No Treason, The Constitution of No Authority, Written by Lysander Spooner, Read by Matt Pritchard
Section 1. 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.
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 on 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 anybody 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.
This language is We the people of the United States, that is, the people then existing
in the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, ensure domestic tranquility,
provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings
of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution
for the United States of America.
It is plain in the first place that this language, as an agreement, purports to be only what
it at most really was, that is, a contract between the people then existing and of necessity
binding as a contract only upon those then existing.
In the second place, the language neither expresses nor implies that they had any intention
or desire, nor that they imagined they had any right or power to bind their posterity
to live under it.
It does not say that their posterity will, shall, or must live under it.
It only says, in effect, that their hopes and motives in adopting it were that it might
prove useful to their posterity, as well as to themselves, by promoting their union, safety,
tranquility, liberty, etc.
Suppose an agreement were entered into in this form.
We the people of Boston agree to maintain a fort on Governor's Island to protect ourselves
This agreement, as an agreement, would clearly bind nobody but the people then existing.
Secondly, it would assert no right, power or disposition on their part to compel their
posterity to maintain such a fort.
It would only indicate that the supposed welfare of their posterity was one of the motives
that induced the original parties to enter into this agreement.
When a man says he is building a house for himself in his posterity, he does not mean
to be understood as saying that he has any thought of binding them, nor is it to be inferred
that he is so foolish as to imagine that he has any right or power to bind them to live
in it.
So far as they are concerned, he only means to be understood as saying his hopes and motives
in building it are that they, or at least some of them, may find it for their happiness
to live in it.
When a man says he is planting a tree for himself in his posterity, he does not mean
to be understood as saying that he has any thought of compelling them, nor is it to be
inferred that he is such a simpleton as to imagine that he has any right or power to
compel them to eat the fruit.
So far as they are concerned, he only means to say that his hopes and motives in planting
the tree are that its fruit may be agreeable to them.
So it was with those who originally adopted the Constitution.
Whatever may have been their personal intentions, the legal meaning of their language, so far
as their posterity was concerned, simply was that their hopes and motives in entering into
the agreement were that it might prove useful and acceptable to their posterity, that it
might promote their union, safety, tranquility, and welfare, and that it might tend to secure
to them the blessings of liberty.
The language does not assert nor at all imply any right, power, or disposition on the part
of the original parties to the agreement to compel their posterity to live under it.
If they had intended to bind their posterity to live under it, they should have said that
their objective 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.
It cannot be said that the Constitution formed the people of the United States for all time
into a corporation.
It does not speak of the people as a corporation, but as individuals.
A corporation does not describe itself as we, nor as people, nor as ourselves, nor does
a corporation, in legal language, have any posterity.
It supposes itself to have and speaks of itself as having perpetual existence as a single
individuality.
Moreover, no body of men, existing at any one time, have the power to create a perpetual corporation.
A corporation can become practically perpetual only by the voluntary accession of new members, as the old ones die off.
But for this voluntary accession of new members, the corporation necessarily dies with the death of those who originally composed it.
Legally speaking, therefore, there is in the Constitution nothing that professes or attempts to bind the posterity of those who established it.
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.
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.