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{
"title": "Natural Law",
"authors": ["Lysander Spooner"],
"publishdate": "1882-09-27",
"tags": ["Law"]
}
Natural law, natural justice, being a principle that is naturally
applicable and adequate to the rightful settlement of every npossible
controversy that can arise among men; being, too, the only standard by
which any controversy whatever, between man and man, can be rightfully
settled; being a principle whose protection every man demands for
himself, whether he is willing to accord it to others, or not; being
also an immutable principle, one that is always self-evidently
necessary in all times and places; being so entirely impartial and
equitable towards all; so indispensable to the peace of every human
being; being, too, so easily learned, so generally known, and so
easily maintained by such voluntary associations as all men can
readily and rightfully form for that purpose—being such a principle as
this, these questions arise, viz.: Why is it that it does not
universally, or well nigh universally, prevail? Why is it that it has
not, ages ago, been established throughout the world as the one only
law that any man, or all men, could rightfully be compelled to obey?
Why is it that any human being ever conceived that anything so
self-evidently superfluous, false, absurd, and atrocious as all
legislation necessarily must be, could be of any use to mankind, or
have any place in human affairs?
he answer is, that through all historic times, wherever any people
have advanced beyond the savage state, and have learned to increase
their means of subsistence by the cultivation of the soil, a greater
or less number of them have associated and organized themselves as
robbers, to plunder and enslave all others, who had either accumulated
any property that could be seized, or had shown, by their labor, that
they could be made to contribute to the support or pleasure of those
who should enslave them.
These bands of robbers, small in number at first, have increased their
power by uniting with each other, inventing warlike weapons,
disciplining themselves, and perfecting their organizations as
military forces, and dividing their plunder (including their captives)
among themselves, either in such proportions as have been previously
agreed on, or in such as their leaders (always desirous to increase
the number of their followers) should prescribe.
The success of these bands of robbers was an easy thing, for the
reason that those whom they plundered and enslaved were comparatively
defenseless, being scattered thinly over the country; engaged wholly
in trying by rude implements and heavy labor, to extort a subsistence
from the soil; having no weapons of war, other than sticks and stones;
having no military discipline or organization, and no means of
concentrating their forces or acting in concert, when suddenly
attacked. Under these circumstances, the only alternative left them
for saving even their lives, or the lives of their families, was to
yield up not only the crops they had gathered, and the lands they had
cultivated, but themselves and their families also as slaves.
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