 Part 1 of Vices are not Crimes This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, auto-volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Vices are not Crimes by La Sanda Spooner. Part 1. Vices are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property. Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike Crimes, they imply no malice toward others and no interference with their persons or property. In Vices, the very essence of crime, that is, the design to injure the person or property of another, is wanting. It is a maxim of the law that they can make. It is a maxim of the law that there can be no crime without a criminal intent. That is, without the intent to invade the person or property of another. But no one ever practices a vice with any such criminal intent. He practices his vice for his own happiness solely, and not from any malice toward others. Unless this clear distinction between vices and crimes be made and recognized by the laws, they can be on earth no such thing as individual right, liberty or property, and the corresponding and co-equal rights of another man to the control of his own person and property. For a government to declare a vice to be a crime and to punish it as such is an attempt to falsify the very nature of things. It is as absurd as it would be to declare truth to be falsehood or falsehood-truth. Two, every voluntary act of a man's life is either virtuous or vicious. That is to say, it is either in accordance or in conflict with those natural laws of matter and mind on which his physical, mental and emotional health and well-being depend. In other words, every act of his life tends on the whole, either to his happiness or to his unhappiness. No single act in his whole existence is indifferent. Furthermore, each human being differs from his physical, mental and emotional constitution and also in the circumstances by which he is surrounded from every other human being. Many acts, therefore, that are virtuous and tend to happiness in the case of one person are vicious and tend to unhappiness in the case of another person. Many acts also that are virtuous and tend to happiness in the case of one man at one time and under one set of circumstances are vicious and tend to unhappiness in the case of the same man at another time and under other circumstances. 3. To know what actions are virtuous and what vicious. In other words, to know what actions tend on the whole to happiness and what to unhappiness, in the case of each and every man, in each and all the conditions in which they may severally be placed, is the profoundest and most complex study to which the greatest human mind ever has been or ever can be directed. It is nevertheless the constant study to which each and every man, the humblest in intellect as well as the greatest, is necessarily driven by the desires and necessities of his own existence. It is also the study in which each and every person, from his cradle to his grave, must necessarily form his own conclusions, because no one else knows or feels or can know or feel as he knows and feels, the desires and necessities, the hopes and fears, and impulses of his own nature or the pressure of his own circumstances. 4. It is often not possible to say of those acts that are called vices, that they really are vices except in degree. That is, it is difficult to say of any action or courses of action that they are called vices, that they would really have been vices if they had stopped short of a certain point. 5. The question of virtue or vice, therefore, in all such cases, is a question of quantity and degree, and not of the intrinsic character of any single act by itself. This fact adds to the difficulty, not to say the impossibility, of any ones except each individual for himself. Drawing any accurate line, or anything like any accurate line, between virtue and vice. That is, of telling where virtue ends and vice begins. And this is another reason why this whole question of virtue and vice should be left for each person to settle for himself. 5. Vices are usually pleasurable, at least for the time being, and often do not disclose themselves as vices by their effects, until after they have been practiced for many years, perhaps for a lifetime. To many, perhaps most of those who practice them, they do not disclose themselves as vices at all during life. Virtues, on the other hand, often appear so hard and rugged, they require the sacrifice of so much present happiness, at least, and the results which alone prove them to be virtues, are often so distant and obscure, in fact so absolutely invisible to the minds of many, especially of the young, that from the very nature of things there can be no universal or even general knowledge that they are virtues. In truth the studies of profound philosophers have been expended, if not wholly in vain, certainly with very small results, in efforts to draw the lines between the virtues and the vices. If then it becomes so difficult, so nearly impossible in most cases, to determine what is and what is not vice, and especially if it be so difficult in nearly all cases to determine where virtue ends and vice begins, and if these questions which no one can really and truly determine for anybody but himself are not to be left free and open for experience by all, each person is deprived of the highest of all his rights as a human being, to wit his right to inquire, investigate, reason, try experiments, judge and ascertain for himself what is to him virtue and what is to him vice. In other words what on the whole conduces to his happiness and what on the whole lends to his unhappiness. If this great right is not to be left free and open to all, then each man's whole right as a reasoning human being to liberty and the pursuit of happiness is denied to him. Six, we all come into the world in ignorance of ourselves and of everything around us. By our fundamental law of our natures we are all constantly impelled by the desire of happiness and the fear of pain, but we have everything to learn as to what will give us happiness and save us from pain. No two of us are wholly alike, either physically, mentally or emotionally, or consequently in our physical, mental or emotional requirements for the acquisition of happiness and the avoidance of unhappiness. Not one of us therefore can learn this indispensable lesson of happiness and unhappiness of virtue and vice for another. Each must learn it for himself. To learn it he must be at liberty to try all experiments that commend himself to his judgment. Some of his experiments succeed and because they succeed are called virtues. Others fail and because they fail are called vices. He gathers wisdom as much from his failures as from his successes, from his so-called vices as from his so-called virtues. Both are necessary to his acquisition of that knowledge, of his own nature and of the world around him, and of their adaptations or non-adaptations to each other, which will show him how happiness is acquired and pain avoided. And unless he can be permitted to try these experiments through his own satisfaction, he is restrained from the acquisition of knowledge and consequently from pursuing the great purpose and duty of his life. 7. A man is under no obligation to take anybody's word or yield to anybody's authority on a matter so vital to himself and regard to which no one else has or can have any such interest as he. He cannot, if he would, safely rely upon the opinions of other men because he finds that the opinions of other men do not agree. Certain actions or courses of action have been practiced by many millions of men through successive generations and have been held by them to be on the whole conducive to happiness. Other men in other ages or countries or under other conditions have held as a result of their experience and