No Treason,
no. 1, was first printed in 1867, just after the American Civil War
The question of treason
is distinct from that of slavery, and it is the same that it would have been
if free states, instead of slave states, had seceded.
On the part of the North,
the war was carried on not to liberate the slaves,
but by a government that had always perverted and violated the Constitution to keep the slaves in bondage,
and was still willing to do so if the slaveholders could be thereby induced
to stay in the Union.
The principle on which
the war was waged by the North was simply this: that men
may rightfully be compelled to submit to and support a government that they
do not want, and that resistance on their part makes them traitors and
criminals.
No principle that is
possible to be named can be more self-evidently false than this nor more self-evidently fatal to all political freedom.
Yet it triumphed in the field, and is now assumed to be established. If it be
really established, the number of slaves, instead of having been diminished
by the war, has been greatly increased; for a man thus subjected to a
government that he does not want is a slave.
And there is no
difference, in principle — but only in degree — between political and chattel
slavery. The former, no less than the latter, denies a man's ownership of
himself and the products of his labor, and asserts that other men may own him
and dispose of him and his property for their uses and at their pleasure.
Previous to the war,
there were some grounds for saying that — in theory, at least, if not in practice
— our government was a free one — that it rested on consent. But nothing of
that kind can be said now, if the principle on which the war was carried on
by the North is irrevocably established.
If that principle be not
the principle of the Constitution, the fact should be known. If it be the
principle of the Constitution, the Constitution itself should be at once
overthrown.
The Nature of Our Government
Notwithstanding all the
proclamations we have made to mankind within the last 90 years — that our government
rested on consent, and that that was the only rightful basis on which any
government could rest — the late war has practically demonstrated that our
government rests upon force: as much so as any government that ever existed.
The North has thus virtually
said to the world, "It was all very well to prate of consent, so long as
the objects to be accomplished were to liberate ourselves from our connection
with England, and also to coax a scattered and jealous people into a great
national union. But now that those purposes have been accomplished, and the
power of the North has become consolidated, it is sufficient for us — as for
all governments — simply to say, Our power is our right."
In proportion to her
wealth and population, the North has probably expended more money and blood
to maintain her power over an unwilling people than any other government ever
did. And in her estimation, it is apparently the chief glory of her success,
and an adequate compensation for all her own losses, and an ample justification
for all her devastation and carnage of the South, that all pretence of any necessity for consent to the perpetuity
or power of the government is (as she thinks) forever expunged from the minds
of the people.
In short, the North
exults beyond measure in the proof she has given that a government
professedly resting on consent will expend more life and treasure in crushing
dissent than any government openly founded on force has ever done.
And she claims that she
has done all this on behalf of liberty! On behalf of free government! On
behalf of the principle that government should rest on consent!
the successors of Roger Williams, within a hundred years after their state
had been founded upon the principle of free religious toleration had taken to
burning heretics with a fury never before seen among men, and had they
finally gloried in having thus suppressed all question of the truth of the
state religion, and had they further claimed to have done all this in behalf
of freedom of conscience, the inconsistency between profession and conduct
would scarcely have been greater than that of the North, in carrying on such
a war as she has done, to compel men to live under and support a government
that they did not want and in then claiming that she did it on behalf of the
principle that government should rest on consent.
This astonishing
absurdity and self-contradiction are to be accounted for only by supposing,
either that the lusts of fame, power, and money have made her utterly blind
to or utterly reckless of the inconsistency and enormity of her conduct, or
that she has never even understood what was implied in a government's resting
on consent. Perhaps this last explanation is the true one. In charity to
human nature, it is to be hoped that it is.
Seven Implications of Consent
What, then, is implied in
a government's resting on consent?
If it be said that the
consent of the strongest party in a nation is all that is necessary
to justify the establishment of a government that shall have authority over
the weaker party, it may be answered that the most despotic governments in
the world rest upon that very principle, viz, the
consent of the strongest party.
