Not Just Bad Policy: The Founders Called it Treason and War
Treason. Invasion. Conquest.
That’s how the Founders and old revolutionaries described usurpation – power stolen, not delegated.
And it wasn’t just rhetoric. It was a foundational, and now-forgotten principle at the very heart of the American Revolution.
When government repeatedly goes beyond the limits of the Constitution, it’s not just an innocent mistake – it’s a kind of war waged against the sovereignty, or final authority, of the people.
MORE THAN JUST “BAD POLICY”
To the Founders, this wasn’t theory – it was a warning. Few, if any, put that warning into sharper words than St. George Tucker, a patriot of the Revolutionary War and one of the most important constitutional scholars of the early republic.
“If in a limited government the public functionaries exceed the limits which the constitution prescribes to their powers, every such act is an act of usurpation in the government, and, as such, treason against the sovereignty of the people, which is thus endeavored to be subverted, and transferred to the usurpers.”
Tucker called it treason. Thomas Paine explained the foundation of it – where all power comes from.
“All power exercised over a nation, must have some beginning. It must either be delegated or assumed. There are no other sources. All delegated power is trust, and all assumed power is usurpation.”
Paine and Tucker weren’t inventing something new. These were long-established principles, recognized for generations. Over a century earlier, Algernon Sidney laid the same foundation:
“The making of laws, coronation, inauguration, and all that belongs to the chusing and making of kings, or other magistrates, is merely from the people; and that all power exercised over them, which is not so, is usurpation and tyranny.”
John Locke took that idea a step further – defining usurpation as the theft of power that rightfully belongs to someone else:
“Usurpation is the exercise of power, which another hath a right to.”
A WAR AGAINST USURPATION
The American revolutionaries fought a long, bloody war to free themselves from the evils of usurpation.
People often say the Declaration of Independence listed grievances. But that word isn’t even in the text. Instead, the Declaration complained of “a long train of abuses and usurpations” and “a history of repeated injuries and usurpations.”
The American revolutionaries weren’t just airing policy disagreements. In the Declaration of Independence, they told the world that power had been seized – stolen – and turned against them.
And they didn’t stop at lofty ideals. The Revolution gave birth to something entirely new: written constitutions that put those principles into binding law. As Tucker explained:
“The American revolution seems to have given birth to this new political phenomenon: in every state a written constitution was framed, and adopted by the people, both in their individual and sovereign capacity, and character.”
This affirmed a core truth: the people hold sovereignty – they are the source of all power – and government is merely their agent, not their master.
“By this means, the just distinction between the sovereignty, and the government, was rendered familiar to every intelligent mind; the former was found to reside in the people, and to be unalienable from them; the latter in their servants and agents.”
John Jay, the first Chief Justice, emphasized that this principle was built into the Constitution itself: it only outlined the specific business the people chose to delegate to their agents:
“The Constitution only serves to point out that part of the people’s business, which they think proper by it to refer to the management of the persons therein designated”
And he made it clear that these people were never meant to rule, but only to serve:
“those persons are to receive that business to manage, not for themselves, and as their own, but as agents and overseers for the people to whom they are constantly responsible, and by whom only they are to be appointed.”
WAR ON THE PEOPLE
The Founders didn’t just see usurpation as a legal issue. They saw it as something far more dangerous – not merely a theft of power, but a form of war against the people themselves.
Benjamin Franklin vividly described this during the Philadelphia Convention.
“As all history informs us, there has been in every State & Kingdom a constant kind of warfare between the Governing & Governed.”
At the height of the Revolution, Samuel Adams recognized the same danger:
“The people hold the Invasion of their Rights & Liberties the most horrid rebellion and a Neglect to defend them against any Power whatsoever the highest Treason.”
A century before that, Algernon Sidney called those who usurp power the greatest enemies a people can face.
“If he be justly accounted an enemy to all, who injures all; he above all must be the publick enemy of a nation, who by usurping a power over them, does the greatest and most publick injury that a people can suffer.”
Locke took it further. Usurpation, he said, isn’t just theft – it’s a form of domestic conquest.
