Section VI

0:00Section 6 It is no exaggeration but a literal truth to say that by the Constitution, not as I interpret it, but as it is interpreted by those who pretend to administer it, the properties, liberties, and lives of the entire people of the United States are surrendered unreservedly into the hands of men who, it is provided by the Constitution itself, shall never be questioned as to any disposal they make of them. Thus, the Constitution, Article 1, Section 6, provides that, for any speech or debate or vote, in either house they, the senators and representatives, shall not be questioned in any other place. The whole law-making power is given to these senators and representatives, when acting by a two-thirds vote, and this provision protects them from all responsibility for the laws they make.

0:54The Constitution also enables them to secure the execution of all their laws by giving them power to withhold the salaries of and to impeach and remove all judicial and executive officers who refuse to execute them. Thus, the whole power of the government is in their hands, and they are made utterly irresponsible for the use they make of it. What is this but absolute, irresponsible power? It is no answer to this view of the case to say that these men are under oath to use their Neither is it any answer to this view of the case to say that the particular individuals holding this power can be changed once in two or six years, for the power of each set of Men is absolute during the term for which they hold it.

1:56And when they can hold it no longer, they are succeeded only by men whose power will be equally absolute and irresponsible. Neither is it any answer to this view of the case to say that the men holding this absolute irresponsible power must be men chosen by the people, or portions of them, to hold it. A man is nonetheless a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term What makes them slaves is the fact that they now are and are always hereafter to be in the hands of men whose power over them is and always is to be absolute and irresponsible. The right of absolute and irresponsible dominion is the right of property, and the right of of Property is the right of absolute irresponsible dominion.

2:50The two are identical, the one necessarily implying the other. Neither can exist without the other. If therefore Congress have that absolute and irresponsible law-making power which the Constitution, according to their interpretation of it, gives them, it can only be because they own us as property. If they own us as property, they are our masters, and their will is our law. If they do not own us as property, they are not our masters, and their will as such is of no authority over us. But these men who claim and exercise this absolute and irresponsible dominion over us dare not be consistent and claim either to be our masters or to own us as property.

3:36They say they are only our servants, agents, attorneys and representatives, but this declaration involves an absurdity, a contradiction. No man can be my servant, agent, attorney or representative and be at the same time uncontrollable by me and irresponsible to me for his acts. It is of no importance that I appointed him and put all the power in his hands. If I made him uncontrollable by me and irresponsible to me, he is no longer my servant, agent, attorney, or representative. If I gave him absolute irresponsible power over my property, I gave him the property. If I gave him absolute irresponsible power over myself, I made him my master and gave myself to him as a slave, and it is of no importance whether I call him master or servant, If a man is my servant, agent, or attorney, I necessarily make myself responsible for all All his acts done within the limits of the power I have entrusted to him.

5:03If I have entrusted him, as my agent, with either absolute power, or any power at all, over the persons or properties of other men than myself, I thereby necessarily make myself responsible to those other persons for any injuries he may do them, so long as he acts within the limits of the power I have granted him. But no individual who may be injured in his person or property by acts of Congress can can come to the individual electors and hold them responsible for these acts of their so-called agents or representatives. This fact proves that these pretended agents of the people, of everybody, are really the agents of nobody. If then, nobody is individually responsible for the acts of Congress, the members of Congress are nobody's agents.

5:49And if they are nobody's agents, they are themselves individually responsible for their and for the acts of all whom they employ and the authority they are exercising is simply their own individual authority and by the law of nature the highest of all laws anybody injured by their acts anybody who is deprived by them of his property or his liberty has the same right to hold them individually responsible that he has to hold any other trespasser individually responsible he has the same right to resist them and their There are agents that he has to resist any other trespassers.