Lysander Spooner: Poverty : Its Illegal Causes and Legal Cure. (1846.)

CHAPTER I.

ILLEGAL CAUSES OF POVERTY.

The existing poverty would be rapidly removed, and future poverty almost entirely prevented, a more equal dis­tribution of property than now exists accomplished, and the aggregate wealth of society greatly increased, if the princi­ples of natural law, and of our national and state constitutions generally, were adhered to by the judiciary in their decisions in regard to contracts.

These principles are violated by the judiciary in various ways, to Wit:

1. In a manner to uphold arbitrary arid unconstitutional statutes against freedom in banking, and freedom in the rate of interest; thus denying the natural and constitutional right of the people to make two classes of contracts, which will hereafter be shown to be of vital importance, both to the general increase and to the more equal distribution of wealth.