SPOONER, Lysander, lawyer, born in Athol, Massachusetts, 19 January, 1808" died in Boston, Massachusetts, 14 Nay, 1887. He studied law in Worcester, Massachusetts, but on completing his course of reading found that. admission to the bar was permitted only to those who had studied for three years, except in the ease of college graduates. This obnoxious condition at once engaged his attention and he succeeded in having it removed from the statute-books. In 1844 the letter postage from Boston to New Yorkwas twelve and a half cents and to Washington twenty-five cents. Mr. Spooner, believing that the United States government had no constitutional right to a monopoly of the mails, established an independent service from Boston to New York, carrying letters at the uniform rate of five cents. His business grew rapidly, but the government soon overwhelmed him with prosecutions, so that he was compelled to retire from the undertaking, but not until he had shown the possibility of supporting the post-office department by a lower rate of postage. His efforts resulted in an act of congress that reduced the rates, followed in 1851 and subsequentyears by still further reductions. Mr. Spooner was an active Abolitionist, and contributed largely to the literature of the subject, notably by his" Unconstitutionality of Slavery "(1845), the tenets of which were supported by Gerrit Smith, Elizur Wright, and others of the Liberty party, but were opposed by the Garrisonians. He defended Thomas Drew, who in 1870 declined to take his oath as a witness before a legislative committee on the ground that in the matter it was investigating it had no authority to compel him to testify. The case was adversely decided on the ground of precedent, but the principles of Mr. Spooner's argument were afterward sustained by the United States supreme court. His writings include "A Deistic Reply to the Alleged Supernatural Evidences of Christianity "and "The Deistic Immortality, and an Essay on Man's Accountability for his Belief" (1836) ; "Credit, Currency, and Banking" (1843): "Poverty, Causes and Cure" (1846); "A Defence for Fugitive Slaves" (1856); "A New System of Paper Currency" (1861) ; " Our Financiers" (1877) ; " The Law of Prices " (1877) ; "Gold and Silver as Standards of Value" (1878) ; and " Letter to Grover Cleveland on his False Inaugural Address" (1886).