They do not claim a wisdom so superior to that of the producers of wealth, as to know, better than they, how their wealth should be disposed of.
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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They do not claim that they are robbing, enslaving, and murdering us, solely to secure our happiness and prosperity, and not from any selfish motives of their own.
They do not profess to be anything but such villains as they really are.
Bandits and pirates do not--like these judges--attempt to cheat us out of our common sense, in order to cheat us out of our property, liberty, or life.
In fact, bandits and pirates are highly respectable and honorable villains, compared with the judges of these courts of injustice.
If the people of this country knew what crimes are constantly committed by these courts of injustice, they would squelch them, without mercy, as unceremoniously as they would squelch so many gangs of bandits or pirates.
If we ever should have courts of justice, it is easy to see what will become of statute books, supreme courts, trial by battle, and all the other machinery of fraud and tyranny, by which the world is now ruled.
Is it too much to hope for mankind, that they may sometime have courts of justice, instead of such courts of injustice as these?
Why are so many of them so ambitious to become lawmakers and judges themselves?
Why have they not told us what impostors and tyrants all these so-called lawmakers, judges, etc., etc., are?
And why have they not told us how false, absurd, and tyrannical are all these lawmaking governments?
Why have they not told us, hundreds of years ago, what are men's natural rights of person and property?