A Letter to Thomas F. Bayard by Lysander Spooner
"A Letter to Thomas F. Bayard" by Lysander Spooner is a critical political treatise written during the late 19th century. This book challenges the legitimacy of congressional power over the citizens of the United States, arguing that the legislators' authority is a usurpation rather than a legitimate delegation of power by the people. Spooner confronts the notion that it is possible for a legislator to exercise authority honestly under the existing constitutionalframework. In this letter, Spooner systematically dissects the concept of delegated legislative power, claiming that no individual can rightfully assign arbitrary dominion over themselves or others. He contends that the U.S. Constitution was enacted without genuine consent from the populace and serves primarily to empower a select group of individuals to enact laws that infringe upon the natural rights of citizens. Spooner urges Senator Bayard to recognize the absurdity of the legislative system, encouraging him to acknowledge that no law created under such arbitrary authority can be considered just. Ultimately, the letter serves as a call for reflection on the nature of government and individual rights, inviting readers to reconsider the foundations of authority in their society. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
Read now or download (free!)
| Choose how to read this book | Url | Size | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Read online (web) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36161.html.images | 43 kB | ||||
| EPUB3 (E-readers incl. Send-to-Kindle) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36161.epub3.images | 86 kB | ||||
| EPUB (older E-readers) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36161.epub.images | 85 kB | ||||
| EPUB (no images, older E-readers) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36161.epub.noimages | 68 kB | ||||
| Kindle | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36161.kf8.images | 175 kB | ||||
| older Kindles | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36161.kindle.images | 168 kB | ||||
| Plain Text UTF-8 | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36161.txt.utf-8 | 37 kB | ||||
| Download HTML (zip) | https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/36161/pg36161-h.zip | 84 kB | ||||
| There may bemore files related to this item. | ||||||
About this eBook
| Author | Spooner, Lysander, 1808-1887 |
|---|---|
| Title | A Letter to Thomas F. Bayard |
| Note | Reading ease score: 44.4 (College-level). Difficult to read. |
| Credits | Produced by Katie Hernandez, Susan Goble, Curtis Weyant and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | KF: Law in general, Comparative and uniform law, Jurisprudence: United States |
| Subject | Legislative power -- United States |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 36161 |
| Release Date | May 17, 2011 |
| Most Recently Updated | Jan 7, 2021 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 90 downloads in the last 30 days. |
| Project Gutenberg eBooks are always free! | |