observation that these actions tended on the whole to unhappiness and were therefore vicious. The question of virtue or vice, as already remarked in a previous section, has also been in most minds a question of degree, that is, of the extent to which certain actions should be carried and not of the intrinsic character of any single act by itself. The questions of virtue and vice have therefore been as various and, in fact, as infinite as the varieties of mind, body and condition of the different individuals inhabiting the globe. Any experience of ages has left an infinite number of these questions unsettled. In fact, it can scarcely be said to have settled any of them. Eight. In the midst of this endless variety of opinion, what man or what body of men has the right to say in regard to any particular action or course of action? We have tried this experiment and determined every question involved in it. We have determined it not only for ourselves but for all others. And as to all those who are weaker than we, we will coerce them to act in obedience to our conclusions. We will suffer no further experiment or inquiry by anyone and consequently no further acquisition of knowledge by anybody. Who are the men who have the right to say this? Certainly there are none such. The men who really do say it are either shameless imposters and tyrants who would stop the progress of knowledge and usurp absolute control over the minds and bodies of their fellow men, and therefore to be resisted instantly and to the last extent. Or they are themselves too ignorant of their own weakness and of their true relations to other men to be entitled to any other consideration than sheer pity or contempt. We know, however, that there are such men as these in the world, and some of them attempt to exercise their power only within a small sphere to wit upon their children, their neighbours, their townsmen and their countrymen. Others attempt to exercise it on a larger scale. For example, an old man at Rome, aided by a few subordinates, attempts to decide all questions of virtue and vice, that is, of truth or falsehood, especially in matters of religion. He claims to know and teach what religious ideas and practices are conducive or fatal to a man's happiness, not only in this world but in that which is to come. He claims to be miraculously inspired for the performance of this work, thus virtually acknowledging, like a sensible man, that nothing short of miraculous inspiration would qualify him for it. This miraculous inspiration, however, has been ineffectual to enable him to settle more than a very few questions. The most important to which common mortals can attain is an implicit belief in his, the Pope's infallibility, and secondly, that the blackest vices of which they can be guilty are to believe and declare that he is only a man like the rest of them. It required some fifteen or eighteen hundred years to enable him to reach definite conclusions on these two vital points. Yet it will seem that the first of these must necessarily be preliminary to his settlement of any other questions, because until his own infallibility is determined, he can authorityfully decide nothing else. He has, however, here to fore attempted or pretended to settle a few others, and he may perhaps attempt to pretend to settle a few more in the future if he shall continue to find anybody to listen to him. But his success so far certainly does not encourage the belief that he will be able to settle all questions of virtue and vice, even in his peculiar department of religion, in time to meet the necessities of mankind. He or his successes will undoubtedly be compelled at no distant day to acknowledge that he has undertaken a task to which all his miraculous inspiration was inadequate, and that of necessity each human being must be left to settle all questions of this kind for himself. And it is not unreasonable to expect that all other popes in other and lesser spheres will sometime have cause to come to the same conclusion. No one certainly not claiming supernatural inspiration should undertake a task to which obviously nothing less than such inspiration is adequate. And clearly no one should surrender his own judgment to the teaching of others unless he first be convinced that these others have something more than ordinary human knowledge on this subject. If those persons who fancy themselves gifted with both the power and the right to define and punish other men's vices would but turn their thoughts inwardly, they would probably find that they have a great work to do at home, and that when that shall have been completed, they will be little disposed to do more toward correcting the vices of others than simply to give to others the results of their experience and observation. In this sphere their labours may possibly be useful, but in the sphere infallibility and coercion, now are probably, for well-known reasons, meet with even less success in the future than such men have met with in the past. 9. It is now obvious from the reasons already given that governments would be utterly impractical if it were to take cognisance of vices and punish them as crimes. Every human being has his or her vices. Nearly all men have a great many, and they are of all kinds. Physiological, mental, emotional, religious, social, commercial, industrial, economical, et cetera, et cetera. If governments would take cognisance of any of these vices and punish them as crimes, then to be consistent, it must just take cognisance of them all and punish all impartially. The consequence would be that everyone would be imprisoned for his or her vices. There would be no one left outside to lock the doors upon those within. In fact, courts enough could not be found to try the offenders or prisons enough built to hold them. All human industry in the acquisition of knowledge and even in acquiring the means of subsistence would be arrested, for we would all be under constant trial or imprisonment for our vices. But even if it were possible to imprison all the vicious, our knowledge of human nature tells us that as a general rule, they would be far more vicious in prison than they ever have been out of it. 10. A government that shall punish all vices impartially is so obviously an impossibility that no one was ever found or ever will be found foolish enough to propose it. The most that anyone proposes is that governments should punish some one or at most a few of what he esteems the grossest of them. But this discrimination is an utterly absurd, illogical, and tyrannical one. What right has anybody of men to say, the vices of other men we will punish, but our own vices nobody shall punish? We will restrain others' men from seeking their own happiness according to their own notions of it. But nobody shall restrain us from seeking our own happiness according to our own notions of it. We will restrain other men from acquiring any experimental knowledge of what is conducive or necessary to their own happiness. But nobody shall restrain us from acquiring an experimental knowledge of what is conducive or necessary to our own happiness. Nobody but knaves or blockheads ever thinks of making such absurd assumptions as these. And yet, evidently, it is only upon such assumptions that anybody can claim the right to punish the vices of others, and at the same time claim exemption from punishment for his own. 11. Such a thing as a government formed by voluntary association would never have been thought of if the object proposed had been the punishment of all vices impartially. Because nobody wants such an institution or would voluntarily submit to it. But a government formed by voluntary association for the punishment of all crimes is a reasonable matter because everybody wants protection for himself against all crimes by others, and also acknowledges the justice of his own punishment if he commits a crime. 