A Letter to Grover Cleveland: An His False Inaugural Address, the Usurpations and Crimes of Lawmakers and Judges, and the Consequent Poverty, Ignorance, and Servitude of the People
A Letter to Grover Cleveland: An His False Inaugural Address, the Usurpations and Crimes of Lawmakers and Judges, and the Consequent Poverty, Ignorance, and Servitude of the People
Lysander Spooner was never interested in polite political disagreement. In this fiery 1885 treatise, he dissects President Grover Cleveland's inaugural address and finds it to be a cathedral of lies. Spooner's central argument remains as audacious now as it was then: governments do not create justice, and laws passed by lawmakers are not automatically righteous simply because they carry the weight of statute. True justice, he argues, exists independent of human authority, immutable and discoverable through reason. Where governments claim to protect the people, Spooner sees something darker: a systematic usurpation of individual rights, where laws serve the interests of the powerful while producing poverty, ignorance, and servitude among the many. This is not a gentle critique of policy. It is a full-frontal assault on the legitimacy of the state itself. For readers willing to have their assumptions about government and freedom genuinely shaken, Spooner's manifesto stands as one of the most uncompromising arguments for individual sovereignty ever written in American letters.
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“And the whole power of the government must be limited to the maintenance of that single principle. And that one principle is justice. There is no other principle that any man can rightfully enforce upon others, or ought to consent to have enforced against himself. Every man claims the protection of this principle for himself, whether he is willing to accord it to others, or not. Yet such is the inconsistency of human nature, that some men”
— Lysander Spooner
“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 beingeverywhere and always the supreme law, it is necessarily everywhere and always the only law.””
— Lysander Spooner
“If A were to go to B, a merchant, and say to him, "Sir, I am a night-watchman, and I insist upon your employing me as such in protecting your property against burglars; and to enable me to do so more effectually, I insist upon your letting me tie your own hands and feet, so that you cannot interfere with me; and also upon your delivering up to me all your keys to your store, your safe, and to all your valuables; and that you authorize me to act solely and fully according to my own will, pleasure, and discretion in the matter; and I demand still further, that you shall give me an absolute guaranty that you will not hold me to any accountability whatever for anything I may do, or for anything that may happen to your goods while they are under my protection; and unless you comply with this proposal, I will now kill you on the spot,"”
— Lysander Spooner
