Lysander Spooner

The court might, with just as much reason, have said that, to preserve the life of the government, congress had the right to issue such money as would authorize all creditors to demand twice the amount of their honest dues from all debtors.

And among these lawful crimes, the court holds that congress had the right to issue money that should serve as a license to all holders of it, to cheat--or rather openly rob--their creditors.

So they hold that in such an exigency as they describe, congress had the right to commit any crime against private persons, by which the government could be saved.

On the contrary, they hold that, in comparison with the preservation of the government, all the rights of the people to property, liberty, and life are worthless things, not to be regarded.

A good government, no more than a bad one, has any right to live by robbery, murder, or any other crime.

And when a government resorts to such measures to save its life, we need no further proof that its time to die has come.

The answer to it is, that no government, however good in other respects--any more than any other good institution--has any right to live otherwise than on purely voluntary support.

Such an attempt as this, to justify one crime, by taking for granted the justice of other and greater crimes, is a rather desperate mode of reasoning, for a court of law; to say nothing of a court of justice.

They show that these judicial oracles, as men call them, are no better than some of the other so-called oracles, by whom mankind have been duped.

On the contrary, they show us what farces and impostures these judicial opinions--or decisions, as they call them--are.

And congress has no more right to invalidate this mortgage, by a single iota, than it has to invalidate a warranty deed of land.

And this mortgage right is as veritable a right of property, as is any right of property, that is conveyed by a warranty deed.