12. It is a natural impossibility that a government should have a right to punish men for their vices. Because it is impossible that a government should have any rights except such as the individuals composing it had previously had as individuals. They could not delegate to a government any rights which they did not themselves possess. They could not contribute to the government any rights except such as they themselves possessed as individuals. Now, nobody but a fool or an impostor pretends that he, as an individual, has a right to punish other men for their vices. But anybody and everybody have a natural right as individuals to punish other men for their crimes. For everybody has a natural right not only to defend his own person and property against aggressors, but also to go to the assistance and defense of everybody else whose person or property is invaded. The natural right of each individual to defend his own person and property against an aggressor and to go to the assistance and defense of everyone else whose personal property is invaded is a right without which men could not exist on the earth. And government has no rightful existence except insofar as it embodies and is limited by this natural right of individuals. But the idea that each man has a natural right to decide what are virtues and what are vices, that is, what contribute to that neighbor's happiness and what do not, and to punish him for all that do not contribute to his is what no one ever had the impudence or folly to assert. It is only those who claim that government has some rightful power which no individual or individuals ever did or ever could delegate to it that claim that government has any rightful power to punish vices. It will do for a Pope or a king who claims to have received direct authority from heaven to rule over his fellow men, to claim the right as the vice-regent of God, to punish men for their vices. But it is a sheer and utter absurdity for any government claiming to derive its power wholly from the grant of the governed to claim any such power because everybody knows that the governed never would grant it. For them to grant it would be an absurdity because it would be granting away their own right to seek their own happiness. It is to grant away their right to judge of what will be for their happiness. It is to grant away all their right to pursue their own happiness. End of Part 1 Part 2 of Vices Are Not Crimes The Slipper Vox recording is in the public domain. Vices Are Not Crimes by La Sander Spooner Part 2 13 We can now see how simple, easy and reasonable a matter is a government for the punishment of crimes as compared with one for the punishment of vices. Crimes are few and easily distinguished from all other acts. And mankind are generally agreed as to what acts are crimes. Whereas vices are innumerable and no two persons are agreed except in comparatively few cases as to what are vices. Furthermore, everybody wishes to be protected in his person and property against the aggressions of other men. But nobody wishes to be protected either in his person or property against himself because it is contrary to the fundamental laws of human nature itself that anyone should wish to harm himself. He only wishes to promote his own happiness and to be his own judge as to what will promote and does promote his own happiness. This is what everyone wants and has a right to as a human being. And though we all make many mistakes and necessarily must make them from the imperfection of our knowledge yet these mistakes are no argument against the right because they all tend to give us the very knowledge we need and are in pursuit of and can get in no other way. The object aimed at in the punishment of crimes therefore is not only wholly different from but is directly opposed to that aimed at the punishment of vices. The object aimed at in the punishment of crimes is to secure to each and every man alike the fullest liberty he can possibly have consistently with the equal rights of others to pursue his own happiness under the guidance of his own judgment and by the use of his own property. On the other hand, the object aimed at in the punishment of vices is to deprive every man of his natural right and liberty to pursue his own happiness under the guidance of his own judgment and by the use of his own property. These two objects then are directly opposed to each other. They are as directly opposed to each other as a light and darkness or as truth and falsehood or as liberty and slavery. They are utterly incompatible with each other and to suppose the two to be embraced in one and the same government is an absurdity and impossibility. It is to suppose the objects of a government to be to commit crimes and to prevent crimes, to destroy individual liberty and to secure individual liberty. 14. Finally, on this point of individual liberty. Every man must necessarily judge and determine for himself as to what is conducive and necessary to and what is destructive of his own well-being because if he admits to perform this task for himself nobody else can perform it for him. And nobody else will even attempt to perform it for him except in very few cases. Popes and priests and kings will assume to perform it for him in certain cases if permitted to do so. But they will in general perform it only in so far as they can minister to their own vices and crimes by doing it. They will in general perform it only in so far as they can make him their fool and their slave. Parents with better motives no doubt than the others too often attempt the same work. But in so far as they practice coercion or restoring a child from anything not really and seriously dangerous to himself they do him a harm rather than a good. It is a law of nature that to get knowledge and to incorporate that knowledge into his own being each individual must get it for himself. Nobody, not even his parents can tell him the nature of fire so he will really know it. He must experiment with it and be burned by it before he can know. Nature knows a thousand times better than any parent what she designs each individual for, what knowledge he requires and how he must get it. She knows that her own processes for communicating that knowledge are not only the best but the only ones that can be effectual. The attempts of parents to make their children virtuous are generally little else than attempts to keep them in ignorance of vice. They are little else than attempts to teach their children to know and prefer truth by keeping them in ignorance of falsehood. They are little else than attempts to make them seek and appreciate health by keeping them in ignorance of disease and of everything that will cause disease. They are little else than attempts to make their children love the light by keeping them in ignorance of darkness. In short, they are little else than attempts to make their children happy by keeping them in ignorance of everything that causes them unhappiness. Insofar as parents can really aid their children in the latter search after happiness by simply giving them the results of theirs, the parent's own reason and experience, it is all very well and is a natural and appropriate duty. But to practice coercion and matters of which the children are reasonably competent to judge for themselves is only an attempt to keep them in ignorance. And this is as much a tyranny and as much a violation of the children's right to acquire knowledge for themselves and such knowledge as they desire as it's the same coercion when practiced upon older persons. Such coercion practiced upon children is as in all of their right to develop faculties that nature has given them and to be what nature designs them to be. It is as in all of their right to themselves and to the use of their own powers. It is as in all of their right to acquire the most valuable of all knowledge to wit the knowledge that nature, the great teacher stands ready to impart to them. The results of such coercion are not to make the children wise or virtuous but to make them ignorant and consequently weak and vicious. And to perpetuate through them from age to age the ignorance, the superstitions, the vices and crimes of the parents. This is proved by every page of the world's history. Those who hold opinions opposite to these are those whose false and vicious theologies or whose own vicious general ideas have taught them that the human race are naturally given to evil rather than to good. To the false rather than to the true. That mankind do not naturally turn their eyes to the light that they love darkness rather than light and they find their happiness only in those things that tend to them misery. 