No Treason

Summary

No Treason is a series of pamphlets that Lysander Spooner, a Boston lawyer and long-time abolitionist, published at his own expense after the Civil War. He planned a longer series but issued only three numbers, No. I and No. II in 1867 and No. VI, The Constitution of No Authority, in 1870; Nos. III to V never appeared, and the library text contains all three published numbers. No. I opens by insisting that the question of treason is separate from the question of slavery. Spooner argues that the North fought on the principle that men may rightly be compelled to support a government they do not want, and that this principle, if established, makes every unwilling subject a kind of slave. He then asks what a government's resting on consent really implies. Neither the consent of the strongest party nor of the most numerous party is enough, he says in seven numbered points, because a majority has no more natural right over a minority than one man over two. The only consistent meaning is the separate consent of each individual who is asked to pay or serve, and that, he contends, was the principle of 1776, when the colonists were called traitors by George III but broke faith with no one. No. II reads the Constitution itself. Its preamble speaks for 'the people', which Spooner treats as a contract binding only those who actually agreed to it, and only for as long as they chose. Treason in its true sense means betrayal, the breach of a trust, so open enemies who give fair warning, like the Southern states, cannot be traitors; Benedict Arnold is his example of a real one. No. VI is the longest and best known. It argues that the Constitution has no authority except as a contract, that its signers are long dead, and that voting and paying taxes do not prove consent, since a man may vote in self-defence and pays taxes under threat. He likens the tax collector to a highwayman who at least takes responsibility for his act, argues that the secret ballot leaves officeholders unable to name their principals, and denies that oaths of office or public debts bind anyone who did not personally agree to them. An appendix concludes that whatever the Constitution means, it has either authorized the government Americans have had or been powerless to prevent it.

Top Lessons

• What consent means

  Spooner presses the phrase 'government by consent' as far as it will go and concludes that only the individual consent of each person who pays or serves can satisfy it. Whether or not readers accept his conclusion, the argument forces a careful definition of a word Americans use constantly. It also shows how much the classical liberal tradition depends on the idea of agreement.

• Treason as betrayal

  No. II argues that treason, in its ordinary sense, means breach of faith, so an open enemy who gives fair warning is not a traitor. Spooner uses Benedict Arnold and the patriots of 1776 to make the distinction concrete. The argument shows how a lawyer reasons from the plain meaning of words.

• Reasoning from contract

  No. VI treats the Constitution as a contract and applies ordinary rules of contract law: parties must be competent, must actually agree, and must sign; contracts do not bind heirs who never agreed. The method is consistent and lawyerly, and its strength and its limits both lie in whether a political community is really like a private agreement.

• Taxation and responsibility

  Spooner's comparison of the tax collector with the highwayman is deliberately provocative: the highwayman, he says, at least acts openly and alone, while the government acts through agents whose principals are hidden by the secret ballot. The passage illustrates his concern for personal responsibility in public acts.

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Medical Lens

A legal and political argument with no medical subject matter.