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                                A LETTER

                                   TO

                            GROVER CLEVELAND,

                                   ON

            HIS FALSE INAUGURAL ADDRESS, THE USURPATIONS AND
                CRIMES OF LAWMAKERS AND JUDGES, AND THE
                   CONSEQUENT POVERTY, IGNORANCE, AND
                        SERVITUDE OF THE PEOPLE.


                                   BY
                           LYSANDER SPOONER.


                                BOSTON:
                      BENJ. R. TUCKER, PUBLISHER.
                                 1886.




        The author reserves his copyright in this letter.
        First pamphlet edition published in July, 1886.[1]

    [1] Under a somewhat different title, to wit, "_A Letter to
    Grover Cleveland, on his False, Absurd, If-contradictory, and
    Ridiculous Inaugural Address_," this letter was first published,
    in instalments, "LIBERTY" (a paper published in Boston); the
    instalments commencing June 20, 1885, and continuing to May 22,
    1886: notice being given, in each paper, of the reservation of
    copyright.




                     A LETTER TO GROVER CLEVELAND.

                               SECTION I.

_To Grover Cleveland_:

SIR,--Your inaugural address is probably as honest, sensible, and
consistent a one as that of any president within the last fifty years,
or, perhaps, as any since the foundation of the government. If,
therefore, it is false, absurd, self-contradictory, and ridiculous, it
is not (as I think) because you are personally less honest, sensible, or
consistent than your predecessors, but because the government
itself--according to your own description of it, and according to the
practical administration of it for nearly a hundred years--is an utterly
and palpably false, absurd, and criminal one. Such praises as you bestow
upon it are, therefore, necessarily false, absurd, and ridiculous.

Thus you describe it as "a government pledged to do equal and exact
justice to all men."

Did you stop to think what that means? Evidently you did not; for
nearly, or quite, all the rest of your address is in direct
contradiction to it.

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 being
everywhere and always the supreme law, it is necessarily everywhere and
always the only law.

Lawmakers, as they call themselves, can add nothing to it, nor take
anything from it. Therefore all their laws, as they call them,--that is,
all the laws of their own making,--have no color of authority or
obligation. It is a falsehood to call them laws; for there is nothing in
them that either creates men's duties or rights, or enlightens them as
to their duties or rights. There is consequently nothing binding or
obligatory about them. And nobody is bound to take the least notice of
them, unless it be to trample them under foot, as usurpations. If they
command men to do justice, they add nothing to men's obligation to do
it, or to any man's right to enforce it. They are therefore mere idle
wind, such as would be commands to consider the day as day, and the
night as night. If they command or license any man to do injustice, they
are criminal on their face. If they command any man to do anything which
justice does not require him to do, they are simple, naked usurpations
and tyrannies. If they forbid any man to do anything, which justice
would permit him to do, they are criminal invasions of his natural and
rightful liberty. In whatever light, therefore, they are viewed, they
are utterly destitute of everything like authority or obligation. They
are all necessarily either the impudent, fraudulent, and criminal
usurpations of tyrants, robbers, and murderers, or the senseless work of
ignorant or thoughtless men, who do not know, or certainly do not
realize, what they are doing.

This science of justice, or natural law, is the only science that tells
us what are, and what are not, each man's natural, inherent,
inalienable, _individual