15. But these men who claim that government shall use its power to prevent vice will say or are in the habit of saying. We acknowledge the right of an individual to seek his own happiness in his own way and consequently to be as vicious as he pleases. We only claim that the government shall prohibit the sale to him of those articles by which he ministers to his vice. The answer to this is that the simple sale of any article whatever independently of the use that is to be made of that article is legally a perfectly innocent act. The quality of the act of sale depends wholly upon the quality of the use for which the thing is sold. If the use of anything is virtuous and lawful then the sale of it for that purpose is virtuous and lawful. If the use is vicious then the sale of it for that use is vicious. If the use is criminal then the sale of it for that use is criminal. The seller is at most only an accomplice in the use that is to be made of the article sold whether the use be virtuous, vicious or criminal. When the use is criminal the seller is an accomplice in the crime and punishable as such. But where the use is only vicious the seller is only an accomplice in the vice and is not punishable. 16. But it will be asked is there no right on the part of government to arrest the progress of those who are bent on self-destruction. The answer is that government has no rights what either in the matter. So long as these so-called vicious persons remain sane, compass-mentus, capable of exercising reasonable discretion and self-control. Because so long as they do remain sane they must be allowed to judge and decide for themselves whether their so-called vices really are vices. Whether they really are leading them to distraction and whether on the whole they will go there or not. When they shall become insane, non-compass-mentus, incapable of reasonable discretion or self-control their friends or neighbours or the government must take care of them and protect them from harm and against all persons who would do them harm in the same way as if their insanity had come upon them from any other cause than their supposed vices. But because a man is supposed by his neighbours to be on the way to self-destruction from his vices it does not therefore follow that he is insane, non-compass-mentus, incapable of reasonable discretion and self-control within the legal meaning of these terms. Men and women may be addicted to very gross vices and to a great many of them, such as gluttony, drunkenness, prostitution, gambling, prize-fighting, tobacco-during, smoking and snuffing, opion-eating, corset-wearing, idleness, waste of property, avarice, hypocrisy, et cetera, et cetera. And still be sane, compass-mentus, capable of reasonable discretion and self-control within the meaning of the law. And so, long as they are sane, they must be permitted to control themselves and their property and to be their own judges as to where their vices will finally lead them. It may be hoped by the lookers on in each individual case that the vicious person will see the end to which he is tending and be induced to turn back. But if he chooses to go on to what other men call destruction, he must be permitted to do so. And all that can be said of him so far as his life is concerned is that he made a great mistake in his search after happiness and that others will do well to take warning by his fate. As to what may be his condition in another life, that is a theological question with which the law in this world has no more to do than it has with any other theological question, touching men's condition in a future life. If it be asked how the question of a vicious man's sanity or insanity is to be determined, the answer is that it is to be determined by the same kinds of evidence as in the sanity or insanity of those who are called virtuous and not otherwise. That is, by the same kinds of evidence by which the legal tribunals determine whether a man should be sent to an asylum for lunatics or whether he is competent to make a will or otherwise dispose of his property. Any doubt must weigh in favour of his sanity, as in all other cases, are not of his insanity. If a person really does become insane, non-compassmentous, incapable of reasonable discretion or self-control, it is then a crime on the part of other men to give him or sell to him the means of self-injury. Footnote, to give an insane man a knife or any other weapon or a thing by which he is likely to injure himself is a crime. End of footnote. There are no crimes more easily punished, no cases in which juries would be more ready to convict than those where a sane person should sell or give to an insane one any article by which the latter was likely to injure himself. Seventeen. But it will be said that some men are made by their vices dangerous to other persons. That a drunkard, for example, is sometimes quarrelsome and dangerous towards his family or others. And it will be asked, has the law nothing to do in such a case? The answer is that if, either from drunkenness or any other cause, a man be really dangerous, either to his family or to other persons, not only himself may be rightfully restrained so far as the safety of other persons requires, but all other persons who know or have reasonable grounds to believe him dangerous may also be restrained from selling or giving to him anything that they have reason to suppose will make him dangerous. But because one man becomes quarrelsome and dangerous after drinking spiritous liquors and because it is a crime to give or sell liquor to such a man, it does not follow at all that it is a crime to sell liquors to the hundreds and thousands of other persons who are not made quarrelsome or dangerous by drinking them. Before a man can be convicted of crime in selling liquor to a dangerous man, it must be shown that the particular man to whom the liquor was sold was dangerous and also that the seller knew or had reasonable grounds to suppose that the man would be made dangerous by drinking it. The presumption of law is, in all cases, that the sale is innocent and that the burden of proving it criminal in any particular case rests upon the government. And that particular case must be proved criminal independently of all others. Subject to these principles, there is no difficulty convincing and punishing men for the sale or gift of any article to a man who is made dangerous to others by the use of it. 18. But it is often said that some vices are nuisances, public or private, and that nuisances can be abated and punished. It is true that anything that is really and legally a nuisance, either public or private, can be abated and punished. But it is not true that the mere private vices of one man are, in any legal sense, nuisances to another man or to the public. No act of one person can be a nuisance to another, unless it in some way obstructs or interferes with that other's safe and quiet use or enjoyment of what is rightfully