If a government can forbid the free exercise of a single one of man's natural rights, it may, for the same reason, forbid the exercise of any and all of them; and thus establish, practically and absolutely, Marshall's principle, that the…
Lysander Spooner
The Public Record
Lysander Spooner was an American abolitionist, entrepreneur, lawyer, essayist, natural rights legal theorist, pamphleteer, political philosopher, and writer often associated with the Boston anarchist tradition.
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And this is equivalent to saying that governments have all power, and the people no rights.
Is not this equivalent to saying that governments have all power, and the people no rights?
The law of justice is just as supreme and universal in the moral world, as these others are in the mental or physical world; and is as unalterable as are these by any human power.
All these are natural laws, that man never made, nor can ever unmake, or alter.
The true definition of law is, that it is a fixed, immutable, natural principle; and not anything that man ever made, or can make, unmake, or alter.
It denies all the natural rights of the people; and is resorted to only by usurpers and tyrants, to justify their crimes.
He had apparently never heard of any natural, individual, human rights, that had never been delegated to either the general or State governments.
And, so far as I know, he never declared a single State law unconstitutional, on account of its injustice, or its violation of men's natural rights; but only on account of its conflict with the constitution, laws, or treaties of the United…
In all that time, so far as I have known, he never declared a single act of congress unconstitutional; and probably never would have done so, if he had lived to this time.
I think his record does not furnish a single instance, in which he ever vindicated men's natural rights, in opposition to the arbitrary legislation of congress.
These propositions were, first, that government has all power; and, secondly, that the people have no rights.