be shot.
↗No Treason, No. VI: The Constitution of No Authority (1870)gutenberg.org All 16 from this book
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Our reading
The Constitution either authorized this government or could not prevent it, so it is unfit to exist
Their wordsBut whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain—that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.
↗No Treason, No. VI: The Constitution of No Authority (1870)gutenberg.org All 16 from this book