Lysander Spooner

This right of resistance is recognized by the constitution of the United States, as a strictly legal and constitutional right.

And it is a sufficient and legal defence for a person accused of using arms against the government, if he can show, to the satisfaction of a jury, or even any one of a jury, that the law he resisted was an unjust one.

In the American State constitutions also, this right of resistance to the oppressions of the government is recognized, in various ways, as a natural, legal, and constitutional right.

It would be a matter of ridiculous supererogation to assert, in a constitution of government, the natural right of men to defend their lives and liberties against private trespassers.

Many of these bills of rights also assert the natural right of all men to protect their property that is, to protect it against the government.

The constitutions of New Hampshire and Tennessee also declare that "The doctrine of non-resistance against arbitrary power and oppression is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind.

The legal effect of these constitutional recognitions of the right of individuals to defend their property, liberties, and lives, ' against the government, is to legalize resistance to all injustice and oppression, of every name and nature…

But for this right of resistance, on the part of the people, all governments would become tyrannical to a degree of which few people are aware.

Constitutions are utterly worthless to restrain the tyranny of governments, unless it be understood that the people will, by force, compel the government to keep within the constitutional limits.

But that the people are stronger than the government, and will resist in extreme cases, our governments would be little or nothing else than organized systems of plunder and oppression.

All, or nearly all, the advantage there is in fixing any constitutional limits to the power of a government, is simply to give notice to the government of the point at which it will meet with resistance.

If the authority be vested in the government, the governmnt is absolute, and the people have no liberties except such as the government sees fit to indulge them with.