These governments are
formed simply by the consent or agreement of the strongest party that they
will act in concert in subjecting the weaker party to their dominion. And the
despotism, tyranny, and injustice of these governments consist in that very
fact. Or at least that is the first step in their tyranny; a necessary
preliminary to all the oppressions that are to follow.
If it be said that the
consent of the most numerous party in a nation is sufficient to
justify the establishment of their power over the less numerous party, it may
be answered,
1.
That two men have no more natural right to
exercise any kind of authority over one than one has to exercise the same
authority over two. A man's natural rights are his own against the whole
world; and any infringement of them is equally a crime whether committed by
one man or by millions; whether committed by one man calling himself a robber
(or by any other name indicating his true character) or by millions calling
themselves a government.
2.
It would be absurd for the most numerous party to talk of establishing
a government over the less numerous party, unless the former were also the
strongest as well as the most numerous: for it is not to be supposed that the
strongest party would ever submit to the rule of the weaker party, merely
because the latter were the most numerous.
And
as matter of fact, it is perhaps never that governments are established by
the most numerous party. They are usually, if not always, established by the
less numerous party — their superior strength consisting in their superior
wealth, intelligence, and ability to act in concert.
3.
Our Constitution does not profess to have been established simply by
the majority, but by "the people" — the minority as much as the
majority.
4.
If our fathers, in 1776, had acknowledged the principle that a
majority had the right to rule the minority, we should never have become a
nation — for they were in a small minority as compared with those who claimed
the right to rule over them.
5.
Majorities, as such, afford no guarantees for justice. They are men of
the same nature as minorities. They have the same passions for fame, power,
and money as minorities and are liable and likely to be equally — perhaps
more than equally, because more boldly — rapacious, tyrannical, and
unprincipled, if entrusted with power.
There
is no more reason, then, why a man should either sustain or submit to the
rule of a majority than of a minority. Majorities and minorities cannot
rightfully be taken at all into account in deciding questions of justice. And
all talk about them in matters of government is mere absurdity.
Men
are dunces for uniting to sustain any government or any laws except those in
which they are all agreed. And nothing but force and fraud compel men to
sustain any other. To say that majorities, as such, have a right to rule
minorities, is equivalent to saying that minorities have, and ought to have,
no rights except such as majorities please to allow them.
6.
It is not improbable that many or most of the worst of governments —
although established by force, and by a few, in the first place — come, in
time, to be supported by a majority. But if they do, this majority is
composed in large part of the most ignorant, superstitious, timid, dependent,
servile, and corrupt portions of the people; of those who have been overawed
by the power, intelligence, wealth, and arrogance; of those who have been
deceived by the frauds; and of those who have been corrupted by the
inducements of the few who really constitute the government.
Such
majorities, very likely, could be found in half, perhaps in nine-tenths, of
all the countries on the globe. What do they prove? Nothing but the tyranny
and corruption of the very governments that have reduced such large portions
of the people to their present ignorance, servility, degradation, and
corruption — an ignorance, servility, degradation, and corruption that are
best illustrated in the simple fact that they do sustain the governments that
have so oppressed, degraded, and corrupted them.
They
do nothing toward proving that the governments themselves are legitimate, or
that they ought to be sustained, or even endured, by those who understand
their true character. The mere fact, therefore, that a government chances to
be sustained by a majority, of itself proves nothing that is necessary to be
proved in order to know whether such government should be sustained or not.
7.
The principle that the majority have a right to rule the minority
practically resolves all government into a mere contest between two bodies of
men, as to which of them shall be masters and which of them slaves: a
contest, that — however bloody — can never, in the nature of things, be
finally closed so long as man refuses to be a slave.
What Makes a "Nation"?
But to say that the
consent of either the strongest party or the most numerous party in a
nation is a sufficient justification for the establishment or
maintenance of a government that shall control the whole nation does not
obviate the difficulty. The question still remains: how comes such a thing as
"a nation" to exist?