“As conquest may be called a foreign usurpation, so usurpation is a kind of domestic conquest.”
And conquest, by its very nature, is war.
“Whenever the legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people.”
Thomas Gordon didn’t hold back – he described lawless power as one of the most monstrous evils a people can face:
“There is something so wanton and monstrous in lawless power, that there scarce ever was a human spirit that could bear it; and the mind of man, which is weak and limited, ought never to be trusted with a power that is boundless. The state of tyranny is a state of war.”
St. George Tucker drove the point home – calling every act of usurpation not just theft, but treason or warfare against the people:
“Every delegated authority implies a trust; responsibility follows as the shadow does its substance. But where there is no responsibility, authority is no longer a trust, but an act of usurpation. And every act of usurpation is either an act of treason, or an act of warfare.”
A PRINCIPLE OLDER THAN AMERICA
This wasn’t some new American twist. It was an ancient truth. Cicero, 2,000 years ago, didn’t merely warn – he branded such tyrants as monsters on the spot.
“For as soon as a king assumes an unjust and despotic power, he instantly becomes a tyrant, than which there can be nothing baser, fouler – no imaginable animal can be more detestable to gods or men – for though in form a man, he surpasses the most savage monsters in infernal cruelty.”
In T he Law of Nations. Vattel didn’t hold back – he called breaking the constitution “a capital crime.”
“To attack the constitution of the state, and to violate its laws, is a capital crime against society; and if those guilty of it are invested with authority, they add to this crime a perfidious abuse of the power with which they are intrusted.”
NO LAW, NO OBLIGATION
Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui – likely the inspiration behind the phrase “pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence – argued that when people with power violate fundamental principles, the people are not only free from obligation, they’re required to resist.
“But if the abuse of the legislative power proceeds to excess, and to the subversion of the fundamental principles of the laws of nature, and of the duties which it enjoins, it is certain that, under such circumstances, the subjects are, by the laws of God, not only authorized, but even obliged to refuse obedience to all laws of this kind.”
He was building on the work of people like Thomas Gordon who also took the position that no one was bound to obey usurpations of power.
“Human reason says, that there is no obedience, no regard due to those rulers, who govern by no rule but their lust. Such men are no rulers; they are outlaws; who, being at defiance with God and man, are protected by no law of God, or of reason.”
Patrick Henry put this principle into practice with his Resolutions against the Stamp Act in 1765. Referring to the hated tax as “illegal, unconstitutional and unjust,” he forcefully argued that the people are not bound to obey.
“The Inhabitants of this Colony, are not bound to yield Obedience to any Law or Ordinance whatever, designed to impose any Taxation whatsoever upon them, other than the Laws or Ordinances of the General Assembly aforesaid.”
Tucker tied it all together – First, with a reminder that acts beyond the limits of the constitution – are not law at all.
“Acts of congress to be binding, must be made pursuant to the constitution; otherwise they are not laws, but a mere nullity; or what is worse, acts of usurpation.”
That being the case – the people are not bound to obey them. Going further, anyone taking an oath to support the constitution is bound to actively oppose them.
“The people are not only not bound by them, but the several departments and officers of the governments, both federal, and state, are bound by oath to oppose them; for, being bound by oath to support the constitution, they must violate that oath, whenever they give their sanction, by obedience, or otherwise, to any unconstitutional act of any department of the government.”
THE CONSTITUTION OR TYRANNY: THE CHOICE IS OURS
Violating the Constitution isn’t just a political mistake. From the Founders and Revolutionaries to the great thinkers who came before them, usurpation was called what it truly is: theft of power, treason against the sovereignty of the people, and an act of war and conquest.
This was the view of those who laid the intellectual foundation for the American Revolution – Locke, Cicero, Sidney, Vattel, and so many others. It was the view of founders like Paine, Adams, and more. They all made it clear: when government crosses the line, it turns from servant to enemy.
The Constitution isn’t a suggestion. It’s the supreme law of the land.
Here’s the kicker almost everyone ignores today: treason and tyranny will never stop themselves.
It’s up to the people to protect and defend their own Constitution and their own liberty – whether the government likes it or not.
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