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NOTE Section I

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No Treason, The Constitution of No Authority, Written by Lysander Spooner, Read by Matt Pritchard

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Section 1. The Constitution has no inherent authority or obligation.

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It has no authority or obligation at all, unless as a contract between man and man.

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And it does not so much as even purport to be a contract between persons now existing.

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It purports, at most, to be only a contract between persons living eighty years ago.

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And it can be supposed to have been a contract then only between persons who had already come to years of discretion,

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so as to be competent to make reasonable and obligatory contracts.

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Furthermore, we know historically that only a small portion even of the people then existing were consulted on the subject,

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or asked or permitted to express either their consent or dissent in any formal manner.

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Those persons, if any, who did give their consent formally are all dead now.

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Most of them have been dead forty, fifty, sixty or seventy years, and the Constitution,

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so far as it was their contract, died with them.

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They had no natural power or right to make it obligatory on their children.

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It is not only plainly impossible in the nature of things that they could bind their posterity,

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but they did not even attempt to bind them.

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That is to say, the instrument does not purport to be an agreement between anybody but the

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people then existing, nor does it either expressly or impliedly assert any right, power, or disposition

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on their part to bind anybody but themselves.

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Let us see.

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This language is We the people of the United States, that is, the people then existing

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in the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, ensure domestic tranquility,

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provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings

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of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution

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for the United States of America.

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It is plain in the first place that this language, as an agreement, purports to be only what

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it at most really was, that is, a contract between the people then existing and of necessity

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binding as a contract only upon those then existing.

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In the second place, the language neither expresses nor implies that they had any intention

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or desire, nor that they imagined they had any right or power to bind their posterity

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to live under it.

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It does not say that their posterity will, shall, or must live under it.

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It only says, in effect, that their hopes and motives in adopting it were that it might

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prove useful to their posterity, as well as to themselves, by promoting their union, safety,

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tranquility, liberty, etc.

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Suppose an agreement were entered into in this form.

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We the people of Boston agree to maintain a fort on Governor's Island to protect ourselves

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This agreement, as an agreement, would clearly bind nobody but the people then existing.

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Secondly, it would assert no right, power or disposition on their part to compel their

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posterity to maintain such a fort.

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It would only indicate that the supposed welfare of their posterity was one of the motives

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that induced the original parties to enter into this agreement.

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When a man says he is building a house for himself in his posterity, he does not mean

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to be understood as saying that he has any thought of binding them, nor is it to be inferred

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that he is so foolish as to imagine that he has any right or power to bind them to live

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in it.

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So far as they are concerned, he only means to be understood as saying his hopes and motives

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in building it are that they, or at least some of them, may find it for their happiness

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to live in it.

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When a man says he is planting a tree for himself in his posterity, he does not mean

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to be understood as saying that he has any thought of compelling them, nor is it to be

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inferred that he is such a simpleton as to imagine that he has any right or power to

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compel them to eat the fruit.

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So far as they are concerned, he only means to say that his hopes and motives in planting

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the tree are that its fruit may be agreeable to them.

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So it was with those who originally adopted the Constitution.

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Whatever may have been their personal intentions, the legal meaning of their language, so far

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as their posterity was concerned, simply was that their hopes and motives in entering into

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the agreement were that it might prove useful and acceptable to their posterity, that it

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might promote their union, safety, tranquility, and welfare, and that it might tend to secure

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to them the blessings of liberty.

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The language does not assert nor at all imply any right, power, or disposition on the part

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of the original parties to the agreement to compel their posterity to live under it.

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If they had intended to bind their posterity to live under it, they should have said that

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their objective was not to secure to them the blessings of liberty, but to make slaves

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of them, for if their posterity are bound to live under it, they are nothing less than

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the slaves of their foolish, tyrannical, and dead grandfathers.

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It cannot be said that the Constitution formed the people of the United States for all time

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into a corporation.

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It does not speak of the people as a corporation, but as individuals.

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A corporation does not describe itself as we, nor as people, nor as ourselves, nor does

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a corporation, in legal language, have any posterity.

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It supposes itself to have and speaks of itself as having perpetual existence as a single

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individuality.

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Moreover, no body of men, existing at any one time, have the power to create a perpetual corporation.

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A corporation can become practically perpetual only by the voluntary accession of new members, as the old ones die off.

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But for this voluntary accession of new members, the corporation necessarily dies with the death of those who originally composed it.

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Legally speaking, therefore, there is in the Constitution nothing that professes or attempts to bind the posterity of those who established it.

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If, then, those who established the Constitution had no power to bind and did not attempt to bind their posterity, the question arises whether their posterity have bound themselves.

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If they have done so, they can have done so only in one or both of these two ways, that is, by voting and paying taxes.