No Treason : The Constitution of No Authority

By Spooner, Lysander

Book Id: WPLBN0000624942
Format Type: PDF eBook:
File Size: 0.5 MB
Reproduction Date: 2005

Title:	No Treason : The Constitution of No Authority
Author:	Spooner, Lysander
Volume:
Language:	English
Subject:	Literature, Literature & thought, Writing.
Collections:	Classic Literature Collection, Blackmask Online Collection
Historic Publication Date:
Publisher:	Blackmask Online


Citation APA MLA Chicago Spooner, B. L. (n.d.). No Treason : The Constitution of No Authority. Retrieved from https://self.gutenberg.org/

Description
Excerpt: Chapter One. The Constitution has no inherent authority or obligation. It has no authority or obligation at all, unless as a contract between man and man. And it does not so much as even purport to be a contract between persons now existing. It purports, at most, to be only a contract between persons living eighty years ago. [This essay was written in 1869.] And it can be supposed to have been a contract then only between persons who had already come to years of discretion, so as to be competent to make reasonable and obligatory contracts. Furthermore, we know, historically, that only a small portion even of the people then existing were consulted on the subject, or asked, or permitted to express either their consent or dissent in any formal manner. Those persons, if any, who did give their consent formally, are all dead now. Most of them have been dead forty, fifty, sixty, or seventy years. AND 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. It is not only plainly impossible, in the nature of things, that they COULD bind their posterity, but they did not even attempt to bind them. That is to say, the instrument does not purport to be an agreement between any body but ?the people? THEN existing; nor does it, either expressly or impliedly, assert any right, power, or disposition, on their part, to bind anybody but themselves. Let us see. Its language is.

Table of Contents
Table of Contents: No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority, 1 -- Lysander Spooner, 1 -- Chapter 1, 1 -- Chapter 2, 3 -- Chapter 3, 6 -- Chapter 4, 8 -- Chapter 5, 9 -- Chapter 6, 10 -- Chapter 7, 12 -- Chapter 8, 12 -- Chapter 9, 14 -- Chapter 10, 14 -- Chapter 11, 15 -- Chapter 12, 17 -- Chapter 13, 18 -- Chapter 14, 18 -- Chapter 15, 19 -- Chapter 16, 19 -- Chapter 17, 20 -- Chapter 18, 21 -- Chapter 19, 24 -- Appendix, 27