his own. Whoever obstructs a public highway is a nuisance and may be abated and punished. But a hotel where liquor's assault, a liquor store or even a grog shop so called, no more obstructs a public highway than does a dry goods store, a jewellery store or a butcher's shop. Whatever poisons the air or makes it either offensive or unhealthy is a nuisance. But neither a hotel nor a liquor store nor a grog shop poisons the air or makes it offensive or unhealthy to outside persons. Whatever obstructs the light to which a man is legally entitled is a nuisance. But neither a hotel nor a liquor store nor a grog shop obstructs anybody's light except in cases where a church, a schoolhouse or a dwelling house would have equally obstructed it. On this grounds, therefore, the former are no more or no less nuisances than the latter would be. Some people are in the habit of saying that a liquor shop is dangerous in the same way that gunpowder is dangerous. But there is no analogy between the two cases. Gunpowder is liable to be exploded by accident and especially by such fires as often occur in cities. For this reasons it is dangerous to persons and properties in its immediate vicinity. But liquors are not liable to be thus exploded and therefore are not dangerous nuisances in any such sense as is gunpowder in cities. But it is said again that drinking places are frequently filled with noisy and boisterous men who disturb the quiet of the neighbourhood and the sleep and rest of the neighbours. This may be true occasionally, though not very frequently. But whenever in any case it is true, the nuisance may be abated by the punishment of the proprietor and his customers and if need be by shutting up the place. But an assembly of noisy drinkers is no more a nuisance than is any other noisy assembly. A jolly or hilarious drinker disturbs the quiet of a neighbourhood no more and no less than does a shouting religious fanatic. An assembly of noisy drinkers is no more and no less a nuisance than is an assembly of shouting religious fanatics. Both of them are nuisances when they disturb the rest and sleep or quiet or neighbours. Even a dog that is given to barking and disturbing the disturbance of the sleep or quiet of the neighbourhood is a nuisance. Nineteen. But it is said that for one person to entice another into a vice is a crime. This is preposterous. If any particular act is simply a vice then a man who entices another to commit it is simply an accomplice in the vice. He evidently commits no crime because the accomplice can certainly commit more than the principal. Every person who is sane, compass-mentus, possessed of reasonable discretion and self-control is presumed to be mentally competent to judge for himself of all the arguments pro and con that may be addressed to him to persuade him to do any particular act. Provided no fraud is employed to deceive him. And if he is persuaded or induced to do the act his act is then his own. And even though the act proved to be harmful to himself he cannot complain that the persuasion or arguments to which he yielded his assent were crimes against himself. When fraud is practised the case is of course different. If for example I offer a man poison assuring him that it is safe and wholesome drink and he, on the faith of my assertion swallows it, my act is a crime. Valentin non-fit induria is a maxim of the law. To the willing no injury is done. That is, no legal wrong. At every person who is sane, compass-mentus, capable of exercising reasonable discretion in judging of the truth or falsehood of the representations or persuasions to which he yields his assent is willing in the view of the law. And takes upon himself the entire responsibility for his acts when no intentional fraud has been practised upon him. This principle that to the willing no injury is done has no limit except in the case of frauds or of persons not possessed of reasonable discretion for judging in the particular case. If a person possessed of reasonable discretion and not deceived by fraud can sense to practise the grossest vice and thereby brings upon himself the greatest moral, physical, or pecuniary sufferings or losses he cannot allege that he has been legally wronged. To illustrate this principle take the case of rape. To have carnal knowledge of a woman against her will is the highest crime next to murder that can be committed against her. But to have carnal knowledge of a with her consent is no crime have it at most device. And it is usually held that a female child of no more than ten years of age has such reasonable discretion that her consent even though procured by rewards or promise of reward is sufficient to convert the act which would otherwise be a high crime into a simple act of vice. Footnote. The statute book of Massachusetts makes ten years the age at which a female child is supposed to have discretion enough to part with her virtue. But the same statute book holds that no person, man or woman of any age or any degree of wisdom or experience has discretion enough to be trusted to buy and drink a glass of spirits on his or her own judgment. What an illustration of the legiousness of wisdom of Massachusetts. End of footnote. We see the same principle in the case of prize fighters. If I but lay one of my fingers upon another man's person against his will no matter how lightly and no matter how little practical injury is done the act is a crime. But if two men agree to go out and pound each other's faces to a jelly it is no crime but only a vice. Even duels have not generally been considered crimes because each man's life is his own and the parties agree that each mutate the other's life if he can by the use of such weapons as are agreed upon and in conformity with certain rules that are also mutually assented to him. And this is a correct view of the matter unless it can be said as it probably cannot that anger is madness that so far deprives men of their reason as to make them incapable of reasonable discretion. Gambling is another illustration of the principle that to the willing no injury is done. If I take but a single cent of a man's property without his consent the act is a crime. But if two men who are compassmentists possess the reasonable discretion of the knowledge of the nature and probable results of their act sit down together and each voluntary stakes his money against the money of another on the turn of a die and one of them loses his whole estate however large that may be. It is no crime but only a vice. It is not a crime even to assist a person to commit suicide if he be in position of his reason. It is a somewhat common idea of conclusive evidence of insanity but although it may ordinarily be a very strong evidence of insanity it is by no means conclusive in all cases. Many persons in undoubted position of their reason have committed suicide to escape the shame of a public exposure for their crimes or to avoid some other great calamity. Suicide in these cases may not have been the highest wisdom and certainly not proof of any lack of reasonable discretion. Footnote. Kate had committed suicide to avoid falling into the hands of Caesar whoever suspected that he was insane. Brutus did the same. Colt committed suicide only an hour or so before he was to be hanged. He did it to avoid bringing upon his name and his family the disgrace of having it said that he was hanged. This, whether a really wise act or not was clearly an act within reasonable discretion. Does anyone suppose that the person who furnished him with the necessary instrument was a criminal? End of footnote. And being within the limits of reasonable discretion it was no crime for any other persons to aid it either by furnishing the instrument or otherwise. And if in such cases it be no crime to aid a suicide how absurd to say that it is a crime to aid him