How do many millions of
men, scattered over an extensive territory — each gifted by nature with
individual freedom; required by the law of nature to call no man, or body of
men, his masters; authorized by that law to seek his own happiness in his own
way, to do what he will with himself and his property so long as he does not
trespass upon the equal liberty of others; authorized also, by that law, to
defend his own rights and redress his own wrongs, and to go to the assistance
and defense of any of his fellow men who may be suffering any kind of
injustice — how do many millions of such men come to be a nation, in
the first place?
How is it that each of
them comes to be stripped of all his natural, God-given rights, and to be
incorporated, compressed, compacted, and consolidated into a mass with other
men, whom he never saw; with whom he has no contract; and toward many of whom
he has no sentiments but fear, hatred, or contempt?
How does he become
subjected to the control of men like himself, who by nature had no authority
over him, but who command him to do this and forbid him to do that, as if
they were his sovereigns and he their subject — and as if their wills and
their interests were the only standards of his duties and his rights — and
who compel him to submission under peril of confiscation, imprisonment, and
death?
Clearly, all this is the
work of force or fraud, or both.
By what right then did we
become "a nation"? By what right do we continue to be "a
nation"? And by what right do either the strongest or the most numerous
party now existing within the territorial limits, called "The United
States," claim that there really is such "a nation" as the
United States?
Certainly they are bound
to show the rightful existence of "a nation" before they can claim,
on that ground, that they themselves have a right to control it: to
seize for their purposes so much of every man's property within it as they
may choose, and at their discretion to compel any man to risk his own life or
take the lives of other men for the maintenance of their power.
To speak of either their
numbers or their strength is not to the purpose. The question is by what right
does the nation exist? And by what right are so many atrocities
committed by its authority? Or for its preservation?
The answer to this
question must certainly be that at least such a nation exists by no
right whatever.
We are, therefore, driven
to the acknowledgment that nations and governments, if they can rightfully
exist at all, can exist only by consent.
A Revolution of Individuals
The question, then,
returns: What is implied in a government's resting on consent?
Manifestly this one thing
(to say nothing of others) is necessarily implied in the idea of a
government's resting on consent, viz, the
separate, individual consent of every man who is required to contribute,
either by taxation or personal service, to the support of the government.
All this, or nothing, is necessarily implied, because one man's consent is
just as necessary as any other man's.
If, for example, A
claims that his consent is necessary to the establishment or maintenance of
government, he thereby necessarily admits that B's and every other
man's are equally necessary, because B's and every other man's
rights are just as good as his own. On the other hand, if he denies that B's
or any other particular man's consent is necessary, he thereby necessarily
admits that neither his own, nor any other man's, is necessary, and that
government need not be founded on consent at all.
There is therefore no alternative
but to say either that the separate, individual consent of every man who is
required to aid, in any way, in supporting the government is necessary, or
that the consent of no one is necessary.
Clearly this individual
consent is indispensable to the idea of treason, for, if a man has never
consented or agreed to support a government, he breaks no faith in refusing
to support it. And if he makes war upon it, he does so as an open enemy, and
not as a traitor — that is, as a betrayer, or treacherous friend.
All this, or nothing, was
necessarily implied in the Declaration made in 1776. If the necessity
for consent then announced was a sound principle in favor of three million
men, it was an equally sound one in favor of three men, or of one man. If the
principle was a sound one on behalf of men living on a separate continent, it
was an equally sound one on behalf of a man living on a separate farm or in a
separate house.
Moreover it was only as
separate individuals, each acting for himself and
not as a member of an organized government, that the three million declared
their consent to be necessary to their support of a government, and at the
same time declared their dissent to the support of the British Crown. The
governments then existing in the colonies had no constitutional power, as
governments, to declare the separation between England and America.
