Lysander Spooner

And this is the theory on which the governments of England and the United States have always, with immaterial exceptions, acted, in prohibiting all but such small amounts of money as they (the governments) should specially license.

And the one only purpose of the monopoly is to enable the holders of it to rob everybody else in the prices of their labor, and the products of their labor.

Few people have any real perception of the power, which this monopoly gives to the holders of it, over the industry and traffic of all other persons.

It is by this arbitrary power over contracts, that the monopoly of money is sustained.

Therefore the assertion, by the government, of a right to prohibit, or qualify, any one of them, is equivalent to a denial of all natural right, on the part of individuals, to make any of them.

If a government has the right to prohibit, or qualify, any one of these contracts, it has the same right to prohibit, or qualify, all of them.

For the right to make any and all of them stands on the same grounds of natural law, natural justice, and men's natural rights.

The prohibition, or qualification, of any one of these contracts--that are intrinsically just and lawful--is a denial of all individual natural right to make any of them.

These governments (State and national) deny this natural right of buying and selling, etc., by arbitrarily prohibiting, or qualifying, all such, and so many, of these contracts, as they choose to prohibit, or qualify.

They are a denial of men's right to make any contracts whatever, except such as the governments shall see fit to permit them to make.

But any and all such prohibitions, or qualifications, are a denial of men's natural right to make their own contracts.

I repeat that both the national and State governments have constantly denied the natural right of individuals to make their own contracts.