in some act that is really pleasurable and which a large portion of mankind have believed to be useful. Twenty. But some persons are in the habit of saying that the use of spiritus liquor is the great source of crime. That it fills our prisons with criminals and that this is reason enough for prohibiting the sale of them. Those who say this seriously talk blindy and foolishly. They evidently mean to be understood as saying that a very large percentage of all the crimes that are committed among men are committed by persons whose criminal passions are excited at the time by the use of liquor and in consequence of the use of liquor. This idea is utterly preposterous. In the first place the great crimes committed in the world are mostly prompted by avarice and ambition. The greatest of all crimes are the wars that are carried on by governments to plunder, enslave and destroy mankind. The next greatest crimes permitted in the world are equally prompted by avarice and ambition and are committed not on sudden passion but by men of calculation who keep their heads cool and clear and have no thought whatever of going to prison for them. They commit not so much by men who violate the laws as by men who either by themselves or their instruments make the laws by men who have combined usurp arbitrary power and to maintain it by force and fraud and whose purpose in usurping and maintaining it is by unjust and unequal legislation to ensure for themselves such advantages and monopolies as will enable them to control the labour and properties of other men and thus impoverish them in order to minister to their own wealth and aggrandisement. Footnote an illustration of this fact is found in England whose government for a thousand years or more has been little or nothing else than a band of robbers who have conspired to monopolise the land and as far as possible all other wealth. These conspirators calling themselves kings, nobles and free holders have by force and fraud taken to themselves all civil and military power. They keep themselves in power solely by force and fraud and the corrupt use of their wealth and they employ their power solely in robbing and enslaving the great body of their own people and in plundering and enslaving other peoples. And the world has been and now is full of examples substantially similar and the governments of our own country do not differ so widely from others in this respect to some of us imagine. End of footnote The robberies and wrongs thus committed by these men in conformity with the laws that is their own laws are as mountains to molehills compared with the crimes committed by all other criminals in violation of the laws. But thirdly there are vast numbers of frauds of various kinds committed in the transactions of trade whose perpetrators by their coolness and suggestiveness evade the operations of the laws that is only their cool and clear heads that enable them to do so. The men under the excitement of intoxicating drinks are little disposed and utterly unequal to the successful practice of these frauds. They are the most incautious, the least successful, the least efficient and the least to be feared of all the criminals with whom the law has to deal. Fourthly the professed burglars robbers, thieves, forgers, counterfeiters and swindlers who prey upon society are anything but reckless drinkers. They are businesses of too dangerous a character to admit of such risk as they would thus incur. Fifthly the cries that can be said to be committed under the influence of intoxicating drinks are mostly assaults and batteries, not very numerous and generally not very aggravating. Some other small crimes as petty thefts or other small trespasses upon property are sometimes committed under the influence of drink by feeble-minded persons not generally addicted to crime. The persons who commit these two kinds of crime are but few. They cannot be said to fill our prisons or if they do we are to be congratulated that we need so few prisons and so small prisons to hold them. The state of Massachusetts for example has a million and a half people. How many of these are now in prison for crimes, not for the vice of intoxication but for crimes committed against persons or property under instigation of strong drink? I doubt if there be one in ten thousand that is one hundred and fifty in all and the crimes for which they are in prison are mostly small ones and I think it will be found that these few men are generally much more to be pity than punished for the reason that it was their poverty and misery rather than any passion for liquor or for crime that led them to drink and thus led them to commit their crimes under the influence of drink. The sweeping charge that drink fills our prison with criminals is made I think only by those men who know no better than to call the drunker to criminal and who have no better foundation for their charge the painful fact that we are such brutal and senseless people that we condemn and punish such weak and unfortunate persons as drunkards as if they were criminals. The legislators are authorized and the judges who practice such atrocities as these are intrinsically criminals unless their ignorance be such as it probably is not as to excuse them. And even if they were themselves to be punished as criminals then they are now conduct. A police judge in Boston once told me that he was in the habit of disposing of drunkards by sending them to prison for 30 days I think that was the stereotyped sentence at the rate of one in three minutes and sometimes more rapidly even than that thus condemning them as criminals and sending them to prison without mercy and without inquiry into circumstances for an infirmity that entitled them protection and protection instead of punishment. The real criminals in these cases were not the men who went to prison but the judge and the men behind him who sent them there. I recommend to those persons who are so distressed lest the prisons of Massachusetts be filled with criminals that they employ some portion at least of their philanthropy in preventing our prisons being filled with persons who are not criminals. I do not remember to have heard that their sympathies have ever been very actively exercised in that direction. On the contrary, they seem to have such a passion for punishing criminals that they care not to inquire particularly whether a candidate for punishment really be a criminal. Such a passion, let me assure them, is much more dangerous one and one entitled to far less charity both morally and legally than the passion for strong drink. It seems to be more consonant with the merciless character of these men to send an unfortunate man to prison for drunkenness and thus crush and degrade and dishearten them and ruin him for life that it does for them to lift him out of the poverty and misery that caused him to become a drunken. It is only these persons who have either little capacity or little disposition to enlighten, encourage or aid mankind that are possessed of this violent passion for governing, commanding and punishing them. If instead of standing by and giving their consent and sanction to all the laws by which the weak man is first plundered, oppressed and disheartened and then punished as a criminal, they would turn their attention to the duty of defending his rights and improving his condition and of thus strengthening him and enabling him to stand on his own feet and withstand the temptations that surround him, they would, I think, have little need to talk about laws and prisons for either rum sellers or rum drinkers or even any other class of ordinary criminals. In short, if these men who are so anxious for the suppression of crime would suspend for a while their calls upon the government for aid in suppressing the crimes of individuals and would call upon the people