On the contrary, those
governments, as governments, were organized under charters from and
acknowledged allegiance to the British Crown. Of course the British king
never made it one of the chartered or constitutional powers of those
governments, as governments, to absolve the people from their allegiance to himself.
So far, therefore, as the
colonial legislatures acted as revolutionists, they acted only as so many
individual revolutionists and not as constitutional legislatures. And their
representatives at Philadelphia, who first declared independence, were, in
the eye of the constitutional law of that day, simply a committee of
revolutionists and in no sense constitutional authorities or the
representatives of constitutional authorities.
It was also, in the eye
of the law, only as separate individuals, each acting for himself and
exercising simply his natural rights as an individual, that the people at
large assented to and ratified the Declaration.
It was also only as so
many individuals, each acting for himself and exercising simply his natural
rights, that they revolutionized the constitutional character of their local
governments so as to exclude the idea of allegiance to Great Britain,
changing their forms only as and when their convenience dictated.
The whole revolution,
therefore, as a revolution, was declared and accomplished by the people
acting separately as individuals and exercising each his natural rights, and
not by their governments in the exercise of their constitutional powers.
It was, therefore, as
individuals and only as individuals, each acting for himself alone, that they
declared that their consent — that is, their individual consent, for each one
could consent only for himself — was necessary to the creation or perpetuity
of any government that they could rightfully be called on to support.
In the same way each
declared, for himself, that his own will, pleasure, and discretion were the
only authorities he had any occasion to consult in determining whether he
would any longer support the government under which he had always lived. And
if this action of each individual were valid and rightful when he had so many
other individuals to keep him company, it would have been, in the view of
natural justice and right, equally valid and rightful if he had taken the
same step alone.
He had the same natural
right to take up arms alone to defend his own property against a single tax
gatherer that he had to take up arms in company with three million others to
defend the property of all against an army of tax gatherers.
Thus the whole Revolution
turned upon, asserted, and, in theory, established the right of each and
every man, at his discretion, to release himself from the support of the
government under which he had lived. And this principle was asserted not as a
right peculiar to themselves, or to that time, or as applicable only to the
government then existing, but as a universal right of all men, at all times,
and under all circumstances.
George III called our
ancestors traitors for what they did at that time. But they were not traitors
in fact, whatever he or his laws may have called them. They were not traitors
in fact because they betrayed nobody and broke faith with nobody. They were
his equals, owing him no allegiance, obedience, nor any
other duty except such as they owed to mankind at large.
Their political relations
with him had been purely voluntary. They had never pledged their faith to him
that they would continue these relations any longer than it should please
them to do so, and therefore they broke no faith in parting with him. They
simply exercised their natural right of saying to him and to the English
people that they were under no obligation to continue their political
connection with them, and that, for reasons of their own, they chose to
dissolve it.
What was true of our
ancestors is true of revolutionists in general. The monarchs and governments
from whom they choose to separate attempt to stigmatize them as traitors. But
they are not traitors in fact, inasmuch as they betray and break faith with
no one. Having pledged no faith, they break none.
They are simply men, who,
for reasons of their own — whether good or bad, wise or unwise, is immaterial
— choose to exercise their natural right of dissolving their connection with
the governments under which they have lived. In doing this, they no more
commit the crime of treason — which necessarily implies treachery, deceit,
breach of faith — than a man commits treason when he chooses to leave a church,
or any other voluntary association, with which he has been connected.
This principle was a true
one in 1776. It is a true one now. It is the only one on which any rightful
government can rest. It is the one on which the Constitution itself professes
to rest. If it does not really rest on that basis, it has no right to exist,
and it is the duty of every man to raise his hand against it.
If the men of the
Revolution designed to incorporate in the Constitution the absurd ideas of allegiance
and treason, which they had once repudiated, against which they had fought,
and by which the world had been enslaved, they thereby established for
themselves an indisputable claim to the disgust and detestation of all
mankind.