No Treason · Chapter
VI: The Constitution of No Authority explained
This chapter argues that the U.S.
What happens
This chapter argues that the U.S. government is a secret band of robbers and murderers, not a legitimate authority based on consent. It contends that taxation without consent is robbery, that voting under compulsion does not imply voluntary support for the Constitution, and that the secret ballot prevents any legal proof of individual consent. The author concludes that the government rests on force, not voluntary agreement.
Themes in this chapter
Consent and Voluntary Government
The chapter denies that taxation or voting constitutes voluntary consent to the Constitution, arguing that both are coerced.
Secret Government and Secret Ballot
The secret ballot is condemned as creating a secret government of robbers and murderers, preventing any legal proof of consent.
Individual Natural Rights
The chapter asserts that individuals have a natural right to keep their money and refuse consent to government, and that forced taxation violates this right.
Characters to notice
- a man
The individual taxpayer who cannot know who composes 'the government' and is forced to pay taxes under threat of violence.
- Unknown
The narrator or abstract individual who reflects on the nature of government and consent.
- these men
The secret band of robbers and murderers who call themselves 'the government' and extort money through force.
- Congress
The legislative body that enacts laws and is part of the secret government apparatus.
- any member of Congress
An individual representative who is part of the government but whose identity is unknown to the taxpayer.
Key passages
“Not knowing who the particular individuals are, who call themselves 'the government,' the tax payer does not know whom he pays his taxes to. All he knows is that a man comes to him, representing himself to be the agent of 'the government'—that is, the agent of a secret band of robbers and murderers, who have taken to themselves the title of 'the government,' and have determined to kill everybody who refuses to give them whatever money they demand.”
The taxpayer cannot identify the people running the government; he only deals with an agent who acts for a hidden group of thieves and killers who threaten death to anyone who withholds payment.
This passage frames taxation as extortion by an anonymous criminal gang.
“As all voting is secret, (by secret ballot,) and as all secret governments are necessarily only secret bands of robbers, tyrants, and murderers, the general fact that our government is practically carried on by means of such voting, only proves that there is among us a secret band of robbers, tyrants and murderers, whose purpose is to rob, enslave, and, so far as necessary to accomplish their purposes, murder, the rest of the people.”
Because voting is done in secret, the government is essentially a hidden gang of criminals whose goal is to steal from, enslave, and kill the population as needed.
This summarizes the chapter's core claim that secret ballots make government illegitimate and violent.