Lysander Spooner

Every human being has the same natural right to buy and sell, of and to, any and all other people in the world, as he has to buy and sell, of and to, the people of his own country.

The pauper laborers (if there are any such) of other countries have just as good a right to live by their labor, and have an equal chance in our own markets, and in all the markets of the world, as have the pauper laborers, or any other…

And all this is done at the instigation, and principally for the benefit, of the employers of home labor, and not for the benefit of home laborers themselves.

But they advocate it solely because they put into their own pockets a very large portion certainly--probably three-fourths, I should judge--of the increased prices their commodities are thus made to bring in the market.

Nobody will suspect them of being influenced by any such compassion as that.

Certainly not because they have such an intense compassion for their own laborers, that they are willing to rob everybody else, rich and poor, for their benefit.

This argument must have originated with the employers of home labor, and not with the home laborers themselves.

This is the great argument that is relied on to justify the robbery.

Thus the amounts that go to the support of the government, and also the amounts that go into the pockets of the home producers, in the higher prices they get for their goods, are all sheer robberies; and nothing else.

And this additional price is sheer robbery, and is known to be so.

They are levied upon the imported commodity, mainly, if not solely, for the purpose of enabling the producers of competing home commodities to extort from consumers a higher price than the home commodities would bring in free and open…

But the pretence that heavy taxes are levied upon imports, solely, or mainly, for the support of government, while light taxes, or no taxes at all, are levied upon property at home, is an utterly false pretence.