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Lysander Spooner's discontentment with the Constitution of the United States led him to publish No Treason, which revises significant parts of that document to reduce the power of the state versus individuals. The author was an anti-authoritarian philosopher and legal theorist who had spent his earlier life vigorously campaigning against slavery. Following the American Civil War however, he became horrified at the brutality and carnage that had been unleashed. Redoubling his criticisms, Spooner asserts his dismay that the U.S. government was rendered inert by its Constitution - slavery was only abolished after a long and bloody war, whereas had it been forbade at the outset, no such conflict would have arisen. A strong proponent of natural law - the concept that all humans had rights endowed at the point of their birth - Spooner had a sense of revulsion at how American politics had ensued in the early-to-mid 19th century.

"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

The Making of the Modern Law: Legal Treatises, 1800-1926 includes over 20,000 analytical, theoretical and practical works on American and British Law. It includes the writings of major legal theorists, including Sir Edward Coke, Sir William Blackstone, James Fitzjames Stephen, Frederic William Maitland, John Marshall, Joseph Story, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and Roscoe Pound, among others. Legal Treatises includes casebooks, local practice manuals, form books, works for lay readers, pamphlets, letters, speeches and other works of the most influential writers of their time. It is of great value to researchers of domestic and international law, government and politics, legal history, business and economics, criminology and much more.++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++Harvard Law School Libraryocm11957687Part first.Boston: A. Williams, 1882. 20 p.; 22 cm.

What is the motive to the secret ballot? This, and only this: Like other confederates in crime, those who use it are not friends, but enemies; and they are afraid to be known, and to have their individual doings known, even to each other. They can contrive to bring about a sufficient understanding to enable them to act in concert against other persons; but beyond this they have no confidence, and no friendship, among themselves.

In the midst of this endless variety of opinion, what man, or what body of men, has the right to say, in regard to any particular action, or course of action, "we have tried this experiment, and determined every question involved in it? We have determined it, not only for ourselves, but for all others? And, as to all those who are weaker than we, we will coerce them to act in obedience to our conclusions? We will suffer no further experiment or inquiry by any one, and, consequently, no further acquisition of knowledge by anybody?"

2010 Reprint of the original 1870 edition. Paperback 55pp. Lysander Spooner (January 19, 1808 - May 14, 1887) was an American anarchist, entrepreneur, political philosopher, abolitionist, supporter of the labor movement, and legal theorist of the nineteenth century. He is also known for competing with the U.S. Post Office with his American Letter Mail Company, which was forced out of business by the United States government. He has been identified by some contemporary writers as an anarcho-capitalist, while other writers and activists are convinced by his advocacy of self-employment over working for an employer for wages, that he was an anti-capitalist or a socialist, notwithstanding his support for private ownership of the means of production and a free-market economy. No Treason has it origins in The Union government's actions during the Civil War. In response, Spooner published one of his most famous political tracts, No Treason. In this lengthy essay, Spooner argued that the Constitution was a contract of government which had been irreparably violated during the war and was thus void. Furthermore, since the government now existing under the Constitution pursued coercive policies that were contrary to the Natural Law and to the consent of the governed, it had been demonstrated that document was unable to adequately stop many abuses against liberty or to prevent tyranny from taking hold. Spooner bolstered his argument by noting that the Federal government, as established by a legal contract, could not legally bind all persons living in the nation since none had ever signed their names or given their consent to it - that consent had always been assumed, which fails the most basic burdens of proof for a valid contract in the courtroom. Spooner widely circulated the No Treason pamphlets, which also contained a legal defense against the crime of treason itself intended for former Confederate soldiers (hence the name of the pamphlet, arguing that "no treason" had been committed in the war by the south). These excerpts were published in DeBow's Review and some other well known southern periodicals of the time.

What is the motive to the secret ballot? This, and only this: Like other confederates in crime, those who use it are not friends, but enemies; and they are afraid to be known, and to have their individual doings known, even to each other. They can contrive to bring about a sufficient understanding to enable them to act in concert against other persons; but beyond this they have no confidence, and no friendship, among themselves.