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A LETTER
TO
GROVER CLEVELAND,
ON
HIS FALSE INAUGURAL ADDRESS, THE USURPATIONS AND
CRIMES OF LAWMAKERS AND JUDGES, AND THE
CONSEQUENT POVERTY, IGNORANCE, AND
SERVITUDE OF THE PEOPLE.
BY
LYSANDER SPOONER.
BOSTON:
BENJ. R. TUCKER, PUBLISHER.
1886.
The author reserves his copyright in this letter.
First pamphlet edition published in July, 1886.[1]
[1] Under a somewhat different title, to wit, "_A Letter to
Grover Cleveland, on his False, Absurd, If-contradictory, and
Ridiculous Inaugural Address_," this letter was first published,
in instalments, "LIBERTY" (a paper published in Boston); the
instalments commencing June 20, 1885, and continuing to May 22,
1886: notice being given, in each paper, of the reservation of
copyright.
A LETTER TO GROVER CLEVELAND.
SECTION I.
_To Grover Cleveland_:
SIR,--Your inaugural address is probably as honest, sensible, and
consistent a one as that of any president within the last fifty years,
or, perhaps, as any since the foundation of the government. If,
therefore, it is false, absurd, self-contradictory, and ridiculous, it
is not (as I think) because you are personally less honest, sensible, or
consistent than your predecessors, but because the government
itself--according to your own description of it, and according to the
practical administration of it for nearly a hundred years--is an utterly
and palpably false, absurd, and criminal one. Such praises as you bestow
upon it are, therefore, necessarily false, absurd, and ridiculous.
Thus you describe it as "a government pledged to do equal and exact
justice to all men."
Did you stop to think what that means? Evidently you did not; for
nearly, or quite, all the rest of your address is in direct
contradiction to it.
Let me then remind you that justice is an immutable, natural principle;
and not anything that can be made, unmade, or altered by any human
power.
It is also a subject of science, and is to be learned, like mathematics,
or any other science. It does not derive its authority from the
commands, will, pleasure, or discretion of any possible combination of
men, whether calling themselves a government, or by any other name.
It is also, at all times, and in all places, the supreme law. And being
everywhere and always the supreme law, it is necessarily everywhere and
always the only law.
Lawmakers, as they call themselves, can add nothing to it, nor take
anything from it. Therefore all their laws, as they call them,--that is,
all the laws of their own making,--have no color of authority or
obligation. It is a falsehood to call them laws; for there is nothing in
them that either creates men's duties or rights, or enlightens them as
to their duties or rights. There is consequently nothing binding or
obligatory about them. And nobody is bound to take the least notice of
them, unless it be to trample them under foot, as usurpations. If they
command men to do justice, they add nothing to men's obligation to do
it, or to any man's right to enforce it. They are therefore mere idle
wind, such as would be commands to consider the day as day, and the
night as night. If they command or license any man to do injustice, they
are criminal on their face. If they command any man to do anything which
justice does not require him to do, they are simple, naked usurpations
and tyrannies. If they forbid any man to do anything, which justice
would permit him to do, they are criminal invasions of his natural and
rightful liberty. In whatever light, therefore, they are viewed, they
are utterly destitute of everything like authority or obligation. They
are all necessarily either the impudent, fraudulent, and criminal
usurpations of tyrants, robbers, and murderers, or the senseless work of
ignorant or thoughtless men, who do not know, or certainly do not
realize, what they are doing.
This science of justice, or natural law, is the only science that tells
us what are, and what are not, each man's natural, inherent,
inalienable, _individual_ rights, as against any and all other men. And
to say that any, or all, other men may rightfully compel him to obey any
or all such other laws as they may see fit to _make_, is to say that he
has no rights of his own, but is their subject, their property, and
their slave.
For the reasons now given, the simple maintenance of justice, or natural
law, is plainly the one only purpose for which any coercive power--or
anything bearing the name of government--has a right to exist.
It is intrinsically just as false, absurd, ludicrous, and ridiculous to
say that lawmakers, so-called, can invent and make any laws, _of their
own_, authoritatively fixing, or declaring, the rights of individuals,
or that shall be in any manner authoritative or obligatory upon
individuals, or that individuals may rightfully be compelled to obey, as
it would be to say that they can invent and make such mathematics,
chemistry, physiology, or other sciences, as they see fit, and
rightfully compel individuals to conform all their actions to them,
instead of conforming them to the mathematics, chemistry, physiology, or
other sciences of nature.
Lawmakers, as they call themselves, might just as well claim the right
to abolish, by statute, the natural law of gravitation, the natural laws
of light, heat, and electricity, and all the other natural laws of
matter and mind, and institute laws of their own in the place of them,
and compel conformity to them, as to claim the right to set aside the
natural law of justice, and compel obedience to such other laws as they
may see fit to manufacture, and set up in its stead.
Let me now ask you how you imagine that your so-called lawmakers can "do
equal and exact justice to all men," by any so-called laws of their own
making. If their laws command anything but justice, or forbid anything
but injustice, they are themselves unjust and criminal. If they simply
command justice, and forbid injustice, they add nothing to the natural
authority of justice, or to men's obligation to obey it. It is,
therefore, a simple impertinence, and sheer impudence, on their part, to
assume that _their_ commands, _as such_, are of any authority whatever.
It is also sheer impudence, on their part, to assume that their commands
are at all necessary to teach other men what is, and what is not,
justice. The science of justice is as open to be learned by all other
men, as by themselves; and it is, in general, so simple and easy to be
learned, that there is no need of, and no place for, any man, or body of
men, to teach it, declare it, or command it, on their own authority.
For one, or another, of these reasons, therefore, each and every law,
so-called, that forty-eight different congresses have presumed to make,
within the last ninety-six years, have been utterly destitute of all
legitimate authority. That is to say, they have either been criminal, as
commanding or licensing men to do what justice forbade them to do, or as
forbidding them to do what justice would have permitted them to do; or
else they have been superfluous, as adding nothing to men's knowledge of
justice, or to their obligation to do justice, or abstain from
injustice.
What excuse, then, have you for attempting to enforce upon the people
that great mass of superfluous or criminal laws (so-called) which
ignorant and foolish, or impudent and criminal, men have, for so many
years, been manufacturing, and promulgating, and enforcing, in violation
of justice, and of all men's natural, inherent, and inalienable rights?