They are mere puppets in the hands of the lawmakers.
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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Because it is a natural impossibility that they can make any law--that is, any law of their own invention--that does not violate "our liberty.
It derives not one particle of its authority from any commands of theirs.
And as it is naturally impossible that they can invent any law of their own, that shall not conflict with the law of justice, it is naturally impossible that they can make a law--that is, a law of their own invention--that shall not…
Any law--made by lawmakers--that should give to any man more liberty than is given him by the law of justice, would be a license to commit an injustice upon one or more other persons.
It does not tell us that individual liberty means freedom from all compulsion to do anything whatever, except what justice requires us to do, and freedom to do everything whatever that justice permits us to do.
It does not tell us that there is any science of liberty; any science, which every man may learn, and by which every man may know, what is, and what is not, his own, and every other man's, rightful "liberty.
It does not tell us that this right of individual liberty rests upon an immutable, natural principle, which no human power can make, unmake, or alter; nor that all human authority, that claims to set it aside, or modify it, is nothing but…
And, finally, it does not tell us that all lawmaking governments whatsoever--whether called monarchies, aristocracies, republics, democracies, or by any other name--are all alike violations of men's natural and rightful liberty.
If, therefore, you really intend to continue this system of lawmaking, it seems indispensable that you should explain to us what you mean by the term "our liberty.
And my answer is, that from the moment it is conceded that any man, or body of men, whatever, under any pretence whatever, have the right to make laws of their own invention, and compel other men to obey them, every vestige of man's…
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.