Section 6 It is no exaggeration but a literal truth to say that by the Constitution, not as I interpret it, but as it is interpreted by those who pretend to administer it, the properties, liberties, and lives of the entire people of the United States are surrendered unreservedly into the hands of men who, it is provided by the Constitution itself, shall never be questioned as to any disposal they make of them.
Thus, the Constitution, Article 1, Section 6, provides that, for any speech or debate
or vote, in either house they, the senators and representatives, shall not be questioned
in any other place.
The whole law-making power is given to these senators and representatives, when acting
by a two-thirds vote, and this provision protects them from all responsibility for the laws
they make.
The Constitution also enables them to secure the execution of all their laws by giving
them power to withhold the salaries of and to impeach and remove all judicial and executive
officers who refuse to execute them.
Thus, the whole power of the government is in their hands, and they are made utterly
irresponsible for the use they make of it.
What is this but absolute, irresponsible power?
It is no answer to this view of the case to say that these men are under oath to use their
Neither is it any answer to this view of the case to say that the particular individuals
holding this power can be changed once in two or six years, for the power of each set
of Men is absolute during the term for which they hold it.
And when they can hold it no longer, they are succeeded only by men whose power will
be equally absolute and irresponsible.
Neither is it any answer to this view of the case to say that the men holding this absolute
irresponsible power must be men chosen by the people, or portions of them, to hold it.
A man is nonetheless a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term
What makes them slaves is the fact that they now are and are always hereafter to be in
the hands of men whose power over them is and always is to be absolute and irresponsible.
The right of absolute and irresponsible dominion is the right of property, and the right of
of Property is the right of absolute irresponsible dominion.
The two are identical, the one necessarily implying the other.
Neither can exist without the other.
If therefore Congress have that absolute and irresponsible law-making power which the Constitution,
according to their interpretation of it, gives them, it can only be because they own us as
property.
If they own us as property, they are our masters, and their will is our law.
If they do not own us as property, they are not our masters, and their will as such is
of no authority over us.
But these men who claim and exercise this absolute and irresponsible dominion over us
dare not be consistent and claim either to be our masters or to own us as property.
They say they are only our servants, agents, attorneys and representatives, but this declaration
involves an absurdity, a contradiction.
No man can be my servant, agent, attorney or representative and be at the same time
uncontrollable by me and irresponsible to me for his acts.
It is of no importance that I appointed him and put all the power in his hands.
If I made him uncontrollable by me and irresponsible to me, he is no longer my servant, agent,
attorney, or representative.
If I gave him absolute irresponsible power over my property, I gave him the property.
If I gave him absolute irresponsible power over myself, I made him my master and gave
myself to him as a slave, and it is of no importance whether I call him master or servant,
If a man is my servant, agent, or attorney, I necessarily make myself responsible for all
All his acts done within the limits of the power I have entrusted to him.
If I have entrusted him, as my agent, with either absolute power, or any power at all,
over the persons or properties of other men than myself, I thereby necessarily make myself
responsible to those other persons for any injuries he may do them, so long as he acts
within the limits of the power I have granted him.
But no individual who may be injured in his person or property by acts of Congress can
can come to the individual electors and hold them responsible for these acts of their so-called
agents or representatives.
This fact proves that these pretended agents of the people, of everybody, are really the
agents of nobody.
If then, nobody is individually responsible for the acts of Congress, the members of Congress
are nobody's agents.
And if they are nobody's agents, they are themselves individually responsible for their
and for the acts of all whom they employ and the authority they are exercising is simply their own individual authority and by the law of nature the highest of all laws anybody injured by their acts anybody who is deprived by them of his property or his liberty has the same right to hold them individually responsible that he has to hold any other trespasser individually responsible he has the same right to resist them and their
There are agents that he has to resist any other trespassers.