for aid in suppressing the crimes of the government, they would show both their sincerity and good sense in a much stronger light than they do now. When the laws shall all be so just and equitable as to make it possible for all men and women to live honestly and virtuously and to make themselves comfortable and happy, there will be much fewer occasions than now for charging them with living dishonestly and viciously. End of Part 2 Part 3 of Vices Are Not Crimes The Slipper Vox recording is in the public domain. Vices are not crimes by Lysander Spooner Part 3 21 But it will be said again that the use of spiritous liqueurs tends to poverty and thus to make men paupers and burdensome to the taxpayers and that this is sufficient reason why the sale of them should be prohibited. There are various answers to this argument. One answer is that if the fact that the use of liqueurs tends to poverty and pauperism be a sufficient reason for prohibiting the sale of them it is equally a sufficient reason for prohibiting the use of them for it is the use and not the sale that tends to poverty. The seller is at most merely an accomplice of the drinker and it is a rule of law as well as of reason that if the principal in any act is not punishable the accomplice cannot be. A second answer to the argument is that if government has the right and is bound to prohibit any one act that is not criminal merely because it is supposed to tend to poverty then by the same rule it is the right and is bound to prohibit any and every other act that are not criminal which in the opinion of the government tends to poverty and on this principle the government would not only have the right and is bound to look unto every man's private affairs and every person's personal expenditures and determine as to which of them did and which of them did not tend to poverty and to prohibit and punish all of the former class a man would have no right to expend a cent of his own property according to his own pleasure or judgment unless the legislature should be of the opinion such expenditure would not tend to poverty A third answer to the same argument is that if a man does bring himself to poverty and even to beggary either by his virtues or his vices the government is under no obligation whatever to take care of him unless it pleases to do so it may let him perish in the street or depend upon private charity if it so pleases it can carry out its own free will and discretion in the matter for it is above all legal responsibility in such a case it is not necessarily any part of a government's duty to provide for the poor A government that is a legitimate government is simply a voluntary association of individuals who unite for such purposes and only for such purposes as suits them if taking care of the poor whether they be virtuous or vicious for such purposes then the government has a government has no more right and is no more bound to take care of them than has always a banking company or a railroad company Whatever moral claims a poor man whether he be virtuous or vicious may have upon the charity of his fellow men he has no legal claims upon them he must depend wholly upon their charity if they so please he cannot demand as a legal right that they either feed or clothe him and he has no more legal or moral claims upon a government which is but an association of individuals than he has upon the same or any other individuals in their private capacity In so much then as a poor man whether virtuous or vicious has no more other claims legal or moral upon a government as upon private persons a government has no more right than a private person to control or prohibit the expenditures or actions of an individual on the grounds that they tend to bring him to poverty Mr. A as an individual has clearly no right to prohibit any acts or expenditures of Mr. Z through fear that such acts or expenditures may tend to bring him Z to poverty Mr. Z may in consequence at some future unknown time come to him A in distress and ask charity and if A has no such right as an individual to prohibit any acts or expenditures on the part of Z then government which is a mere association of individuals can have no such right Certainly no man who is accomplishmentous holds his right to the disposal and use of his own property by any such worthless tenure as that which would authorise any or all of his neighbours whether calling themselves a government or not to interfere and to forbid him to make any expenditures except such as they might think would not tend to poverty and would not tend to ever bring him to them as a supplicant for their charity Whether a man who is accomplishmentous come to poverty through his virtues or vices a man nor body or men can have any right to interfere with him on the ground that their sympathy may sometime be appealed to in his behalf because if it should be appealed to they are at perfect liberty to act their own pleasure or discretion as to complying with his solicitations The right to refuse charity to the poor whether they are let to be virtuous or vicious is one that governments always act upon No government makes any more provision for the poor than it pleases As a consequence the poor are left to suffer sickness and either death because neither public nor private charity comes to their aid How absurd then to say that government has a right to control a man's use of his own property through fear that he might sometime come to poverty and ask charity Still a fourth answer to the argument is that the great and only incentive which each individual has to labour and to create wealth is that he may dispose of it according to his own pleasure or discretion and for the promotion of his own happiness and the happiness of those to whom he loves Footnote It is of this incentive alone that we are indebted for all the wealth that has ever been created by human labour and accumulated for the benefit of mankind End of footnote How a man may often, from inexperience or want of judgement expend some portion of the products of his labour injudiciously and so as not to promote his highest welfare Yet he learns wisdom in this as in all other matters by experience, by his mistake as well as by his successes and this is the only way in which he can learn wisdom When he becomes convinced that he has made one foolish expenditure he learns thereby not to make another like it and he must be permitted to try his own experiments and to try them to his own satisfaction in this as in all other matters for otherwise he has no mate of the labour nor to create wealth at all Any man who was a man would rather be a savage and be free creating or procuring only such little wealth as he could control and consume from day to day than to be a civilised man knowing how to create and accumulate wealth indefinitely and yet not permitted to use or dispose of it except under the supervision direction and dictation of a set of medicine superserviceable fools and tyrants who with no more knowledge than himself and perhaps not half so much should assume to control him on the ground that he had not the right or the capacity to determine for himself as to what he would do with the proceeds of his own labour A fifth answer to the argument is that if it be the duty of government to watch over the expenditures of any one person who has compass meant us and not criminal to see what ones tend to poverty and what do not and to prohibit and punish the former then by the same rule it is bound to watch over the expenditures of all other persons and prohibit and punish all that in each judgement tend to poverty If such a principle were carried out impartially the result would be that all mankind would be so occupied in watching each others expenditures and in testifying against trying and punishing such as tended to poverty that they would have no