From: Alexander Sheppard (alexandersheppard@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Nov 19 2002 - 09:30:11 MST
"These tyrants, living solely on plunder, and on the labour of their slaves,
and applying all their energies to the seizure of still more plunder, and
the enslavement of still other defenceless persons; increasing, too, their
numbers, perfecting their organisations, and multiplying their weapons of
war, they extend their conquests until, in order to hold what they have
already got, it becomes necessary for them to act systematically, and
cooperage with each other in holding their slaves in subjection.
"But all this they can do only by establishing what they call a government,
and making what they call laws. ...
"Thus substantially all the legislation of the world has had its origin in
the desires of one class of persons to plunder and enslave others, and hold
them as property."
"In process of time, the robber, or slaveholding, class -- who had seized
all the lands, and held all the means of creating wealth -- began to
discover that the easiest mode of managing their slaves, and making them
profitable, was not for each slaveholder to hold his specified number of
slaves, as he had done before, and as he would hold so many cattle, but to
give them so much liberty as would throw upon themselves (the slaves) the
responsibility of their own subsistence, and yet compel them to sell their
labour to the land-holding class -- their former owners -- for just what the
latter might choose to give them."
"Of course, these liberated slaves, as some have erroneously called them,
having no lands, or other property, and no means of obtaining an independent
subsistence, had no alternative -- to save themselves from starvation -- but
to sell their labour to the landholders, in exchange only for the coarsest
necessaries of life; not always for so much even as that."
"These liberated slaves, as they were called, were now scarcely less slaves
than they were before. Their means of subsistence were perhaps even more
precarious than when each had his own owner, who had an interest to preserve
his life."
"They were liable, at the caprice or interest of the landholders, to be
thrown out of home, employment, and the opportunity of even earning a
subsistence by their labour."
"They were, therefore, in large numbers, driven to the necessity of begging,
stealing, or starving; and became, of course, dangerous to the property and
quiet of their late masters."
"The consequence was, that these late owners found it necessary, for their
own safety and the safety of their property, to organise themselves more
perfectly as a government and make laws for keeping these dangerous people
in subjection. . . . "
"The purpose and effect of these laws have been to maintain, in the hands of
robber, or slave holding class, a monopoly of all lands, and, as far as
possible, of all other means of creating wealth; and thus to keep the great
body of labourers in such a state of poverty and dependence, as would compel
them to sell their labour to their tyrants for the lowest prices at which
life could be sustained."
Thus the whole business of legislation, which has now grown to such gigantic
proportions, had its origin in the conspiracies, which have always existed
among the few, for the purpose of holding the many in subjection, and
extorting from them their labour, and all the profits of their labour."
--Lysander Spooner
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