Lysander Spooner Quotes About Constitution

Quotes about: Constitution

• But 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.

  Lysander Spooner

  Government, Constitution, Cases

  Lysander Spooner (1971). “The collected works of Lysander Spooner”

• And yet we have what purports, or professes, or is claimed, to be a contract—the Constitution—made eighty years ago, by men who are now all dead, and who never had any power to bind us, but which (it is claimed) has nevertheless bound three generations of men, consisting of many millions, and which (it is claimed) will be binding upon all the millions that are to come; but which nobody ever signed, sealed, delivered, witnessed, or acknowledged; and which few persons, compared with the whole number that are claimed to be bound by it, have ever read, or even seen, or ever will read, or see.

  Lysander Spooner

  Men, Years, Numbers

  Lysander Spooner (1971). “The collected works of Lysander Spooner”

• 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.

  Lysander Spooner

  Men, Doe, Constitution

  Lysander Spooner (1973). “No Treason and a Letter to Thomas F. Bayard”

• Our constitutions purport to be established by 'the people,' and, in theory, 'all the people' consent to such government as the constitutions authorize. But this consent of 'the people' exists only in theory. It has no existence in fact. Government is in reality established by the few; and these few assume the consent of all the rest, without any such consent being actually given.

  Lysander Spooner

  Reality, Government, People

  Lysander Spooner (1847). “The unconstitutionality of slavery: including parts first and second”, p.153

• 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.'

  Lysander Spooner

  People, United States, Doe

  Lysander Spooner (1972). “Let's Abolish Government”, Ayer Company Pub

• No man can delegate,... any right of arbitrary dominion over a 3rd person; for that would imply a right in the 1st person, not only to make the 3rd person his slave, but also a right to dispose of him as a slave to still other persons. Any contract to do this is necessarily a criminal one...To call such a contract a “constitution” does not at all lessen its criminality, or add to its validity.

  Lysander Spooner

  Men, Criminals, Doe

• The number who actually consented to the Constitution of the United States, at the first, was very small. Considered as the act of the whole people, the adoption of the Constitution was the merest farce and imposture, binding upon nobody.

  Lysander Spooner

  Numbers, People, Adoption

  Lysander Spooner (1867). “No Treason: No. 1-”

• There is not, in the Constitution, a syllable that implies that persons, born within the territorial limits of the United States, have allegiance imposed upon them on account of their birth in the country, or that they will be judged by any different rule, on the subject of treason, than persons of foreign birth.

  Lysander Spooner

  Country, United States, Different

  Henry Bool, Lysander Spooner, Edwin C. Walker (1972). “Individualist anarchist pamphlets”

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