time left to create wealth at all Everybody capable of productive labour would either be in prison or be acting as judge, juror, witness or jailer It would be impossible to create courts enough to try or to build prisons enough to hold the offenders All productive labour would cease and the fools that were so intent on preventing poverty would not only all come to poverty imprisonment and starvation themselves but would bring everybody else to poverty imprisonment and starvation If it be said that a man may at least be rightfully compelled to support his family and consequently to abstain from all expenditures that in the opinion of the government tend to disable him to perform that duty various answers might be given But this one is sufficient viz that no man unless a fool or a slave would acknowledge any family to be his if that acknowledgement would remain an excuse by the government for depriving him either of his personal liberty or the control of his property his family is usually almost universally the great paramount object of his pride and affection and he will not only voluntarily but as his highest pleasure employ his best powers of mind and body not merely to provide for them the ordinary necessities and comforts of life but to lavish upon them all the luxuries and elegancies that his labour can procure sends us into no moral or legal obligation with his wife or children to do anything for them except what he can do consistently with his own personal freedom and his natural right to control his own property at his own discretion if a government can step in and say to a man who was accomplishmentous and who was doing his duty to his family as he sees his duty and according to his best judgment however imperfect that may be we the government suspect employing your labour to the best advantage for your family we suspect that your expenditures and your disposal of your property are not so judicious as they might be for the interests of your family and therefore we the government will take you and your property under our special surveillance and prescribe to you what you may and may not do with yourself and your property and your family shall hear after look to us the government if a government can do this all a man's pride, ambition and affection relative to this family would be crushed so far as it would be possible for you materially to crush them and he would either never have a family whom he would publicly acknowledge to be his or he would risk both his property and life in overthrowing such an insulting outrageous and insufferable tyranny and any woman who would wish her husband he be encompassmentist to submit to such an unnatural insult and wrong his utterly undeserving of his affection or of anything but his disgust and contempt and he would probably very soon cause her to understand that if she chose to rely on the government for the support of herself and her children rather than him she must rely on the government alone 22 still another and all sufficient answer to the argument that the use of spirit as liquors tends to poverty is that as a general rule it puts the effect before the cause it assumes that it is the use of liquors that causes the poverty instead of it being the poverty that causes the use of liquors poverty is the natural parent of nearly all the ignorance vice crime and misery there are in the world footnote except those great crimes with the few calling themselves governments practice upon the many by means of organized systemic extortion and tyranny and is only the poverty ignorance and consequent weakness of the many that enable the combined and organized few to acquire and maintain such arbitrary power over them and a footnote why is it that so large a portion of the laboring people of England are drunken and vicious certainly not because they are by nature any worse than other men but it is because their extreme and hopeless poverty keeps them in ignorance and servitude destroys their courage and self-respect subjects them to such constant insults and wrongs to such incessant and bitter miseries of every kind and finally drives them to such despair that the short the drink or other vice affordance them is for the time being a relief this is the chief cause of the drunkenness and other vices that prevail among the laboring people of England if those labors in England who are now drunken and vicious had had the same chances in surrounding and life as the more fortunate classes have had if they had been reared and comfortable and happy and virtuous homes instead of squalid and wretched and vicious ones if they had opportunities to acquire knowledge and property and make themselves intelligent comfortable, happy, independent and respected and to secure to themselves all the intellectual social and domestic enjoyments which honest and justly rewarded industry could enable them to secure if they could have had all this instead of being born to a life of hopeless unrewarded toil with a certainty of death in the work health they would have been as free from their present vices and weaknesses as those who reproached them now it is of no use to say that drunkenness or any other vice only adds to their miseries for such is human nature the weakness of human nature if you please that men can endure but a certain amount of misery before their hope and courage fail and they yield to almost anything that promises present relief or mitigation for what the cost of still greater misery in the future to preach morality or temperance to such wretched persons instead of relieving their sufferings or improving their conditions is only insulting their wretchedness well those who are in the habit of attributing men's poverty to their vices instead of their vices to their poverty as if every poor person or most poor persons were especially vicious tell us whether all the poverty perished year and a half have been brought so suddenly as it were in a moment upon at least 20 millions of the people of the United States were brought upon them as a natural consequence either of their drunkenness or of any other of their vices was it their drunkenness or any other of their vices that paralysed this by a stroke of lightning all the industries by which they lived and which had but a few days all been in such prosperous activity was it their vices that turned the adult portion of those 20 millions out of door with that employment compelled them to consume their little accumulations if they had need and then to become beggars beggars for work and fouling in this beggars for bread was it their vices that all at once without warning filled the homes of so many of them with want, misery, sickness and death no, clearly it was neither the drunkenness nor any other vices of these laboring people that brought upon them all this ruin and wretchedness and if it was not what was it this is the problem that must be answered for it is one that is repeatedly occurring and constantly before us and that cannot be put aside in fact the poverty of the great body of mankind the world over is the great problem of the world that such extreme and nearly universal poverty exists all over the world and has existed through all past generation proves that it originates in causes which the common human nature of those who suffer from it had not hitherto been strong enough to overcome could these sufferers are at least beginning to see these causes becoming resolute to remove them let it cost what it may and those who imagine that they have nothing to do but to go on attributing the poverty of the poor to their vices and preaching to them against their vices will there long wake up to find that the day for all such talk is past and the question will be then not what are men's vices but what are their rights end of part three end of vices are not crimes by Lysander Spooner